Monthly Recap: May 2025

TRANSPARENCYMONTHLY RECAP

5/31/20255 min read

So there were two in person events this month, technically, but ConCarolinas will actually get tracked on next months report. Rather than try to parse out which days should go on which month, I just put an event in whatever month the last day of said event occurs. I will say that while the book club event was a ton of fun, it was also surprisingly lucrative from a money standpoint. I did not expect to make almost 400 bucks at that. But even with that my in person sales are taking a bit of hit this month. Next month should be pretty good though.

I am super pleased with Patreon. I will be well above 50 bucks next month (I thought I would be this month, but Patreon is weird sometimes). And I got a bump in online sales, which I think was largely related to the book club buying my books for their meeting.

Otherwise, nothing much going on. Shirts were down, games were down, can't recall a time where I had zero bucks in a month across all three. But hey, audiobooks ticked up a little. But while this is my worst month of the year by far, looking back I can see that as recently as 2022 this would have been my second best month of the year. Thank god for stat tracking, or I might feel some kinda way about how down this month was haha.

Income:

Fixed Monthly Expenses:

  • PO Box: $14.17

  • Domains: $2.77

  • Webhosting: $3.99

  • Captivate: $17.00

Total: $37.92

Monthly total made:

  • $579.40 ($1989.53 last month)

  • Decrease of: $1,372.21

Yearly total made:

  • $7211.08

If you would like to leave a comment on this blog, a version of it has been posted on my Patreon and my Subreddit.

So I finally remembered to go onto Threads and Bluesky and 'shut them down.' Essentially I put a pinned post on each of those accounts explaining that I don't check it, unless I am tagged in something. In which case I will respond. This will be my pattern moving forward on any new social medias probably, unless one really grabs me. Which, as I hate social media, is unlikely.

I am still on the fence about my Facebook Group. As stated before:

"I am also considering doing something similar to my facebook group. I just simply do not get any sort of real return there. Like, at all. Not that I can see. I had to turn off the ability for folks to make posts because porn bots kept posting porn in there, or scams. And basically only I can post there...then what's the point?" - Bob, in February.

This is still the case. I still haven't decided.

I am going to start using my Tales by Bob subreddit more however, and will start tracking that in my stats. I think it might be a good alternative, and frankly, I just like Reddit more than Facebook and Discord. To that end I am posting all of my blog posts there whenever I write one. 

I did tweak my Discord a bit. Nothing dramatic, just cleaning up some channels that weren't getting used, and adding some channels to facilitate playing games like.

So yeah, pretty normal month: lots of angst, decent growth.

Social media Growth:

Podcasts:

  • Podcast Downloads (Monthly): 60 (+13)

  • Podcast Downloads (Lifetime): 3,702

Here's what I am thinking I will do:

  • If the Series Bible gets completed, then I will start my 'go wide with print books' project.

  • I will do two events, Impact Book Festival and Southern Fried Gaming Expo.

  • I want to complete a full list of 'these are the tasks I do as Tales by Bob' so I can start to parse out what I could hand off to a PA.

  • Book hotels for upcoming conventions.

  • Getting my books in some local stores that have asked for them.

  • I want to write 10,000 words on Crimson 3. I would love to work up some sort of word counter for this website while I am at it.

  • I want to make a printable one page pitch document for Jubal County.

I got a lot done! Here is a list:

  • Reviewed the work Carol has been doing on my Series Bible.

  • Planned for my upcoming book club meeting in Ozark.

  • Attended said book club meeting.

  • Wrote four blog posts, counting this one.

  • I turned 40.

  • I applied to a con, which promptly rejected me.

  • Redid my covers on ACX for my audiobooks.

  • Published Feet in the Fires on Audible.

  • Wrote a Marsh Dispatch over on my Patreon.

  • Spoke to a class hosted by Michelle Thompkins about organic marketing.

  • I organized my discord a bit, and added a section where folks can play games.

  • Calculated my monthly fixed expenses, which I blogged about and will be getting included below.

  • I moved over all my lists of UF books from my old website to the new. Which I wasn't planning to do, but someone asked, so I did.

  • Created an FAQ for this website.

  • Started posting my blog posts to my subreddit.

  • Prepped for my panels for ConCarolinas.

  • Packed for ConCarolinas.

  • Did ConCarolinas. Technically, I am at it as this is getting posted. 

  • Wrote and sent my newsletter, including a small swap with author Barbara Evers. 

    • Which required that I go through a whole process of authenticating my email, because my domain host changed with the new site.

  • I guested on a few shows:

The only things I didn't do, that I had planned, was writing and getting my books uploaded to Ingram so I can go wide with them in print. But I am holding off on that until further notice. The reason being that as Carol is working on my series bible, she is finding some typos. So my plan now is that once she is done, I will fix all typos, then upload the fixes to amazon, and the new clean versions to Ingram.

On the writing front, I had to be all systems go on the website work, so that consumed my writing time for the month. 

Alright, alright, alright! This is officially the first monthly recap of the new website/blog! So I will be fine tuning this one, as it's gonna be the template I run with moving forward. Header images?! Working links?! Bask in the improvements, BASK!

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