One Year in Erotica ≈$32,000
Hi all! I'm back for my one-year update woop woop.
In my post history, you can see my previous dataporns on my current pen name to see how I got here and how long I've been at this. I have rambled on for ages in those posts, so this one will be short and sweet. As always, I'm happy to answer all questions in the comments (but please no DMs, I prefer to discuss everything out in the open).
This sub continues to be a great resource for me and I want to try and give something back to writers just starting out like I once was.
The data:
Month 1 (June 2025): $128.43
Month 2: $545.03
Month 3: $845.37
Month 4: $1,339.24
Month 5: $1,421.78
Month 6: $1,838.24
Month 7: $3,151.69
Month 8: $3,837.58
Month 9: $3,491.85
Month 10: $4,340.74
Month 11: $4,117.29
Month 12: $3,931.83
Month 13 (June 2026): $3,374.87
KU: $22,206.90
Sales: $10,141.97
Total: $32,348.86
In this year and a bit (I published my first book on the 9th of June 2025), I have published 50 books. 42 of those are shorts and 8 are bundles. That comes to an average of about one book every 9 days. I was aiming for once a week, so can't be too mad at the effort. Formatting and publishing a bundle takes me about 2 hours, so I don't count them in the average.
My books range from 7k-12k words and are all in KU. I would estimate my average length is about 9-10k. I can generally write 10k words and do a quick round of editing in 3-4 days, but I've had periods where I've published nothing for 2 weeks and you can always see my laziness in the earnings.
I have just come off a month where I only published two shorts and a bundle. Along with the natural summer slump, I assume this is why my June earnings took a bit of a hit. I'm not worried about it long-term though.
I started this pen when I got fired from a job, so I was able to publish very fast for the first few months. I started another job and juggled writing and that for the past 7 months, but now I quit that job as well lol, so I'm back to writing full-time as of today.
Where I live, this is already decent money and I can easily live off it with my partner. My partner makes all my covers and helps me brainstorm all my stories. I doubt I would have been as disciplined without them, so thank you.
Due to my liberation, I'm now starting to focus all my time on my erotica business and will be starting a new pen name in a similar niche to the one I write in. I hope to leverage my 2500-person newsletter to kickstart that pen name for me as I build a back catalogue. I'm hoping that I can maintain the earnings of my current pen name, publishing at a similar rate of one book every 9 days, and build the new one to be making similar money in the next year. Time will tell if I can manage this or not.
I don't think I have hit the ceiling for what I can make with my current pen name, but I do think it has to be around the $5000/month mark as I am already the #2 author in my niche. My best month was $4300, so I do think I'm close to the maximum.
My long-term goal is to get to $10k/month and I feel I will probably need at least 3 pen names to get there (if I ever do). So, although it's comfortable writing for my current pen, I know I have to branch out to make this a full-on career.
Not much more to say really, I am obviously very happy with the results and didn't expect to get to this level so fast. I'll continue doing what I'm doing and trying to grow this even more. It's a great job to have and I hope I can continue doing this for as long as possible.
Happy to answer more specific questions in the comments as I don't have the energy to go into quite as much detail as before haha.
Thanks to the vets on this sub answering the same questions over and over again and good luck to all the newbies just getting started!
Earnings screenshot from KDP: https://prnt.sc/GZ9ugvmKRfWn