Income report 2020

I’ve been putting off writing this for a long time. I think I mentioned I wanted to have this done in February, but every time I went to write it, I just couldn’t. Well, luckily you guys are dogged in asking me about my income report for last year and kept reminding me until I had a free moment to think about last year. We’re not almost five months through the year, and I can finally look at 2020 without having a complete mental breakdown. If you want to see previous income reports, you can click here.

I wish I did a better totaling of each category in previous years, but I didn’t, so I couldn’t look back and tell you whether things were up or down, and since the categories shifted considerably last year with the canceling of shows, it might not have been helpful either.

I hope this is instructive, at least as a snapshot of how one person dealt with 2020.

For me, I had already planned to move into doing more Kickstarters all the way back in early 2019. The difference became that I didn’t have conventions to help buoy sales.

Instead, I had to count on online sales and frankly, PPP loans and unemployment, to help fill the gap. We ended up doing REALLY well on Kickstarter, but doing a lot of Kickstarters means ramping up production on books, which means spending a whole lot more on contract labor, editors, and other things.

I now have something like 6,000 books in my garage waiting for shows, because that was how I sold back catalog books. With shows, I only needed to make 1-2 books a year, and I could go to shows and sell the stock that I had left over. It was a big shift, and it meant thousands of more writing hours over the course of the year than normal. Luckily, writing is the thing I was put on this earth to do, so I didn’t mind.

For being a dumpster fire of a year, I was able to do the thing I planned on doing all along, pulling back from shows, doing more online sales, and forcing myself to test out some things I always wanted to try so that I didn’t have to hit the road 20 weeks a year.

Hopefully when shows come back, they will be a joyous experience instead of a stressful one. I would love to be able to use shows like my friends do, knowing there will be income coming in from other sources. I put SO much pressure on shows they stopped being fun for me. In 2022, when I run a full slate, I’m hopeful that I can learn to con better with a more stable income from other sources I built up in 2020.

So how did I do?

Kickstarter – $67,375.32

This was across five campaigns, ranging from $3,000 to $30,000 in scale. 2020 was easily my biggest Kickstarter year ever. The only other year that comes close is 2017, the first year I grossed over $100,000, when I made $52,000 on Kickstarter across two campaigns. In 2019, I made $16,780 on Kickstarter, and the previous year I made $39,000, each from one campaign. This definitely helped replace the loss of conventions.

Indiegogo – $477.84

This was mostly from Cthulhu is Hard to Spell sales, but also a few sales of Ichabod Jones volumes 1 and 2.

Online Sales – $5,784.17

A lot of this was from a promotion I did for a free+shipping offer I ran in August, and then selling copies of Cthulhu is Hard to Spell to contributors.

This all came from non-Kickstarter funds, and this is the most I’ve ever made online outside of Kickstarter funding in a year, and outside of Amazon/BN/Kobo, etc. This helped replace convention income, but since I made over $27,000 in 2019 and over $34,000 in 2018, it was still a long way off. Still, it was nice to be able to do it in my jammies without having to be on the con floor for 10 hours slinging books. I have been working on my endurance all year so that when shows come back, I hopefully won’t be so gassed by them.

Amazon, BN, Kobo, etc – $1273.98

Most of this came from Amazon. There were only a couple of sales from other platforms.

Audiobooks – $116.63

This might not seem like a lot of money, and it’s not, but I narrated these books myself and did all the post-production on them, so this is all profit.

I didn’t even record either book last year, so this is 100% passive income. I have two audiobooks for my non-fiction books How to Build your Creative Career and How to Become a Successful Author.

Royalties – $80.99

Ichabod was translated into Spanish for the Argentinian market last year, and I received one royalty check from them. I don’t often get book royalties from publishers because I don’t do a ton of work for other publishers outside of Wannabe Press, but it’s always nice when you get them.

Speaking – $350

I did a couple of presentations for Author Learning Center last year, in October, which netted me a couple hundred dollars. I’ve already done one this year, and have another scheduled for June, so this has become a nice little revenue stream.

Marketing – $6,656

I stopped doing book marketing for people in May, after running seven viral builders for people. I also consulted for some people last year, which added to this income.

Courses – $2,594

Course sales were way down last year, but I still made a good chunk of change from them. All I pay for this all year is the $399.00 Teachable fee to keep it up, so very profitable even though course sales were way down.

I edit and record them all myself, so every dollar that comes in is profit, save for hosting fees.

Verizon – $9,968

Even though businesses were closed a good portion of the year, we still made some money from my Verizon store. This is a completely passive income stream for me, and we don’t have an office. All I have to pay is the commission for sales by my team.

PPP – $2,146

I took a first draw PPP loan last year, and I took another one this year because I’m not going to turn away free money.

Uncategorized – $16,928.89

This was a lot of cash deposits that I couldn’t figure out, and other deposits into my bank. Some of this will likely be book sales, but also other stuff. I marked it as business income in Quickbooks, so I know it was business income, but I don’t remember specifically what income it was, so I left it in this big, uncategorized bundle. It’s a lot of money to not know where it came from, but last year was not my most organized year.

Total – $116,046.50

In all, I made less money last year than in 2019, but the overwhelming majority of it came from writing, which doesn’t happen often. Usually, my writing income and speaking income are about equal, but last year I made $77,403.58 writing, $9,600 in marketing/speaking/courses, and then $9,968 from my Verizon store, with another $2,146 coming from a PPP loan which I used to pay my very meager salary of $150/week. Adding in the uncategorized $16,928.89, that means 66% of my total revenue last year came from writing and writing-related activities, which is thrilling since the thing I want to do is be a writer, and last year allowed me to do that.

Spending – $152,325

Woof. While I didn’t do too bad on my income last year, my spending was WAY up all around. A lot of that was because I was paying royalties to people before I earned out on them.

I was doing pretty well until the end of the year. In the last two months of the year I spent $25,000 in November and $17,000 in December. I went a little….overboard I think, after hoarding money up all year.

The biggest category by far was contract labor. I paid $53,000 in contract labor, commissions, royalties, and the like last year. Then, we paid $17,159.74 for shipping. After that, I paid $9,180 for hardcover books, $7,864.80 in apps and other services, and another $6,038.62 in other materials, like softcover short-run books, shipping materials, and things like that. Then there was $4265.46 in other office expenses and $2,137.69 in research. There were other expenses, but those are the ones that jumped out to me. It’s expensive to run a business.

And that was it. 2020 in a nutshell. Hope it is helpful to see it all laid out.