Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!
- Thread starter GobBluthJD
- Start date
Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
You can sell 4-5k word ebook at 0.99$ but for 2.99 10k word is a mini-minimum. 20k will be better.
You can find some writers on Odesk who charge 30$ for 3500 words, it's ok for testing some niches, but if you want to sell, 100$ for 10k words is the minimum.
Formating your ebook is not time consuming, to make an average cover is not time consuming too.
But if you're planning to sell fiction book, the most time consuming is to write the outline and characters sheets.
Hiring a proofreader is a good thing, because you will always let pass spelling mistakes...
Pinger030: Do you think there is a factor between free download and paid downloads ? It could be fun to extract some statistics
Since its easy for you to write, you can write one and outsource another one. You had cut short half the time.
Raven13
Power Member
- May 31, 2011
- 659
- 417
Guys, I just started a little Kindle journey. I've published two ebooks in monday at $2.99, one of them made a sale the moment after it been published and the 24h after NOTHING, the second didn't make a cent. I ran the free promo for 2 days for both ebooks, one is reaching the rank of #800 in the free kindle store while i'm typing this, the other is like #3000...Both ebooks have 3 5* reviews. The ebook ranking #800 is getting like +200 download a day.
My question for those into kindle since a long time:
Is 800 as a rank in the free store good?
-If I rank like in the top 500 in the free Kindle store, would that be beneficial for the ebook once back to the paid version? (I can try getting more positive reviews to improve the ranking)
-If I edit my ebook and change the category, would that affect my ranking?
-If I change the price, and set it at 0.99 to get some sales and improve my ranking, then I change it to 2.99 would it work?
-Are the Kindle ebooks like apps in appstore, as you publish an app it gets good ranking and after a week or so this ranking drop.
My actual plan is pushing like 4 to 8 ebooks by November if everything is fine (If I see some money coming I can publish more). KDP is worth giving it a try.
PS: PINGER030, I was into that joureny before reading this topic, but dude!! YOU ROCKS, after reading your posts it was a fucking boost for my motivation! You're also sharing precious information and different method than the one i'm using actually. My 2 next ebooks would be based on your method dude! Thanks!
My question for those into kindle since a long time:
Is 800 as a rank in the free store good?
-If I rank like in the top 500 in the free Kindle store, would that be beneficial for the ebook once back to the paid version? (I can try getting more positive reviews to improve the ranking)
-If I edit my ebook and change the category, would that affect my ranking?
-If I change the price, and set it at 0.99 to get some sales and improve my ranking, then I change it to 2.99 would it work?
-Are the Kindle ebooks like apps in appstore, as you publish an app it gets good ranking and after a week or so this ranking drop.
My actual plan is pushing like 4 to 8 ebooks by November if everything is fine (If I see some money coming I can publish more). KDP is worth giving it a try.
PS: PINGER030, I was into that joureny before reading this topic, but dude!! YOU ROCKS, after reading your posts it was a fucking boost for my motivation! You're also sharing precious information and different method than the one i'm using actually. My 2 next ebooks would be based on your method dude! Thanks!
Last edited:
Dragon2010
Junior Member
- Jul 4, 2010
- 112
- 31
What route should someone take?
I designed my entire book in html. Should I just convert it to a mobi using kindlegen or should I format it in a program like sigil?
I designed my entire book in html. Should I just convert it to a mobi using kindlegen or should I format it in a program like sigil?
vypersells
Newbie
- Sep 29, 2014
- 34
- 16
Raven~
800 is not that great, but if you've done 0 promotion it is not bad. If you promote before you release you should be able to break 100.
changing category does not affect your ranking
I have noticed very little change between sales at .99 and 2.99 but you will have to try for yourself to find out what works for you.
Ranks are based on competition, if you pick a stiff niche category you will get booted off the ranks, if you pick a dead niche it wont move. I've been #3 on a stale niche for months but it still nets me $2-$3 a day. lol.
800 is not that great, but if you've done 0 promotion it is not bad. If you promote before you release you should be able to break 100.
changing category does not affect your ranking
I have noticed very little change between sales at .99 and 2.99 but you will have to try for yourself to find out what works for you.
Ranks are based on competition, if you pick a stiff niche category you will get booted off the ranks, if you pick a dead niche it wont move. I've been #3 on a stale niche for months but it still nets me $2-$3 a day. lol.
