If you’re not an accountant and would much rather write or clean out your closets than tackle recordkeeping for your writing biz, I understand. Having been raised by a bookkeeper whose father was an accountant, and with three CPAs in my immediate family, numbers are definitely a thing in our household, though. Oddly, I’m the one who balances the checkbook in our house, but I don’t mind.
I keep records for my writing business without using any particular program, although I will if the business grows. Right now, income and expenses are few enough to simply record on an Excel spreadsheet. My family takes care of the tax filing and calculating the deductions I’m allowed from working out of my home office. My part is to simply enter expenses and income as they appear.
It isn’t always that straightforward, given that bookstores and some of Draft2Digital’s vendors have a lag time between making a sale and reporting it to the author, as do publishers. In the old days, I used to wrap my bookkeeping up on December 31st, but it now occurs the last week of January.
Crunching the numbers is the best way to take stock and compare net profit with the previous year’s income, and to make budgetary decisions for the year ahead. I wasn’t expecting much for 2020 because my usual craft fair events were cancelled. The book promotion sites, especially BookBub boosted ebook sales to the point where I sold more books than last year than ever before, although 90% of them were ebooks and therefore a fraction of the price of my print books. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that my net profit for 2020 was up a little bit compared to 2019. The reason is that my expenses were cut in half because I didn’t have to spend big bucks on craft fair fees and the insurance coverage that some fair organizers require.
Hopefully, the craft fairs will be back this year. I’ve already received one application from a fair planning to return in November. I can’t wait to see how this year unfolds. How about you? Was your 2020 better, worse, or the same as the previous year? Do you plan to try something new to sell books this year?
Mystery Deb 
My husband and I double-team this–I use Excel and he uses Quickbooks. The business used to do much better–why we took that approach–but really, now, it’s overkill!
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The writing biz really flows and ebbs, doesn’t it? Some years are banner years, others are so sluggish that you wonder what’s going on.
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Thank you for reminding writers that we are all together in the accounting dark… It’s kind of scary that we who prefer to focus artistically on one thing until it is like breathing do indeed have to come up for other air and the wearing of so very different hats in order to enable our preferred lives. And it is even more cool that you remind us how secretly versatile we can all be if it serves that inner mistress the Muse!
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Thanks, KC! It’s all a bit overwhelming at times, and occasionally annoying to realize that we have to carve time out of our artistic lives to accommodate all the other stuff.
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Debra, it sounds like you have all your accounting sorted and organised! It’s good news about new events for the year and fingers crossed they can take place. Once possible I look forward to visiting schools with my children’s book – it will be great to be out there amongst people again and working with children is always incredibly rewarding and exciting!
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Yes, meeting with children is a perfect way to connect with new readers. Let’s hope the year goes well!!
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