A Get-By July

July comes to an end.


Summer is close on its heels.


I’m sure all the forest fire smoke we have around Missoula will be here well into October, however...maybe longer.


But that doesn’t concern us much today.


We’re here to talk about writing, or the lack thereof.


For the month I wrote about 18,000 words. Those were all just Montana blog posts (of which there were 17) and comments on other sites.


In July I sold 186 books, which is one more than last month.


Those sales break down like so:

• Amazon: 140
• D2D: 27
• Createspace: 19

If you figure an average royalty of $3 for each of those sales, that gets me $558 for the month...though I won’t be paid that money for another 60 days or so.


Impressive for ‘your hobby’ or ‘doing a little art on the side,’ but it doesn’t pay all the bills anymore.


I have other jobs for that.


Yep, most of my income isn’t coming from writing these days.


Here’s what my income was for the month, and where it came from:

​

---

I have no qualms about sharing this information with you, for a variety of reasons.

​

• Few people are reading it.
• Fewer people care.

We like to make a big deal about income in this country, but if you’re just honest about what you make...who really gives a shit?


We often mistake the sentiment of caring for actual caring.


It’s easy to say “I care,” but it’s much harder to follow through with concrete actions that actually show you care.


Anyways, bit of a tangent there.


So let’s get into my income.


There were 9 total sources of income this month, and it was actually my most profitable month of the year (last month was the second most).


A little more than just ‘getting by, huh? I actually did pretty good.


Oh, not compared to those making thousands of dollars a month...but what do I need all the money for anyways?


Material possessions?


By far the biggest source of income was the new job I picked up in May. Usually that income would be a few hundred dollars less, but I worked more this month.


Altogether, my three paychecks took me over the $1,000-mark. Most of the other $500 came from my books.


I’m not expecting a lot to change next month...though I might actually make more money.

One exciting adventure this month was the death of my computer.


I’d bought the thing in Hong Kong in 2013 and its time was done. It just wouldn’t charge anymore when it was plugged in.


So I got a new computer. It’s a Lenovo Ideapad 100S. Got it for $149, on sale from $229.


I’m not that thrilled with it.


One of the shift keys is much smaller, and closer to the ‘up arrow’ key. This screws me up a lot.


For another, MS Office gave out on me, so I’m now just using Google Sheets. I don’t mind that, but my computer has so little memory and storage space that if you have a few tabs open it crashes a lot.


Mainly, I’m thinking of returning it and getting a $179 Google Chromebook. The screen is a little smaller and there’s no ‘delete’ key, but I’m feeling ready to move away from Microsoft.


There was a lot of camping in July, but I think that’s done.


The increased level of fire restrictions means you often can’t have a campfire. What’s the point of camping if you can’t do that?


Maybe in September, but I’m not counting on it.


I’m not counting on doing a lot of writing this month, either.


I mean...why?


No one is emailing me asking me when the next book is going to be out, or when the next blog post will be up.


Most people do not care for my efforts, so I haven’t been putting a lot of effort forth.


Expect that trend to continue into August and probably for some time after.