Raven13
Power Member
- May 31, 2011
- 659
- 417
Thanks a lot for the answer! It make things a bit more clear as i'm at a very early stage of the Kindle business. Well regarding promo I just sent the book to like 20 facebook groups dedicated to kindle, all the groupe are 1000+ members, and bought 4 reviews for each ebook. It would be awesome cracking the formula to get at least 2usd day per ebook, with 50 u're already hitting the $100/day!! BTW my well performing ebook made 260 downloads today...I hope it does at least 1% from that when the book is back to the paid version.
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Pinger030
Regular Member
- Oct 15, 2013
- 304
- 379
@Raven
Nice to hear that I could motivate you.
If your pen name is completely new I advise you to price your first books low ($0.99). You need visibility because a high visibility means more sales, more borrows, more chances to get reviews and you can also build up your fanbase (FB, Twitter, Blog + Email list and so on) much faster. So when you will publish your 3rd or 4th book you already have your fan base in your back hand to make your upcoming book(s) succesfull from day one. Most of the people make the mistake to give up too fast if they do not reach the expected sales with their first books. Take a look at the Kindle journeys here in this forum. Mostly every journey is dead because the people gave up too fast. They are not aware that success is a process and a process needs time. Remember you when you were younger and you could not read. Have you ever thought: Oh, because I can not read after one week I will give it up. I does not work for me!". I do not think so. Same here: You know that Self Publishing is working for thousands of people. For some people the success comes faster than for the others but there is absolutely NO reason why you can not be successful with Self Publsihing. There are no excuses why it should not work for you. So again: To give up with the sentence "It does not work for me because I do not made the expected numbers/my writing skills are bad/I have no time/and so on" are the stupidest excuses in the world. Giving up is sooo easy in this times because you can already have a great living as a deadbeat. You already have your flat, your food, your flat screen, your XBox 360. More than that: In times like today it is cool to give up and fail - just look at our hipsters. If you make business and work hard every idiot is saying to keep calm. What "keep calm"? These failed people are also those people who insult me on the street when I am driving with my Porsche. But I pay a lot of taxes for the lives of these lazy people (so that they can "calm down"). Their flat screens, their XBoxes, their food and so on. And not just for only one person! What I want so say with that: In our world it is fucking easy to give up and fail. It is easy to put your hand in your pants, to sit on the sofa and smoke, drink and watch stupid series the whole day. It is easy to find excuses for everything because there are no consequences. Nobody wants that you succeed. And nobody (NOT your teachers, NOT the TV and so on) will tell you how to be successful because if you have success you would not consume all these senseless and crappy products. Our failure is the engine of our society! That is the reason why NLP or personality development is absolutely necassaary to have real success. It is more than "Believe in your dreams". Only with a solid foundation of the knowledge how to be strong personality you can have success. And one of the basic facts is that you do not have to give up too fast. Yes, it takes time to build up a big fan base around you and sell well. And it takes time until your pseudonym grows to an authority. This is normal and the most effective way to grow is to writer more and more books and to read about the business, connect to people and learn how to be a strong personality. It is the same with every (business) process in life.
I do not recommend you to use the free download persiode. It is hard to describe why but I want to try it: You know of the section "People who bought this book, also bought..." on every product page. If you give your book away for free there will be a lot of people who will download niche book 1, niche book 2 and niche book 3. So they will download these three books of completely different niches (mostly not because they are interested in this niches but because they are free). A free download is working like a sale and with a lot of downloads your niche book gets listed in the "People who also bought...-section" of a book in a completely different niche. Yes, after the free download period your book is getting more visibility because the popularity has growen with the downloads and your book climbs up under your keywords. BUT: Because of the hundreds of downloads you lost all connections (Listings in the "people who also bought...-sections") to your related competitor books in your niche. And because of the hundreds of free downloads (and wrong connection paths) the people have to buy hundred of times your competitors books first and then yours until your book is listed in the "people who also bought...-section" of your competitors book(s). Yaaa, it is hard to understand. This section is very very important for your sales because: Imagine there is a competitors book wich sells very good. The product pages of this book is getting viewed by tons of interestend people per day. If your book is in the section of the "people who also bought...-section" of this successful book the chances are good that your books becomes successful too (and if you connected to more than one successful book the chances are higher and higher). So if you have published your book and you have less sales in the first days ...that means nothing because you are not yet connected to your competitors books. Because of this fact I recommend you to give it two weeks and wait. You have nothing to lose and you can set it for free even after this time. I use the free download periode just if one of my books has a really bad rank and if I see no other chance. But I will never do it within the first weeks.
