Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Great achievement! I am always proud of fellow members when they are on a good path to success. I am happy for you and wish you more and more sales. I was out of the kindle book writing for the last 2 months, but now you guys inspired me and I will start writing/outsourcing again. :) Thank you for that!

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays!

:beach2:
 
Ok, well to bring it back to discussing strategy a bit....
i guess this question is "directed" @CarePolice and/or anyone else who's having some success in the FICTION genre...

Question
I posted 2 Erotica 'books' - but they were extremely short "17 Kindle pages" for 99c.
That's basically because
1) The story was lame
2) It was laden with punctuation errors, which I actually paid to have fixed up.

I think I may have answered my question as to why this didn't sell AT ALL. Perhaps also I put it in Romance --> Erotica, when it should maybe be Fiction --> Erotica.

I posted 2 other fiction books in two other genres. Writing is error free here.
Again,
1) Books were really short - but 8,000 words pages per book
2) I had them in the adult fiction, then figured it might be better for YOUNG ADULT. YOUNG ADULT, however was not in my keywords?

I've sold zero of these (2) books and had fairly low downloads during my 2 day promo - I also submitted one of these books (before going young adult) to a slew of 'freebie posting' sites.

I'm not asking for a spoon full of awesome marketing juice, but I'm wondering if my errors here could be
1) Length of Book(s)
2) Keywords
3) both

Like I said the writing is "good", in that I wrote 1 of the books as a freelance job last year that wasn't used - but got nice comments about it.
Another one of the 8,000 word books were outsourced, well written and quite interesting - but again it was short maybe 7,199 words.

I know it's hard to look at this and give a detailed analysis just based on what I said, but generally, would you say my lack of success in the FICTION genre is due to anything of the above, or is it just that competitive when dealing with a new fiction genres pen name.

Also, I priced the books first at .99, then at $2.99. No sales, no borrows.

Non-fiction, however, seems to go swimmingly well for me. Published 2 NF books, editing a 3rd and 4th Non fiction book now, with one in progress on pre-order for 15th Jan.

ANY insight would be grately appreciated..especially since I actually like​ writing in my genre of fiction. (Adventure etc)
 
Also, I have 2 more fiction works being worked on now.

I'm wondering if I should just

OPTION A: continue with Pen names #1 and #2 so that they have more than "1" book out,

OPTION B: or if I should begin a new pen name and do something different then what I've done before for these two new stories

OR

OPTION C: If I should bundle the 2 new stores and the 2 other ones under same author and make it a "4 Short Story Bundle" of "pen name #1"? That way the "Book" will be like 24,000 word short story book (of 4 stories) and sell that for $4.99.

Thanks
 
Hey friends! I have also started kindle publishing and published 5 books so far. 2 are new and i have got no sales from them. 3 Older ones are selling, not too well but they are. I am looking for a way to get good amount of reviews on my books. Talking to authors individually on FB groups is a bit difficult. If some one knows of a skype group please add me there.
 
Since the last 3 days I have some refunds issues.
In the pas I had a very few refunds like 1 per week. But in 3 days I had 10. Even my "big book".
That's strange.
 
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After almost going into a JV with someone from BHW for a Kindle project I decided to go it alone after reading all of this thread along with some other high quality posts regarding Kindle.

I released my first 5000 word non fiction book yesterday thad four sales and today it has six currently :)

I have ordered my next Kindle book and I am planning niches for additional ones come the new year.
 
Has anyone else experienced increased sales on christmas? I sold twice as much as usually yesterday :)
 
Wow, In 7 weeks my refund rate was far below 1%
This week, it's near 10%

With my 10-15k words book, with a good quality content.
It's too bad that we can't know why customers ask a refund.
 
Seriously. It's the most successful way I've found to make money online. Yes, it has a lot of drawbacks (which I'll mention in a minute), but holy s*** do the rewards ever make up for them! I only seriously started attempting to make money with Kindle 2 months ago. I wrote, prepped, and released a book a week, until I figured out a better outsourcing system. I now have 20 books up and am averaging a new book every 2 to 3 days. My latest book was just released last week and, well, since then it's sold 500+ copies. I know, I still can't believe it when I look at the reports, but it's not going away. At even $2/book profit, that's not too shabby.

Okay, this isn't to say that this is easy or there aren't cons. There are. Lots of them. Which is why, I imagine, there's not a lot of Kindle talk around this forum.

