Paradoxically, even more so when it comes to the very limited genre of TG fiction.

One of the reasons many authors can make a living doing one or two types of fiction or non-fiction writing is because of the mass audiences that those genres appeal to. Stephen King has hundreds of millions of potential readers for horror fiction, while Pratchett's Fantasy-Parody Discworld books appeal to young and old readers alike with their humor and easily accessible genre conventions, even when those get turned completely on their heads.

TG fiction, on the other hand, automatically limits potential genre interest to a very narrow strata of readers, and more so depending on exactly which subcategories your work appeals to.

You have those in our community who are into fantasy, or sci fi, or horror, or adventure, and so on and so forth. Readership is as varied within our small community as it is in the greater body of readership in general, which means that no work is going to have a chance of capturing the hearts of every reader within the genre. As such, to capture the most readers possible, an author would have to diversify their works so that they intersect with as many sub-genres as possible.

In your case, you have limited yourself to an even tighter band of available readers than many other authors with both your spiritual focus in many works and your often-used themes of emotional abuse. While there is nothing wrong with the presence of either one in a writer's work, they are worth note as contributing factors to limiting your work's ability to appeal to a larger audience.

The quickest way to increase your income from literary works would be, quite frankly, to abandon the TG theme entirely and to focus works on mainstream audiences. I would prefer not to see this, however, since the presence of TG authors outside of outright smut on most e-book platforms seems to be seriously lacking to begin with, and I would rather not chase away a good author by telling them to go elsewhere.

On the opposite end of the pole, though, is the fact that I don't see 2000 a month being a reasonable income to expect from an e-book endeavor with as limited appeal as TG literature carries. Even if you were to manage to write a whole slew of books that appealed to every possible sub-genre imaginable and convinced every person here to pick up a copy of their preferred genre's title, you would only be able to keep up a fair-sized income for so long before sales would peter out, and you would burn yourself out well before you could make a respectable living at writing that way.

So, in short, I guess my answer would be; diversify, diversify, diversify. This not only applies to broad genres, but to elements within your books as well. Not every book needs to be emotionally weighty, or deal with real-world issues. Sometimes a bit of a fluff piece is all that people really want, something to make them feel good and escape their own troubles. Being able to write both would be a great boon on your career as an author.

On top of this -- and I KNOW this is a touchy subject -- is the recommendation that, if you want to appeal to the largest audience, and therefore draw in the most income, you should be willing to have a range of work available that does not have a spiritual focus to it. I'm not saying to ignore your beliefs, but by not making them a focus of your work you could greatly increase reader interest from parties who would otherwise avoid your books. Your spirituality is important, and writing works that focus on it is a GOOD thing, but doing so is a huge limiter on your potential future market, and at least demonstrating the capability to write outside that frame of reference will expand your future audiences greatly.

Did I ramble too much? I think I rambled.

Melanie E.