2025 – Year in Review

At the end of 2024 I set myself a number of goals and, looking back at them as I write this year’s blog focussing on the business side of my writing, I did pretty well. However, this was also the year when I struggled the most with all of this and there were times in 2025 when I really questioned myself as a writer.

Audiobook Sales

Following 2024’s successful Kickstarter, I released the Hall of Bones audiobook in January 2025 across all the major online retail platforms, with Audible following in its own sweet time in May the same year. This meant that my full-length work was available to buy for the first time in places like Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Kobo and iTunes. Building on the release of my short story collection in 2024, this was a further step along the road of diversifying my income streams, rather than being solely reliant on Amazon.

There’s a bit of a lag in my data on audiobook sales, but despite heavily promoting this release I didn’t get the level of interest I was expecting. As of the end of September 2025 I shifted 35 audiobooks, which is up on 18 in 2024 but certainly not what I was hoping for, especially as that Kickstarter project had been such a massive effort to put together and deliver.

That said, I am incredibly proud of the quality of the Hall of Bones audiobook. My narrator, RJ Bayley, did an absolutely superb job on this. One thing it’s very important to remember is the lag between doing something as a writer and that filtering through to readers or, in this case, listeners, is much longer than you think. At the end of the year I started to see more reviews coming through for the Hall of Bones audiobook as more people began listening to this. That culminated in receiving an Indie Ink Award nomination for Best Audio Narration. Even getting onto the longlist of that competition (I’m currently awaiting the results of the voting stage) is a major step forward and was a real positive for me at the end of 2025.

eBook and Paperback Sales

Part of the strategy behind that 2025 audio release was to help get eyes back on the Brotherhood series, having completed the final book, Broken Brotherhood, in November 2024. I’d been working on the basis that whilst sales had slowed in 2024 I would see renewed interest in my books once I had a completed series under my belt. Things didn’t work out that way.

Hall of Bones was my best-selling book, so that means readers were still starting the series. Broken Brotherhood was the second most popular title, which is encouraging since people were also wanting to finish the saga. However, my overall paid sales figures still dropped by around 35% compared with 2024.

The pattern was similar on Kindle Unlimited, although there Broken Brotherhood took the top spot. KU still dropped off by over 50% compared to 2024, though, which again surprised me as I expected Amazon to be pushing the series more with a new release.

Ultimately, there’s no getting away from the fact these numbers are small and a reduction in both sales and pages read compared with 2024. Perhaps that’s not unusual for an indie author, but I will admit to feeling pretty discouraged at times last year. I want my books to find their way into the hands of readers and that proved to be a major struggle in 2025.

Direct Sales

I said in my 2024 round up that I wanted to look at moving into direct sales, although I didn’t do much on this last year. Selling direct has obvious advantages since there’s no middle man taking a cut. I did take this step with my audiobooks, using a third party called AE Audio Outlet. This remains the place where you can pick up my audiobooks at the best price, unless the other online retailers are running a really competitive discount on my titles. If you haven’t already, go check it out:

Doing this with paperbacks (I can’t sell direct for eBooks as I’m exclusive to Amazon) involves a lot more work. In 2025 I just didn’t have the time and, frankly, the mental energy to attend the various conferences and events in order to do this in person. I’m planning to move house in 2026 and one of the things I want to look at when that’s done is whether I establish purchase links on my website for physical books, alongside attending events where I can sell directly. The main issue here is fitting this in around working full-time, as this is effectively the launch of another business. It remains an option but whether this happens in 2026 depends on how a few other things work out.

Finances

Amazon has been my only income stream this year. I’ve had royalties come in every month, which is encouraging. However, this is about 55% of what I earned in 2024 and a major drop off from the high points of 2022 and 2023.

Whilst those numbers just about funded my underlying operating costs this year, it wasn’t enough to cover various one-off expenditure items on related projects and promotions.

My audiobooks are subject to a payment threshold before royalties are released, so I am expecting a payment from those in early 2026, which will be very welcome.

The other big step to diversify my income included setting up my own Patreon for the first time in October. From a commercial perspective, having seen how 2025 has worked out, I now understand why so many authors and other creatives use platforms like Patreon or KoFi. When I started out in this business I expected my author earnings to increase year on year as my reader base grew. That wasn’t realistic and I’m now discovering first hand that income from creative work is very unpredictable. Having financial supporters on Patreon or KoFi can help keep things ticking over when royalty payments slow down.

Writing is all about the long game and becoming established on Patreon is no different. However, I’m hopeful this will grow over time. I’ve enjoyed putting the site together and creating content on the platform and you can take a look at it here:

New Books

The other goal I highlighted last year was writing more books. Whilst I did a lot of writing, I’ve not put out a new title under my own name in 2025, and I think everything I’ve said in this blog post needs to be looked at in that context. The single biggest thing you can do to sell your books is write more books. I think the absence of a new release in 2025 has significantly contributed to the overall picture here.

2025 was a creative struggle and, looking back, I think I was mentally exhausted after such a busy period from 2020-24. I’d released one book per year, contributed to two anthologies and been heavily involved in two Kickstarter projects. Broken Brotherhood was a difficult book to write from a technical perspective and, whilst I’m really proud of the whole series, I went into 2025 with very little left in the tank.

