Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.


Buck Books Productivity Event
December began with a strong accent. On the 1st was the Buck Books Productivity event I organized. I actually took a day off from my job and was tracking everything the whole day. The event was a smashing success.

We catapulted 2 books into the top #1k on Amazon. All the rest of our books landed below the #4k rank. Master Your Time was as high as #1,217. Half of the books got a bestseller badge and we totally dominated the Time Management category.

I sold 200 copies and earned $55 in affiliate revenue.

 

During the first week of December I was furiously working on documenting the event as well as expanding the Buck Books section on my blog. I installed and learned to use a Gallery plugin, which was very handy in presenting all the ranks of books involved in the event. I also started working on organizing the next event.

 

Early in the month, I finished the Kindle Gold Rush book and here I was with 4!! raw manuscripts! This was the first time since I started writing, that I had so much unpublished material on my hands.

 

A week after the productivity event, I sent a bitter email to my publisher asking about the future of my books. The sales were still dwindling. I couldn’t see how they were going to reverse this trend. I even went as far as suggesting that I will pull out from any future cooperation. I felt they didn’t fulfill their promises (however they were very careful in not giving any definite promises).

They answered the next day.

I had hurt their feelings and they were angry. They paid for their mistakes as much as I paid. They also invested money and time. We are on the same wagon. This was a very unpleasant email to read. The will of cooperation evaporated from me. I felt really shitty the whole day.
Lesson:

Don’t send emails written under emotions. Put them down for the next day and read once again before you press the “send” button. Or show someone else to verify that you didn’t move too far.

 

There is also a continuation of this story. On 29th of December, I received a note from my publisher, that they nullified our contract. The official reason was that managing withholding tax is too much of legal headache.

I also had an impression that my outburst from a few weeks ago had something to do with their decision. Well, it didn’t, they nullified the contract even with UK-based authors. But I felt bad about myself.

And I was crushed by this sudden change of plans. Within a couple of days, I had to transfer my books again under my old account.

 

To add insult to the injury on 16th I had a “serious talk” with my supervisor at work. I was accused of slacking, and I admitted that it was true. I was asked why, and I revealed I don’t see much sense in working hard for a “thank you”. Well, “thank you” in my company is rare, but even in abundance, it won’t feed my family. The talk finished in a standard way. My concerns about my salary and work from home were dismissed, I was issued a warning and got solemn promises there will be some improvement in organizational culture.

This is absurd in corporations. My supervisors have a power to punish or fire me, but they have no power to raise my salary. Anyway, I needed to focus a bit more on my day job for a month. Being fired by my employer and my publisher simultaneously wouldn’t have done much good for my income.

 

I spent Christmas at home. My sister visited us with their family. Conditions for writing and doing business were far from optimal, to say the least. Add to that my discouragement by the overall situation and you get the recipe for the worst writing month since April (in April I decided to write 1,000 words a day instead of 600). I wrote just several thousand words for the next book and a lot of content for my blog.

At the end of the year I summarized my goals, another failure.

This was a very gloomy month. It finished with a nice accent, I got my first coaching client on Coach.me (formerly Lift).

The Income Report Breakdown

Income €16.23 (about $19.47)

Costs:
$19, Aweber services
$10, proofreading services Fiverr
$20, ghostwriting gigs Fiverr

Total: $49

Net Result: -$29.53


Previous Income Report: November 2014 || Next Income Report: January 2015

twenty-second-income-report-january-2015

Twenty First Income Report – December 2014 (-$29.53)

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