You saw the chart. Eight months, 22x royalty growth, 15x profit. Not magic – process. Now I'm setting the next target: $5,000/month by the end of 2026. And I'm doing it publicly, with full transparency on what works and what doesn't. Here's what changed in my thinking going into this year. Low-content got me to $50/month on autopilot. Switching to a quality-first mindset got me past $3,000. But scaling further requires something I spent the last few months building: a repeatable system that doesn't depend on my mood, my schedule, or lucky niche picks. I'm calling it the Guided Publishing System. It's not a course. It's not a prompt pack. It's a structured workflow — built around the idea that AI can do the heavy lifting in execution, while the decisions, creative direction, and judgment calls stay with us. That's what produces defensible, platform-compliant books that actually sell. And that's what separates publishers who plateau from publishers who compound. I'm not ready to open it up fully yet. But I'm looking for a group of serious publishers – people already making something on KDP, already past the "does this even work?" phase – who want to run this alongside me in 2026. What that looks like in practice: Real numbers shared. Real process documented. No cheerleading – just what's working, what broke, and how I'm adjusting. If you're plateaued somewhere between $50 and $1,000/month and you're done waiting to figure out what the next level actually requires, this is worth paying attention to. If $5,000/month is a thing of the past for you, it's amazing! Let's target 5x growth, for example. More details on the Premium tier upgrades will be available soon. Watch this space. --- The chart shows my trajectory from Jan-25 through Dec-25. Your numbers will be different. I hope you will crash it.

Just a random fact: the Royalty Guild was launched a little over a month ago, and we're already among the top 1,000 most interesting communities in the Money category! Although it has no practical application, it is a material representation of an internal understanding that we have a great community. Let's continue to gain knowledge, have fun, and make money.

The long-awaited process for creating high-quality illustrations with consistent characters is now available in the Classroom: https://www.skool.com/guild/classroom/c0dc43d2 (available to all members with Level 2 and above). If you are still at Level 1, write a comment or publish a new topic to give other members the opportunity to like your work. You only need five likes to reach Level 2. Please share your feedback on the process to collectively improve it.

I am thrilled that @Maxime Lebrun , author of KDPaste Chrome Extension joined us today. KDPaste is a simple yet powerful tool that allows you to test your book covers against those of your competitors. Simply upload your cover to the extension and replace any book in Amazon's search results with yours. I am sure the extension will save you a lot of effort at the cover testing stage. Now you can thank Maxime in the comments! 😄

From a results standpoint, November was awful for me. Royalty increased by only 9% from October to November, reaching $1,458, while operational profit was $843. A lack of preparation and an absence of new books dramatically limited my results. Lesson learned. What were your results?