Month eleven, and I want to be straight with you again. October was the bounce I was hoping for.

Estimated Royalties: $429.97 Published Books: 3 (total now at 162 published)

Q4 Kicked Off With a New High

Last month was the first time the streak broke, and I said I had high hopes for Q4. October is the first month of it, and it delivered. Estimated royalties came in at $429.97, up from $345.86 in September. That is a gain of over $84 in a single month, and it is also my highest month so far, edging past August’s $427.85.

This is my first time through Q4 with ebooks, so I went into the month with no real baseline to compare against. Every result from here is new information. A strong first month of the holiday season is a good sign, but I am treating it as one data point and not a promise about November and December.

Here is the full breakdown from KDP’s royalties estimator.

Every category moved up, but the real story is print. Paperback royalties jumped by over $72 and now make up roughly 77 percent of my total income. That fits what I was planning for heading into the holidays. Paperbacks are the easy gift purchase, and having a paperback option available on every title is paying off right when shoppers start buying presents. The ebook side grew too, up about $11, which tells me the lower price point from earlier this year is at least holding its own. KENP stayed nearly flat.

Let me put that in perspective. I started this in December with zero books and zero dollars. By July I was at $343.46. By August I had jumped to $427.85. September dipped to $345.86, and now October has set a new high at $429.97.

No Volume Play Anymore, So the Strategy Changes

With Amazon limiting uploads to 2 books per week, the old approach of publishing as many titles as possible is gone for good but I still stand behind using eBook Writer AI as a source for the starter book to add onto and edit. I published 3 books in October, and that is closer to the new normal than the 12 to 16 book months I used to aim for. The question now is how to make each book count for more.

My plan is to publish slower and aim each title at gaps in the Kindle marketplace. That means spending more time on keyword research, looking for subjects where demand exists but the existing books are thin, outdated, or poorly done, and building books that fill those gaps properly. Fewer titles, better targeted. If I cannot win on volume, I need to win on fit.

The other half of the plan is diversifying. I have been putting real time into growing my YouTube channel and building out my Amazon Influencer Program (AIP) storefront. Watching other creators lose their entire income after relying on one stream has stuck with me, and the upload cap is a perfect example of how quickly the rules on a single platform can change. Splitting my attention has meant fewer books, but I would rather have a few smaller streams working together than one big one I cannot protect.

What I’m Watching for the Rest of Q4

Eleven months in, here is what I want to see over the next two months:

• Whether print continues to carry the growth as holiday gift buying ramps up
• How the newest gap-targeted titles perform compared to the older, higher volume batches
• Whether ebook royalties can keep climbing alongside print at the current price points

The compounding is real, and October showed it still has room to run. November and December are where I find out how far.