Do authors in control of everything really make more money?

ALLi’s 2025 Indie Author Income Survey — drawing on responses from authors who spend at least half their working time on writing and self-publishing — found that the median self-published author income was US$13,500, growing at a healthy 6% year-on-year. For context, the typical traditionally published author earned only US$6,000–$8,000 and that figure was trending down. (Alliance of Independent Authors).

In Australia, the 2025 Australian Society of Authors Annual Member Survey (which covers both traditionally and self-published authors) found conditions still difficult: 76% of respondents reported earning under AU$15,000 from their creative practice in the last financial year, and among full-time writers, 45% still fell below that threshold.  ASAuthors.org.au

Taking the median gives a more realistic picture than ‘average’ or mean earnings, because the higher-earning authors went gangbusters. Authors with 25 or more books achieve a median of $3,000 per month from book sales alone, with 40% exceeding $5,000 monthly — illustrating just how skewed the top end can be. However, book writing seems a very risky earning model.

Unfortunately, this is not even including all the hobbyist writers who write after work and do not spend at least half their working hours at it.

Here are some ideas that are designed to spark thinking about more author income streams without so much additional hard work.

‘The Minimalist Author’: J.R. Heimbigner’s strategy explicitly includes creating and selling templates and guides that supplement her book content, turning readers into product customers.

Subha Malik has created math worksheets and workbooks that generate income by selling on Amazon KDP and similar sites, demonstrating how low-content book templates can be monetised.

Deya made $1200 in 2025 from tools & templates; $16000 from bundles & kits, though she is definitely a multi-platform Content Creator rather than an author. Traffic has to be driven, as she constantly says.

Dorie Clark in Entrepreneurial You talks about building up her own income from online writing, paid speaking and masterminds. She added a Thinkific course which ended up selling for $2,300 a pop. I got this book as an Audiobook and recommend it for inspiration.

How I’m Building Additional Products

It’s been a long, slow tortoise ride … first, I added some research or marketing tools I like. The best one proved to be the research tool Kindle Rocket, as the affiliate payment is a solid chunk and it’s popular for multiple-book fiction authors.

The Mega Book & Course Workbook I created, well, I just give it with my coaching program. If I had a large social media presence, this would be worth talking about.

The Book Creation Self-Publish course started as a mastermind, then a Thinkific course, now it lives on here. Not mega sales, but it’s a great value-add for book coaching or editing clients. I wish I had put more effort into its promotion, like every other course creator on Earth.

Woocommerce runs the shop part of things. It’s fairly straightforward to set up, although the shipping options had me head-scratching.

Other ways I’d like to keep the income rising in 2026 is through these ideas:

• Workshops on planning Book Launches
• Book landing page for direct sales
• Perhaps take some more content from my last book and make micro lessons from it. Use SkillShare teaching or at least grow on one platform, e.g. YouTube or Facebook. Video editing always takes me too long, so I’ll find a video editing AI app probably.

A previous way I earnt as a teaching author:

• Author marketing training seminars put on at local libraries, paid for by the Council.

There is also a lot of scope for value-adding emailed newsletters, as Mike Kowis says in Smart Marketing for Indie Authors. With newsletters you can add links to affiliate products, branded partner links (e.g. local business), or links to your new course.

Ben Angel, in Escape the 9-to-5 (an older book I read) said that it’s important to build up your audience’s desire through seeding golden nuggets about the coming launch (my words). He was also the master at verbally saying just the right thing on his promotional videos. I think that’s why he has 283,000 Facebook followers… just a guess. He’s an Australian who escaped to Florida.

What Other Ways Can we Think of to Add Revenue?

Perhaps an app that helps people avoid common spelling errors (like of instead of off; your/you’re).

Or coding that you can sell to Facebook for millions that auto-reads people’s poorly written comments and says “did you mean this?”

Or a consulting + methodology that you can sell for about $10K to clients, a la Pyschotactics by Sean D’Souza.

Understanding why people buy and consulting to help companies understand it is pretty darn lucrative. Just ask Rory Sutherland, who wrote Alchemy: the Surprising Power of Ideas that Don’t Make Sense. He made his living in advertising and going against ‘logical thinking’.

People like Sean D’Souza and Dorie Clark always make me feel lazy, unorganised and y’know, not an elite academic.

But how many farm-raised girls can you think of that migrated, took themselves off to University, learnt to write books, learnt to edit and design books, and learnt WordPress. I mean, that’s got to count for something.

With all that learning, and all your learning, it’s surely time to make some well-deserved regular income streams.