[Dataporn] 6 months + 4 shorts = $271.72

Intro

I was a bit reluctant to do one of these things because I haven't been a super active user of this subreddit, although I do browse it everyday. I questioned whether I should do one of these things, since I don't actually have that much to report since I've only published 4 shorts, but I decided to do it anyways and maybe I can get some feedback or something. Any dataporn is good dataporn, I guess?

Who am I?

I'm a fairly ordinary bookworm who has a lot of chronic health issues, so I work from home. I do other work at home stuff and this is just one of them. I want to hugely increase my output and eventually start publishing full length novels. Writing has been my dream and even writing small stories like this and having people read them is an amazing feeling to me.

The data

In 6 months I have published 4 short stories in 3 different niches for a total of $271.72.

My best book has made a total of $150.30 and continues to sell. It was the second one that I published.

My worst book was the first that I published and it only made $8.82.

May was the month where I earned the most money, but I seem to be dropping off in sales. I published my first short on Feb 17, so I didn't get to I am not sure if this is the so called "summer slump" or if my stories are just old and have been out too long. No worries though, I have one story that just needs editing, and another that I'm almost finished with. I hope to publish them both this week.

All of these shorts are between 5000 and 7000 words.

What went wrong?

• My output is pretty pathetic for 6 months, but I actually have a pretty good excuse because these last few months have been some of the craziest of my entire life. In the 6 month timeframe of writing these shorts my husband asked me to marry him, we bought a house, got married, moved to another city and I also had emergency surgery and was in recovery for an entire month. (Funny story: As I was coming down from anesthesia in the recovery room, I almost told the nurse guy that I write erotic stories when he asked me what I did for a living. Thankfully I came to my senses and told the guy a fake pseudonym when he wanted to look me up.)

• My first book really seemed to bomb and I have no real idea of why. Maybe it's just the niche wasn't very popular or something. It was paranormal so maybe that is why?

• Given all the crazy things that have been happening in my life I just haven't put this hours into this that I should. I haven't made writing a part of my daily schedule. It's been more of an experiment than anything. Thankfully I have learned a lot.

What went right?

• I think my covers might be a factor in how many books I have sold so far. I bought a deal from depositphotos and I have Photoshop skills from classes I took in college.

• Formatting is something I paid a lot of attention to and I learned how to do it from a book called Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress.

• Before I started writing I created a mini outline and that really helped keep me on track. I also used a program called Cold Turkey Writer, which helped me ignore the internet and get to writing.

What I learned

I learned a lot about how to self publish, as well as how to just get things done. Even though my output has been minimal I am glad I started with these small projects, because they really helped me understand what I was doing. I feel like I'll be a lot more prepared when I actually write something bigger, like a novel. I also learned that I really can't write without an outline, which is one reason I haven't finished that many stories.

Future Goals

I am in the middle of outlining my first romance novel, but I think I wanna do a bit more research before hand.

I also want to drastically increase my output of shorts until I am publishing at least 2 or 3 per week.

Conclusion

So there you have it. This is probably not that impressive but I wanted to share my little experiment. Any feedback, advice or comments are greatly appreciated.