I haven't posted in this thread in about a year, so I thought I'd update!
I now have 12 books out (7 short novels and 5 novellas). My last series was a quartet of romance novellas centered around holidays. I released them all within a 4-month period.
The last two were released in January and February, and income-wise, these were my best months on Amazon US! (Amazon US is over half of my total sales) The single-book sales were still not as good as the release for Grumpy Fake Boyfriend, but with sales for other books in the series and the rest of my backlist, they were good overall (low four figures). So I feel like I am slowly building an audience.
March sales have not been great (not my worst, though), but I didn't have a release, and there is a lot happening in the world at present.
In 2019, my revenue was low five figures (CAD), but with my expenses, it looks like I made almost nothing. (Note, however, that I did attend an out-of-country conference.) Other expenses included edits, covers, and advertising. However, I really haven't figured out how to make ads work for me, though I've read a bunch on this topic. FB and BookBub (ads, not feature deals) have been a waste of money so far. I do have some limited success with Amazon Ads, but am not running them at present. Back in August, when I had a book on sale for 99 cents, I paid for listings in a few services that send out e-mails about free/cheap books, and I was disappointed with the results. So, at some point I need to figure out how to make ads work for me, but it hasn't happened yet. Not looking to do this right now, however. Twitter continues to help my sales the most.
In 2020 I am hoping to make more of an actual profit
I have 3 more novels and 1 novella planned. The next one (Pregnant by the Playboy) will be out in May. I have box sets planned, too, and there will be a bunch of free/99 cent sales.
My Holidays with the Wongs series was a little different from the previous one in that it has illustrated covers, all books are novellas, and it's very low angst and conflict (even for me, lol). This series was planned about a year ago, and I intentionally wanted to write something that wouldn't be tough on me emotionally, due to what was happening with my family. Illustrated covers have been huge in trade paperback rom-coms, but haven't become as popular in self-publishing, though there are still some. I found that these covers got less attention when I first revealed them on social media, but my pre-orders were a bit better than for all my other books (except Grumpy Fake Boyfriend)...though this might be me building an audience. I'm planning to go back to photo covers for the next 2 series, but we'll see how it goes. These novellas are all $2.99 and about 30k in length; my novels (about 60k words) are all $3.99. The epilogues of these novellas also very clearly hooked the next couple in the series, and I do think this may have helped sell-through.
I now have print versions of my novel-length books, which I set up through IngramSpark. They are sold in a few romance bookstores, such as The Ripped Bodice and Love's Sweet Arrow. I didn't expect to make much money on these at all (I did them mainly for signings and because one of my books was in a sex toy/romance subscription box), but I actually do make $50-100 a month, so that's nice.
My books have appeared on various lists and articles, and when I went to the RWA conference, lots of people seemed to know who I was. I recently got an agent, and hopefully she will be able to sell subrights for some of my books. She was supposed to put something new out on submission for me this month, but then...COVID-19 happened. I definitely want to continue self-publishing, but I'd be interested in having a book a year at a trade publisher, if possible, to get in more bookstores...and also, rom-coms are hot right now.
I'm not a huge success, but I'm reasonably happy with how things have gone, and it has been nice to see my sales build over time. If you have any questions, let me know! The rest of my books are here:
jackielaubooks.com/books/