Yearly Recap: 2025

All right, sales. I made a lot more money this year, going from $12,796.72 to $17,580.60. That's a 37.38% increase. Fuck yeah. I also spent a lot of it, which you can see on my year end expense report. 

In person sales were the big driver on the increase of course. I did open up a couple new avenues for sales now: my website in a limited degree for signed copies of print books, and very late in the year, Ingramspark.

The only real down side was I got fewer paid in person appearances. I got paid 1k less for appearances, and what do you know, my other category was a bit under 1k lower than last year. Anywho, I am hoping to right that ship in 2026, but we'll see. 

Here is how much I made in each category for the year:

Income (Book Sales):

• $200.00 - Website Book Sales

• $1,517.86 - Online Book Sales/KENP

• $0.00 - Book Sales - Ingram

• $14,078.66 - In Person Book Sales

• $309.34 - Audiobooks  

• $79.34 - Consignment

Total: $16,185.20 ($10,533.98 last year)

Income (Other):

• $572.07 - Patreon

• $250 - Appearance

• $54.27 - Amazon Affiliate Income

• $372.56 - Amazon Shirts

• $46.50 - TeePublic Shirts/Merch

• $100.00 - Freelance

Total: $1,395.40  ($2,262.74 last year)

Yearly Totals And Averages:

• Yearly daily average: $35.06 increased to $48.17

• Yearly monthly average: $1,066.39 increased to $1,465.05

• Yearly total made: $12,796.72 to $17,580.60, an increase of: $4,783.88!

• Career total made: 49.169.27

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 steady, if largely unimpressive growth across the board. Except for my newsletter, which dropped. Partly it dropped because I went in and culled like 200 folks from it who weren't opening. Since then, I've been steadily losing 3-4 a month on average. This is my number one priority to sort out in the new year social media-wise. 

But yeah. In short: I like Instagram the most, and it grew the most. Just sayin. 

Social Media Growth:

• Facebook Page Follows: 1039 to 1074

• Instagram: 712 to 821

• Facebook Fan Group: 317 to 344 

• Youtube: 130 to 146 subscribers 

• Email List: 750 to 580 subscribers 

• Discord Server: 57 to 75 

• Threads: 222 to 262 

• Bluesky: 156 to 206 

• Patrons: 16 paid/24 free to 21 paid/38 free

• r/Talesbybob: 11 to 21 (started in May) 

• Total: 3,383 to 3529 

Podcasts:

• Podcast Downloads (Since April 2022): 3412 to 4944

BBI Social Media Growth:

• Instagram: 125 to 125

• Bluesky: 5 to 5

• Threads: 27 to 27

Alright, alright, alright! Another year in the books, so let's get to recapping!

It makes a difference when you can see a years worth at once! So in past years I have included my December and Yearly stat recap into one. This year I am splitting them up. Not really sure why...actually I could explain why, but it would take way too long, and it's waaay too inane a reason. Chalk it up to me being weird and then move on.

So this is really more about the specific numbers that I track monthly, just in aggregate. If you want to know more of the big picture type things, I would go take a look at my State of the Tales by Bob Empire post. That gets into the more strategic side of things. I will make some observations here however, to explain some numbers.