Dataporn: 1.5 years of writing erotica and romance, $63k KDP earnings
Hi all! I’ve had a few requests for an update on my last dataporn. That was posted in May last year when I hit a $2k month for the first time. Lots has changed since. I've now made $63k on KDP since I started 1.5 years ago. June was my biggest month so far, with almost $8k in KDP and an audiobook advance on top of that.
Biggest change since my last dataporn: I'm now more focused on romance writing. I also quit my day job to study a master’s, which ended with me having a thesis deadline and a book deadline in the same week (would not recommend, even though both went well). While studying I had to set limits on how much time I could spend on my writing business, so my publishing schedule has slowed down a lot.
Here’s a look at how my catalogue is doing this year. You can definitely see the slowdown in publishing while I wrote my thesis:
| Pen name | Books | Gross earnings in 2026 so far (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Erotica 1 | 35 (6 in 2026) | 14450 |
| Erotica 2 | 2 (0 in 2026) | 457 |
| Romance | 3 (1 in 2026) | 16055 (including audiobook advances) |
| Short romance (first self-publishing foray, lol) | 5 (0 in 2026) | 5 |
Reflections:
- Active marketing for romance is a slog: It works, but it’s tough. That’s my main takeaway from my romance pen, and the reason I will probably keep my main erotica pen going. I enjoy writing romance, but I love being able to publish erotica shorts without thinking about socials or ARCs.
- Stop posting about romance at your peril: My romance earnings took a dive earlier this year. I was pretty busy and stopped posting on TT and Insta following a slow launch. Taught me that active marketing is not a nice-to-have but a necessity, at least in my competitive niche.
- Pleasant surprise: My very neglected erotica pens are still bringing in around $1.5k per month.
- Dumb luck can sometimes work: I am a terrible example for erotica writers in that I didn’t do proper niche research before starting either of my erotica pen names and they both made money anyway. For my main pen name, I retroactively amended this by doing a lot of KU reading after the fact, and it started to makes more money and rank better once I focused on hitting reader expectations.
- Get a KU subscription: This remains my favorite part of this whole business. I can read everything my comps are publishing, and it doesn’t feel like work. I chose my niches because I like them, so doing comp research in KU is fun. Plus you can branch out and discover new niches you might want to write.
Expenses: There are quite a few now, mostly going to romance, averaging out to $1k per month this year. Most of these things make my business easier, others (like ads) I'm still figuring out. You could probably do without a few of these, but because I've had limited time, I've been trying to make things as easy as possible.
- I have spent $2k on nice covers and character art for my romance pen. This is not necessary at all, but it makes active marketing more fun and motivates me to post on socials.
- Since my most recent launch in June, I’m paying a PA $250 per month to make 5 x trial reels each day for my romance pen.
- I have annual subscriptions for PublisherChamp, Bookfunnel, StoryOrigin, and ProWritingAid.
- I did all three paid ARC services (Netgalley through the Victory Editing Co-op, Booksirens and Booksprout) for my most recent launch.
- I also spent $1000 on Facebook ads for that launch. I'm very much still figuring out how to make those profitable, but they've at least helped keep my book at a decent ranking if nothing else.
- Most months I have two paid erotica promos in Bookspry, and I do Bookspry romance promos too.
Overall, writing romance and erotica easily covered my living and travel costs while I studied, which was unexpected but cool. Now that I’m looking for a job, I’m quietly stoked to be able to write more and strategize about what to do next. Very grateful to this subreddit and also the IAA Discord for all the advice.
Feel free to ask any questions you have!