A few questions for those of you achieving success with Kindle publishing.
I understand Kindle is a numbers game, and you'll need, say, 20-50 books to make a great living.
I looked around at all the different categories for good book ideas. The problem was, every good idea I had was quickly becoming saturated. There were books being released every day in these niches. All short (20-30 pages), all cheap (about $2.99), all with good covers and all (reasonably) well written. Pretty much what everyone, everywhere is recommending people do to become successful with Kindle.
Some niches there were literally 2 or 3 releases every day. That niche is going to be saturated, fast. Having to find 5 or 10 niches to operate in -- ones that aren't saturated -- is going to be very difficult.
Is this something that concerns you all? Or have I just found niches that are particularly saturated, and there are better ones out there? You might not even be worried about cometitor books, but it would be good to hear your thoughts on it.
Beyond the saturation problem, my biggest concern was the performance of these (seemingly identical) books. Because they were so similar in length, quality and cover quality, it was hard to tell which book was 'better'. Despite this, some were ranked well, at #20,000 and others not so well, #200,000. That's quite a difference in sales numbers for an almost identical product (and because of their similarity I'm guessing they were all following a similar promotional strategy).
Some of you have very impressive figures, which you have maintained for over 5 books. As many of you outsource, probably from the same writer pool, there is no reason why your books would be of a higher quality than some of the other outsourced books.
Why do you think yours have performed better? Do you think, to a certain degree, this is luck? Will you rank high long term?