This "connection-fact" is the exactly reason why so much people saying that her book sales are good after the free download periode ...but went down within a few days. Reason: The (new) high popularity of a book under your keywords (= the high visibility) went down hour by hour if it has no consitantly high sales after the free download period. But your connections are lost for weeks or month (until you get hundreds of sales from readers who comes from other (mostly similiar) competitors books.
PS: I have also published a new $0.99 book a few days ago. I just have about 6 sales and a few borrows per day. But that's nothing to worry about. My pen name is new and it is the first book. I have analysed the niche before, the cover and the product description are great, the story is solid, the formatting is good etc. There is no reason why it should not run well. I spend about two hours to analyse the market for this niche and keywords ...not just for fun^^ ...I know what I am doing and I believe in my skills. So I know that the sales will increase ...at least after the weekend. Analyse the market carefully and you do not have to struggle with the download period.
Wish you everything best and don not calm down like the hipsters! ;D
Nice to hear that I could motivate you.
If your pen name is completely new I advise you to price your first books low ($0.99). You need visibility because a high visibility means more sales, more borrows, more chances to get reviews and you can also build up your fanbase (FB, Twitter, Blog + Email list and so on) much faster. So when you will publish your 3rd or 4th book you already have your fan base in your back hand to make your upcoming book(s) succesfull from day one. Most of the people make the mistake to give up too fast if they do not reach the expected sales with their first books. Take a look at the Kindle journeys here in this forum. Mostly every journey is dead because the people gave up too fast. They are not aware that success is a process and a process needs time. Remember you when you were younger and you could not read. Have you ever thought: Oh, because I can not read after one week I will give it up. I does not work for me!". I do not think so. Same here: You know that Self Publishing is working for thousands of people. For some people the success comes faster than for the others but there is absolutely NO reason why you can not be successful with Self Publsihing. There are no excuses why it should not work for you. So again: To give up with the sentence "It does not work for me because I do not made the expected numbers/my writing skills are bad/I have no time/and so on" are the stupidest excuses in the world. Giving up is sooo easy in this times because you can already have a great living as a deadbeat. You already have your flat, your food, your flat screen, your XBox 360. More than that: In times like today it is cool to give up and fail - just look at our hipsters. If you make business and work hard every idiot is saying to keep calm. What "keep calm"? These failed people are also those people who insult me on the street when I am driving with my Porsche. But I pay a lot of taxes for the lives of these lazy people (so that they can "calm down"). Their flat screens, their XBoxes, their food and so on. And not just for only one person! What I want so say with that: In our world it is fucking easy to give up and fail. It is easy to put your hand in your pants, to sit on the sofa and smoke, drink and watch stupid series the whole day. It is easy to find excuses for everything because there are no consequences. Nobody wants that you succeed. And nobody (NOT your teachers, NOT the TV and so on) will tell you how to be successful because if you have success you would not consume all these senseless and crappy products. Our failure is the engine of our society! That is the reason why NLP or personality development is absolutely necassaary to have real success. It is more than "Believe in your dreams". Only with a solid foundation of the knowledge how to be strong personality you can have success. And one of the basic facts is that you do not have to give up too fast. Yes, it takes time to build up a big fan base around you and sell well. And it takes time until your pseudonym grows to an authority. This is normal and the most effective way to grow is to writer more and more books and to read about the business, connect to people and learn how to be a strong personality. It is the same with every (business) process in life.
I do not recommend you to use the free download persiode. It is hard to describe why but I want to try it: You know of the section "People who bought this book, also bought..." on every product page. If you give your book away for free there will be a lot of people who will download niche book 1, niche book 2 and niche book 3. So they will download these three books of completely different niches (mostly not because they are interested in this niches but because they are free). A free download is working like a sale and with a lot of downloads your niche book gets listed in the "People who also bought...-section" of a book in a completely different niche. Yes, after the free download period your book is getting more visibility because the popularity has growen with the downloads and your book climbs up under your keywords. BUT: Because of the hundreds of downloads you lost all connections (Listings in the "people who also bought...-sections") to your related competitor books in your niche. And because of the hundreds of free downloads (and wrong connection paths) the people have to buy hundred of times your competitors books first and then yours until your book is listed in the "people who also bought...-section" of your competitors book(s). Yaaa, it is hard to understand. This section is very very important for your sales because: Imagine there is a competitors book wich sells very good. The product pages of this book is getting viewed by tons of interestend people per day. If your book is in the section of the "people who also bought...-section" of this successful book the chances are good that your books becomes successful too (and if you connected to more than one successful book the chances are higher and higher). So if you have published your book and you have less sales in the first days ...that means nothing because you are not yet connected to your competitors books. Because of this fact I recommend you to give it two weeks and wait. You have nothing to lose and you can set it for free even after this time. I use the free download periode just if one of my books has a really bad rank and if I see no other chance. But I will never do it within the first weeks.