Con #1: It's a LOT of work. Even if you're outsourcing. I started by doing it all myself: research, writing, formatting, cover design, uploading, marketing. Everything. It's a huge time investment, and I suspect this is the step that scares most people off.

Con #2: It's NOT instantaneous. We're always looking for quick money in the IM world. Kindle is not that. It takes time and effort to build up an audience, to learn how to outsource correctly, to streamline the process for efficiency. It's worth it, but it does take a great deal of time.

Con #3: Kindle is not PLR friendly, is not article spinning friendly, is not black hat friendly, etc, etc. This probably also scares a lot of people off. Mess with Kindle, and it will blacklist you. But even playing by the rules has gotten me much more than black hat stuff ever did.

Okay, it's not all doom and gloom. Let's see some pros.

Pro #1: Once you've uploaded a book, it's (nearly) set, forget, and earn. My very first book took me a long time to research, write, format, etc. It was a pain. But you know what? Since I uploaded it 2 months ago, I have done zero marketing, zero promotion, and have spent zero effort on it. Guess what: it's still averaging about 10 sales per day. That's with zero work on my part. IMO, that's well worth the initial effort. A few days pain for recurring money daily - I'll take that any day.

Pro #2: Tied in with Pro #1 is the fact that, if you sign up for KDP Select, you hardly have to do any marketing (unless you want, of course). I have a series of books in a non-fiction, educational sort of niche. I have done zero marketing on them. No blogs, no twitter, no fb, nada. All 4 books are in the Top 10 in their Kindle category. If you create a quality book, Amazon will market it for you. It will start showing up in people's feeds, in "people who bought X, also bought Y", and all that type of stuff. It's beautiful. Set and forget.

Pro #3: Once you get a system down, you can easily produce a book a day. Even if you only make one sale a day, that's $2. You have 10 books? That's $20 a day. You have 50 book? Hello, $100 per day. The possibilities are endless. Literally.

Okay, okay, enough of the rant. Just wanted to share what (I think) is an under-looked market on this forum. Yes, it's not black hat. Yes, it's not quick and easy money. But it's sustainable and, if done right, really profitable.

My tips:

Do your research (I'll post more on this later, if wanted)
Produce (or outsource) quality content.
Enroll in KDP.
Set a goal of 1 book per month, per week, or per day even (if the quality doesn't suffer).
Use the same pen name for similar books, to build up an audience and make each book easier to find.
Put links to your books at the end of all of your other books, to make them easier to find.
Sit back and enjoy.

Any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them. I've only been doing it 2 months, but I've been doing it nearly 24/7 and have learned a lot. Been using this forum for awhile now, and finally have something to give back to the community!

Hi, been considering this. but can you tell me how much it costs to have a book outsourced please?

Thanks!
 
Hi, been considering this. but can you tell me how much it costs to have a book outsourced please?

Thanks!

Mootonandy, this really depends on the niche and the quality of ghostwriter you hire. I've had 50-75 (Kindle) page books of outstanding quality written for between $200-400 each. A really great trick to picking up quality work on the cheap is to utilize hiring websites like elance and look specifically for newer members to the website. With good interviewing skills you'll find quality candidates that need to build up reputation on the website, so they're willing to work for less.
 
For today, over 75% refunds... I never had that before...
 
That's so strange, I haven't noticed any increase in refunds for me. Something must be up, is it across all of your books? and suddenly?

It's for all of my books and it's since 4 days approx.
my downloads increased, but the refunds rate is near to 80%.

Even my books refund free are impacted.
 
Does anyone know if I can sell one light version of a book at 99c and a full version of a same book at 2.99 ?

It's pretty the same toc, but the light version is only an overview instead of the full book is more detailled.
 
@GringoMonkey: Please do not promote your JV outside of your own thread.
People are starting to report you for spamming.

Thank You - "Wiz"
 
For today, over 75% refunds... I never had that before...

Thats crazy high, are they all in the same niche with the same pen name? Perhaps a rival is trying to ruin your account/rankings.

Does anyone know if I can sell one light version of a book at 99c and a full version of a same book at 2.99 ?

It's pretty the same toc, but the light version is only an overview instead of the full book is more detailled.

I would imagine you are aloud as you can bundle books together and offer them at a discount just clearly state in the description it is a short version.
 
You know, I always keep this in the back of my mind, one day, not quite yet, but one day!!
 
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