Amazon KDP Journey

[jivvust]

By the way, how do you plan to get payments out of Amazon for 2nd and consecutive "fake name" accounts? I'm hearing they're pretty uptight with verification.

 

[Fruchtwein]

great journey and quite inspiring
i have no knowledge about websites or even blogs
after reading bhw posts, i think kindle may be the one i am looking for
however, english is not my mother language either, and i dont have so much budget for hiring a writer

anyway will keep following your post op

Hi, thank you.
I like the KDP, because I never succeeded with blog, websites or social media. I wouldn't say that KDP is easier, but for me, I understand the processes better.

I'm surprised, usually my sales double on Saturdays. Have you checked to see if your books are adult filtered?

My German books are the same on Sunday. Roundabout double sales.
But here... I am still not sure. Still changing the descriptions - maybe also doing some fancier cover. Until now I uploaded only the picture without any changes or title in it. Maybe there is a way to look more unique.

By the way, how do you plan to get payments out of Amazon for 2nd and consecutive "fake name" accounts? I'm hearing they're pretty uptight with verification.

First, I could use my wife data but second I never had problems before.
I own two German accounts now (it was four in total, but two get blocked half a year ago) and both are sending money checks on my name. And I put them on the same bank account. T't use wo weeks ago I changed them both to my payoneer account. Until now no problems.

Also I never heard they are strict? Only problem is IP. The are keeping track of the login IP. That is how I lost two of my accounts, because normally you are not allowed to have multiple accounts, but them they payed the money out regularly. But I couldn't use the accounts anymore. There is no verification process. Only an IRS declaration for the withhold of 30% US taxes - and there I always give true information.

Here are my current numbers:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]KDP Accounts:[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks available:[/TD]
[TD]216[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sales (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]86[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Profit (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]~172,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

[jivvust]

Thanks for for the reply, I'll be following this journey since you look like the type of guy who doesn't abandon what he starts midway (like most other journey starters do). Good luck with scaling it up!

 

[realtonymontana]

Nice post..I am following you now

 

[Salexes]

Sehr gutes System die Idee ist echt gut, dein einziges blackhat was ich hier rauslesen konnte ist mehrere Accounts. Oder nimmst du existierendes und spinst es ?


You only have 1 writer? And he comes up with new Storys every day ?
Porn Books are allowed on Kindle? I thought only erotic stories are allowed.

 

[Fruchtwein]

 

[Salexes]

 

[java]

I take it that with this kind of volume, you are not doing any promotion on the titles? No free days, just upload, put on a cover, price 2.99 and go on to the next?

 

[Charn]

What percentage, if any, are bundles? If you had 0 bundles in the 500+ shorts you had, you could "easily" turn those 500 shorts into well over 10,000 bundles. I say easily in quotes because it will be a pain in the butt to combine them and whatnot.

Right now I'm in the process of turning 12 stories into 60 bundles of 3.

 

[totag]

E-Book publishing can be quite lucrative. Member GobBluthJD and others have informative threads in reference to KDP and general e-book publishing if interested. Good luck with your journey.

 

[Fruchtwein]

 

[java]

No promotion yet. I never did with my German books, but I thought about it already. I'm not a freebie fan - especially if it my stuff for free but you will get some advertisment. Maybe I give it a try but first I wait a week for the reaction to the new cover.

Where do you get the images for your covers? They don't look like the stock images from Amazon cover creator.

Also are you getting multiple sales from individual titles? If the titles are only getting a couple of sales each, then you'll have to endlessly add new titles and not really build up any income beyond new uploads.

 

[digga]

This is very inspiring! I have just stared with Kindle and have published 2 books so far.
I got a couple of sales but nothing big yet. I guess I have keep publishing more and wait for positive reviews.
My Ebooks are in German by the way.

 

[Fruchtwein]

Where do you get the images for your covers? They don't look like the stock images from Amazon cover creator.

Also are you getting multiple sales from individual titles? If the titles are only getting a couple of sales each, then you'll have to endlessly add new titles and not really build up any income beyond new uploads.

I have a subscription with Bigstockphoto and can download ten pictures per day. For three month it costs 270,- USD, but you can download around 900 pics. So it is per picture 0,30 USD.
I only use the cover creator, because it is easy to give the cover a more legit look than with a naked picture. I also could use Photoshop, but than you have to save the pic first, upload it, delete after from the hard drive, etc.

Some books sold already like five or six times, some none. But I feel that is normal. Not every book is a hit. I uploaded pretty the same book (only changed a few things) five times in my German account and only one was a good seller. The others between normal and nothing. When you upload a book, it will be on the first pages for a few days (maybe two or three) and after your rank is going down. Only sales can keep it up.

From my point of view it is impossible to generate an income with KDP beyond new uploads. You have to upload a steady stream of books. If you are a good writer who can produce bestsellers only two a year, but as I am sucking in writing, I need a lot more then two for a nice income. My experience is, that a book is dying after around six month. Some are earlier, some a later. But a 100% passive income is only possible for a few month.