This "connection-fact" is the exactly reason why so much people saying that her book sales are good after the free download periode ...but went down within a few days. Reason: The (new) high popularity of a book under your keywords (= the high visibility) went down hour by hour if it has no consitantly high sales after the free download period. But your connections are lost for weeks or month (until you get hundreds of sales from readers who comes from other (mostly similiar) competitors books.
PS: I have also published a new $0.99 book a few days ago. I just have about 6 sales and a few borrows per day. But that's nothing to worry about. My pen name is new and it is the first book. I have analysed the niche before, the cover and the product description are great, the story is solid, the formatting is good etc. There is no reason why it should not run well. I spend about two hours to analyse the market for this niche and keywords ...not just for fun^^ ...I know what I am doing and I believe in my skills. So I know that the sales will increase ...at least after the weekend. Analyse the market carefully and you do not have to struggle with the download period.
Wish you everything best and don not calm down like the hipsters! ;D
Last edited:
Raven13
Power Member
- May 31, 2011
- 659
- 417
Pinger030 Logical stuff bro!! Thanks again this will help me on my next step with kindle!!! No worries i'm not a hippster, I also drive a sexy beamer and people say "look at this snobish punk" hahhahahaha I'm a self made serial entrepreneur already running offline businesses, and having some succes with amazon affiliate and as Kindle is an amazon product I'm sure it would be a great experience...I fucking love amazon!!!!!
The potential I see on Kindle is far way bigger than all things i'm into right now... Can't wait to push my new ebooks!!!
The potential I see on Kindle is far way bigger than all things i'm into right now... Can't wait to push my new ebooks!!!
I think you should expect that you're going to get competition no matter what. You just have to be better than them.
I have hopped on the bandwagon with this and I find so far the hardest part is finding a particular niche and outsourcing (if you outsource). I have outsourced to 3 guys so far, and dealing with these guys is a pain. I can tell I'm going to get 2 dud ebooks for every 1 good one I get back if I'm lucky.
Pinger- What are your thoughts about using images on the inner copy of the ebook? Also do you rewrite the ebooks that you get that are outsourced? I plan to read, and expand on the outsourced books I get back before publishing them, but I'm not sure if hiring an illustrator to provide some fancy images to include throughout the book is worthwhile, or if readers of non-fiction are satisfied with just plain text.
Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
I'm french and my first ebooks were in french. It's a virgin market, but there is not a lot of downloads.
For example, in a good categorie like cooking, if you get 50 downloads per day on the free promotion, you'll be lucky.
If it's fantasy or romance, not even more... 10 downloads max per day on the free promotion.
BUT if you can crack the erotica niche, you can sell a lot.
Raven13
Power Member
- May 31, 2011
- 659
- 417
Damn...I was about to hire a french writer LMAO...thanks for the insigts! I'm in for the Reviews exchange btw
Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
dennis_797
Registered Member
- Jun 25, 2012
- 76
- 11
A few tips based on my (admittedly limited) experience. I've released a few books and have quite a few in the pipeline, with my main book selling around 8-10 copies per day, for what it's worth!
1. Don't pay too much attention to the free rank. I didn't promote my first book at all, instead wanting to just get it launched. I got around 100 free downloads per day, but a few days after I got off the free promotion I still hit my current levels of 8-10 per day for my main book. I see the free days as just a way to get reviews, but they make me nervous as people without any interest in the topic could download the book and give a rubbish review due to their lack of interest rather than lack of quality!
2. Quality is everything. Read the other books in your niche (you can get Kindle unlimited for about $10 I think). Look at their strengths, weaknesses, and their contents. If you can create something better than this you can rank higher than it. 'Better' is subjective, but I aim to hire a better writer, make the book longer, cover the same topics and then some, and have a better cover. I also edit the books myself meticulously (I'm a freelance writer by trade) to make sure it is up to my high standards. I also think this adds some of my own touches to the book, which is great for keeping a consistent style if you use multiple writers.