This meant progress on my ongoing projects was slower than usual, and I think this in turn hit my confidence and things got into a bit of a vicious cycle.

Fortunately, I do have plans to address this, which I’ll cover in the goals section of this post.

Overall Financial Performance

I account for my income and taxes in April each year. This is how I’ve fared since starting out in November 2020, after expenses are taken into account:

2020-21 = £606 loss

2021-22 = £101 loss

2022-23 = £1,508 profit

2023-24 = £1,288 profit

2024-25 = £488 loss

Unless something miraculous happens, 2025-26 is on track for a loss. Timing is a major factor here. I’ve invested in new artwork for the omnibus edition of The Brotherhood of the Eagle but I haven’t released that yet, so I haven’t had chance to recoup any of that investment. Similarly, I have paid for sensitivity reader services for The Silent Division but I’m still writing that book at the moment. I’ve also invested in some new artwork for my Patreon as well, and whilst this wasn’t hugely expensive these things all add up.

It can take a while for one off costs to be covered by ongoing royalties. The thing I like about writing is you only pay those bigger expenses once, whilst royalties steadily accrue over time. I could do with them accruing a bit more steadily, though! Obviously, the main way to address that is by finishing various works in progress.

Goals for 2026

The key goal for this year is completing my current projects and exploring both independent and traditional publication routes for various manuscripts.

Brotherhood omnibus – The omnibus edition of The Brotherhood of the Eagle gathers together all four books in one 1,900 page eBook volume for the first time. Putting this together took a lot longer than I anticipated in 2025, as I gave each book a final editing polish as part of this process. The omnibus will contain three new maps which will appear in my books for the first time. I’ve also included four bonus short stories, three of which have previously only been released via my newsletter and/or Kickstarter. Editing and formatting is now complete and the omnibus will be released in January 2026 to get the year off to a good start.

The Wolf Throne – This novel began as a short story series available to my newsletter subscribers. Over time it gradually grew into something more. The Wolf Throne is a prequel novel to events in Brotherhood, expanding upon its magic and lore. The novel is now complete and the final instalment will be issued with my February newsletter. The manuscript is currently with my editor and we have a decision to make on this book. There’s scope to go on submission and see if there’s interest in traditional publication, but this means delaying what would otherwise be an obvious independent release in 2026. It's one to discuss with my agent and consider carefully this year.

The Silent Division – This is my current gaslamp fantasy writing project. It’s fully plotted out and I’m really enjoying working on this at the moment. As this takes place in a different fantasy world this is another project my agent thinks has potential with traditional publishers. The goal is to have this written by the first half of 2026 and then explore those options further.

A Quiet Betrayal – The follow up to my standalone novel A Quiet Vengeance is my next planned independent fantasy release. I’ve known the broad strokes of the next standalone novel’s plot and character arcs for a few years but there hasn’t been the time to work on this alongside my other projects. I’m planning to begin writing this in the second half of 2026. If things go well we could be talking about a 2026 indie release but that’s being optimistic. If that doesn't happen then we’ll be looking at 2027. I’ll have a much better idea of timescales once I’ve finished working on The Silent Division.

Spotlight Indie – One of the best things which happened in 2025 was I joined the Spotlight Indie team. Spotlight Indie is a growing community of writers focussing, unsurprisingly, on independent speculative fiction. They have their own YouTube channel and organise both in-person and online events. There’s lots planned for 2026 and I’m really excited about joining them on this journey and being part of something that’s a positive, supportive force for independent creatives.

Editorial Services – I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time and now the omnibus work is complete this is something I want to offer in 2026. I’ll be writing about this separately as this post is already long enough. However, this is something I know I’m good at and, weirdly, enjoy doing. It’s also another step in diversifying my income and trying to become more resilient to the ups and downs of my author income.

Conclusion

It’s been helpful for me to look back and reflect on how 2025 has gone. In summary, I think there’s something of a mismatch between my overall creative output and the resulting commercial results! Although I started 2025 on a low ebb, by the end of the year I’d released my first full length audiobook, completed another novel and fully prepared my series omnibus ready for release in 2026. That’s a good, productive year and I just need to reap the rewards of that work.

I think above everything else I have mentioned so far, the key goal in 2026 is to keep going. The business side of writing can be very hard and it’s easy to become discouraged. 186 sales doesn’t sound very much but that’s the reality of being a small, independent author. Another way of looking at this is I’m averaging a book sale every other day and an audiobook sale every week. That puts a different perspective on those numbers.

The other thing, which doesn’t come across in those raw numbers, is the sheer pleasure of doing all of this. I love being part of the wider reading, writing and blogging community. In the last five years I’ve started pursuing my passions wholeheartedly, rather than neglecting them and doing various things I thought I should be doing which didn’t, ultimately, bring me the same level of joy. You can’t measure any of that in a royalty statement.

The point of writing a transparency post like this isn’t to boast. I think it’s important that people going into this business for the first time have realistic expectations. I certainly wish more information like this had been available when I started out in 2020. It’s really helpful for me to pause and take stock, think about my goals and objectives and be (reasonably) sensible about what can and can’t be achieved each year. I’m also writing this for me in the future, so that I have something to look back on in years to come and can see how my whole author journey worked out – including the various bumps in the road.

Now it’s time to set 2025 aside and focus on what 2026 will bring.

Onwards!