March wrap up & updates

Hello, hello and a merry April Fool's day! I've never been one to participate in April Fool's day shenanigans, but it's fun to see the silly jokes people come up with sometimes. But let's hop right into these updates.

Writing updates

I am happy to share that I have started writing again. My creative block is slowly passing and I finally sat down and was able to crank out ~800 words. After not writing any words for months now, getting almost 800 down on the page has me feeling really good. And I'm actually liking what I wrote! Which is great lol. I ended up going back to a story I had already started and simply trying again. I guess I just needed a break from it for a while because I reread what I had and didn't even feel the need to scrap anything. Just some minor edits and that's it. As for the other story that I had started then stopped, I reread that and...yea...that one is hot garbage lol. So that one is going in the trash can, pronto.

What I've been reading

I haven't read a book all year long. Last year, for 2025, I read a decent amount of books. I didn't set any reading goals because I just wanted to be free with my reading, and surprisingly, I read mostly children's/middle grade books. I don't have any other reason other than I was looking for magic and whimsy and well, children's books and middle grade books are the perfect place to find both those things.

As for this year, March was the first month I picked up a book again and I am currently halfway through two books. I am reading Inheritance by Nora Roberts and The Swan's Daughter by Roshani Chokshi. I am greatly enjoying both, however, The Swan's Daughter is grabbing my attention more at the moment. It is basically a fairytale retelling and combines inspiration from The Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake. I can see the Ugly Duckling parallels, but not really Swan Lake at the moment, but that is definitely because I don't think I've ever even seen Swan Lake. Either way, I'm really liking it. Some of the descriptions can be a bit too abstract and nonsensical for my taste, but it's still really fun.

As for Inheritance, this one is basically a ghost story/mystery. It's a little slow moving and the dialogue can sometimes read a little contrived, but I am still enjoying it and am very curious about the mystery aspect. I started off listening to the audiobook and couldn't stand the voice actress so I rented a physical copy from my library instead and my reading experience has gotten much better. I already struggle with audiobooks as it is, but mixed with a narrator whose voice I hate and whose acting is subpar at best?? Nope. Return immediately. I'll read it with my own eyeballs.

Publishing income

I finally got my first payout from Amazon for the month of January and even though I was projected to make a little over $4, I didn't quite get there. My month petered out at $3.58. Better than nothing! Lol. I did not sell any ebooks (I also have not published any physical copies yet) and all of my KENP reads were from the U.S. In total, I had 851 KENP reads with two stories published for January.

I have not yet gotten my payout for February but it looks like the amount has finalized in my KDP dashboard already. I have made $5.79 for the month of February with a total of 1,325 KENP reads. My books have also reached a broader audience and I received some KENP reads from Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom which is so cool! I published 1 book in February and had 3 books published in total.

My total income has not finalized for March just yet since the month just ended, but I can see that there has been an increase in KENP reads for a total of 1,711. All my reads for March were from the same countries: U.S.A., Australia, Germany, and the U.K. I published only 1 book in March and had 4 books published in total.

I am happy because, I will be honest, I was not expecting to make any money at all. I write short stories, I don't have a social media presence, I don't advertise, and I don't share my writing in my real life. I really just wanted to see what could happen if my put my writing out into the universe and well...I did. And it's not going horribly, whoo! I even have two ratings from what I can see. And honestly, it feels good knowing that someone liked my story enough to rate it at all.

Amazon stuff

I have decided to stick with Amazon for now for my ebooks. No matter where I research (blogs, reddit, youtube, podcasts), the consensus is that Amazon is the best there is right now for self published books and by choosing a different platform, especially with no pre-established online presence, you are cutting off almost your entire potential audience. So it's looking like I don't have much of a choice.

That being said, I just released a new book! I wanted it to to go live today but Amazon's approval timeline is so inconsistent. I submitted it yesterday at the end of the work day, thinking it would at least take overnight for approval. But within maybe 2 or 3 hours, it was live. So my story was published March 31st instead of April 1st 😒. Oh well. I am still counting this as my April release.

What's next?

I think I'm going to go ahead and get myself an Instagram 😓. There. I said it. I'm gonna bite the bullet and get an Instagram and honestly, just hope for the best. I don't even know how to have an author instagram and what to post about to keep people interested, but...whatever. Sheesh. Even as a millennial, I still have a type of aversion to social media, especially now that social media feels so click-baity and salesy. And talking about my books will essentially be exactly that: Salesy. And that kind of sucks. But, I guess I will see how it goes.

That's all for now. I'll be back again soon with other updates and progress reports!

Thanks for reading :)