3. Getting the writers right is the hard part. Sure, you might receive some decent applications, but finding someone reliable is even harder. Of the writers I've hired (I've hired about 15-20 now, with some books in the pipeline) only 2-3 have delivered the book on time. Most of the writers have gone AWOL without ever submitting a word, while others write about 20% then vanish, and I know I'm a very relaxed client to work with during the writing phase (I get more serious when the first draft is complete). Others get the job done, but miss the deadline by a mile, which is fine as I'd rather have a quality book delayed then a poor one on time, but it's worth keeping in mind.
I think this is down to the low rates being paid. Earning $100 for a 10,000 word book might sound OK at first glance, but after spending days on the research and writing the first few chapters, they realize they have only earnt $20 in the three days they've been working, and so completing the book isn't worth their time -- fair enough, it's a problem we all face when paying the low rates.
4. And this is my last tip, which I learnt the hard way: CHECK FOR PLAGIARISM BEFORE DOING ANYTHING! I just spent a good 12 hours putting a guide through my first edit process, only to find that the guide had been plagiarised 100%, the writer hadn't even bothered putting it through a spinner or anything! Schoolboy mistake, but one I won't make again.....
Quick question to other writers as there has been a few comments about formatting. Do you pay to get your guide professionally formatted with the fancy chapter headings and styles based on your cover? I formatted my books myself, with working TOC and clean chapter headings using Word (it's simple, but looks quite nice). As I'm considering releasing the books on CreateSpace I've given more thought to professional formatting, and wondered if any of you guys had invested in this?
1. Don't pay too much attention to the free rank. I didn't promote my first book at all, instead wanting to just get it launched. I got around 100 free downloads per day, but a few days after I got off the free promotion I still hit my current levels of 8-10 per day for my main book. I see the free days as just a way to get reviews, but they make me nervous as people without any interest in the topic could download the book and give a rubbish review due to their lack of interest rather than lack of quality!
2. Quality is everything. Read the other books in your niche (you can get Kindle unlimited for about $10 I think). Look at their strengths, weaknesses, and their contents. If you can create something better than this you can rank higher than it. 'Better' is subjective, but I aim to hire a better writer, make the book longer, cover the same topics and then some, and have a better cover. I also edit the books myself meticulously (I'm a freelance writer by trade) to make sure it is up to my high standards. I also think this adds some of my own touches to the book, which is great for keeping a consistent style if you use multiple writers.
3. Getting the writers right is the hard part. Sure, you might receive some decent applications, but finding someone reliable is even harder. Of the writers I've hired (I've hired about 15-20 now, with some books in the pipeline) only 2-3 have delivered the book on time. Most of the writers have gone AWOL without ever submitting a word, while others write about 20% then vanish, and I know I'm a very relaxed client to work with during the writing phase (I get more serious when the first draft is complete). Others get the job done, but miss the deadline by a mile, which is fine as I'd rather have a quality book delayed then a poor one on time, but it's worth keeping in mind.
I think this is down to the low rates being paid. Earning $100 for a 10,000 word book might sound OK at first glance, but after spending days on the research and writing the first few chapters, they realize they have only earnt $20 in the three days they've been working, and so completing the book isn't worth their time -- fair enough, it's a problem we all face when paying the low rates.
4. And this is my last tip, which I learnt the hard way: CHECK FOR PLAGIARISM BEFORE DOING ANYTHING! I just spent a good 12 hours putting a guide through my first edit process, only to find that the guide had been plagiarised 100%, the writer hadn't even bothered putting it through a spinner or anything! Schoolboy mistake, but one I won't make again.....
Quick question to other writers as there has been a few comments about formatting. Do you pay to get your guide professionally formatted with the fancy chapter headings and styles based on your cover? I formatted my books myself, with working TOC and clean chapter headings using Word (it's simple, but looks quite nice). As I'm considering releasing the books on CreateSpace I've given more thought to professional formatting, and wondered if any of you guys had invested in this?
Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
Dennis_797 : Thanks for your advices and Good Game for your results !
I think the rank during the free promotion means nothing. One of my ebooks was 690 on Free Rank and it didn't make any sales after.
Perhaps the strategie of Pinger030 is better. I'll test it for sure.
I think the rank during the free promotion means nothing. One of my ebooks was 690 on Free Rank and it didn't make any sales after.
Perhaps the strategie of Pinger030 is better. I'll test it for sure.