This is very inspiring! I have just stared with Kindle and have published 2 books so far.
I got a couple of sales but nothing big yet. I guess I have keep publishing more and wait for positive reviews.
My Ebooks are in German by the way.

Thank you.
With erotica the reviews are not so important as the rank in the erotica category is.
Your buyers are mostly controlled by emotions/lust/hormones - they will buy the first book with a nice picture, title, description and fitting theme (like BDSM, gay, MILF, whatever).

I had a few German books with bad review - they still sell.
Also I think a lot of people are afraid to give an erotic book a review. Because they use their normal Amazon accounts and don't want to get caught with porn...


The week is over and here are my stats:

[TABLE="class: cms_table_cms_table_grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]KDP Accounts:[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks available:[/TD]
[TD]267[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sales (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]117[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Profit (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]~240,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Still bad numbers - but what to do. I have to wait a few days to see if the actions have an effect.
Today I crossed the brake even point. That is good to know - only missing two zeros after the profit

I applied now for EIN to save the 30% US tax and I will travel to Hong Kong later this year to save also the German tax. Only for that KDP journey it wouldn't worth to get a company in Hong Kong, but I also need it for other purposes.

 

[digga]

Thanks for the info about reviews. It makes Sense. I guess I wouldn't review an erotic book either lol
Your thread inspired me to try erotic. I am rewritting a nice erotic story now that I found online.
Should be around 2500 words once it's done.
But I am concerned that German people won't buy it for 3 euro and consider offering it for 0,99 Cents. As you know, Germans are stingy
Although I would only get 30% at the 99 cent option. Which is really little money.
Do you mind sharing your experience how you priced your German erotica ebooks?

 

[Fruchtwein]

Thanks for the info about reviews. It makes Sense. I guess I wouldn't review an erotic book either lol
Your thread inspired me to try erotic. I am rewritting a nice erotic story now that I found online.
Should be around 2500 words once it's done.
But I am concerned that German people won't buy it for 3 euro and consider offering it for 0,99 Cents. As you know, Germans are stingy
Although I would only get 30% at the 99 cent option. Which is really little money.
Do you mind sharing your experience how you priced your German erotica ebooks?

I think it is also possible to make money with other books then erotica.
There a lot of things you could write about and get the information you need for free from the internet:
Animals (first aid for dogs, how to train your cat, blablabla), health (like quit smoking or diet stuff), trading (stocks, forex or futures), cook books with nice pictures, etc etc etc

But I wouldn't try the big genres like fantasy, chick-lit, etc. - to many books are online already. It is to heavy competition in the end. But if you can write very good books, give it also a try.

For erotica I use basically the Website Literotica as source or "inspiration". They have stories in each language available.
But don't do copy and paste - Amazon is clever and will figure it out. Rewriting is a good start. If you have some money left or you would like to reinvest your first profit you should try mylittlejob or machdudas to find a writer or a rewriter, who is doing it for you.

I charge 2.99 EUR per German book. But keep in mind, that you have to calculate the price without 3% European tax.
30% is to less, you need the 70%. With 2.99 you can keep 2,01 EUR. With 99 Cent you receive 35 Cents. You would have to sell around six times more books to get the same profit. I made good experience with the 2.99 EUR. But try it out, you can change the price anyway. Even with the German "Buchpreisbindung", because nobody cares about that on Amazon yet.

But the German market is tough at the moment. They are more than double so much erotic eBooks in the market than before Christmas. So don't expect a few sales a day with one book. Also I never figured out why some books are selling like nothing else and some others are never asked. Even with close content.

Germans like to read about BDSM or gay (male).
Also really special topics like sissification, lactation or pet play are okay.
They don't want to read about romantic first time stuff or non-human sex (like aliens, or vampires, etc. - NO animals!) :cow04:

I hope that will help you!

 

[digga]

That helped me a lot!!! If you sold them for 2.99 Euro on the German market, so can I.
I will give it a shot.

I am still wondering what BDSM means haha...never mind I will ask Google.

Also, if you have any non-erotic German ebooks then I would like to swap reviews.

 

[Charn]

Obviously I'm not pumping out the same volume of books as you, but I just started creating bundles of any and everything I can. Honestly what you could try doing is upload all the books as drafts until Thursday morning. Publish them all at once, so they can get visibility Friday, then Saturday when most sales happen they will all be new buys.
Small time over here.

 

[bxxxx]

 

[jivvust]

Hallo aus Deutschland ;-)

I am only active in the english kindle market at the moment. For a book with 5k words+ I pay 40-50$ with very good quality. Not rewritten - completely new. Some are cheaper...
I could think of that it's not needed to have such long books in the niche. The idea with the bundles is not that bad...

Cheers!

If you're hiring a freelancer to write for you - how do you like their work? Is the writing quality good enough to publish?