Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!
- Thread starter GobBluthJD
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Pinger030
Regular Member
- Oct 15, 2013
- 304
- 379
Use Mailchimp. No website etc. necessary. They give you an opt-in url for free.
JaxOver9s
Junior Member
- Jun 4, 2011
- 121
- 16
what recommendations can you make regarding finding lucrative keywords in fiction writing that does not fall into erotica?
thank you in advance!
- Jax
Do KU accounts really hurt the sales of bundles that much? I was initially planning on putting everything on KDP in order to get the higher royalties.
Thanks for your answers and congratulations on the Allstar bonus!
Has anybody tested out the $0.99-$1.99 price range? I'd really like to make some bundles of $3.99, but that's too low for a bundle of $2.99 books and too high for $0.99 books. I was thinking of pricing some singles at either $1.49 or $1.99.
Also, Happy New Year's gang!
Also, Happy New Year's gang!
Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
If borrows will be 1.39$, in december I made 414$... Not bad with 100% refunds on some days.
It's the 2nd "full" month and my sales progressed of about 49%.
For 2015 I'm planning on a average progression rate of 10% per month.
So my objective for dec 2015 is 1300$.
We will see !
It's the 2nd "full" month and my sales progressed of about 49%.
For 2015 I'm planning on a average progression rate of 10% per month.
So my objective for dec 2015 is 1300$.
We will see !
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Carepolice
Power Member
- Mar 25, 2009
- 575
- 629
The Kindle marketplace is absolutely huge, there are a lot of great niches still available. The trick is locating keywords where people spend a lot of money on multiple products. In Zon Sidekick we have a special formula for this that assigns a "Buyer Behavior" score based on those top results.
My personal approach is to take a look at the Top 100 sections and note the most common words used in titles (again, we automated this in ZS) and then to take that list and blow it up with keyword suggestions in our software so that I have several hundred to work with.
From there I take those keywords and run them through our system to find the highest scoring ones. I then take the best of those and expand further with additional suggestions based on these until I have a list of awesome keywords that I may base my next titles on.
The recipe is solid, I find out where high traffic and great opportunity intersect and then place my titles front and center with this good keyword research. The result is zero marketing and a bunch of traffic, the book still needs to be good but the hard part is done at this point.
I hope that helps!
If anyone needs some assistance performing similar research without any software, just PM me and I'll help you figure the process out. It's a bit of a grind when done by hand but I'll happily assist with the parts you're uncertain of.
Cheers!
Shaunm
Elite Member
- Mar 27, 2014
- 3,435
- 2,998
Don't you only get paid from KOLL and KU if they read more than 10% of the book ?
It is answered like 50 times if you read the full thread....
Pinger030
Regular Member
- Oct 15, 2013
- 304
- 379
I prefer to publish my books on Wednesday because when your book is new you get more sales and borrows during the first days. So you have a good ranking/standing/visibility for the weekend (best selling days).
But don't care too much about this. When a book is ready - publish it! Time is money.
But don't care too much about this. When a book is ready - publish it! Time is money.
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Talyn
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2014
- 216
- 74
Hi all,
I have a cookbook that sells well, but I want to maximize its revenue and I have an opportunity to format/illustrate it like a "beautiful" cookbook.
Do you think that I can publish it a second time with a different price under a different pen name, or it's again the TOS ?
I have a cookbook that sells well, but I want to maximize its revenue and I have an opportunity to format/illustrate it like a "beautiful" cookbook.
Do you think that I can publish it a second time with a different price under a different pen name, or it's again the TOS ?
- Dec 26, 2013
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I took a look at that guy's videos. Here's why it actually motivated me to tackle Kindle eBook writing:
1) The overwhelming majority of his stories are under 4,000 words. The rest are 4,000 to 5,000. It didn't sound like any of his books actually hit the 5,000 mark (meaning, his longest book by far is 4,999 words or shorter).
2) In the comments of one of his videos, someone asked what he'd be willing to pay an outsourced writer for a story of 5,000 to 7,500 words. His response would be $25-30. That means he's paying less than that per story, since his are all under 5,000 words. We've seen all over this thread that $150 for 15,000 words is tough to find if you want quality writing. This guy wouldn't go as high as $60, which gives you an idea as to how poor the quality of his content is.
3) In another comment, he explains how he filters out bad freelance writers from good ones. He makes a five-story contract that has an escape clause for him. If the first story purchased is bad, he's allowed to end the business agreement without having to buy the other four stores. He then publishes the very poorly written stories anyway. So even by his own poor standards, the bulk of his stories are incredibly bad quality.
4) The way his business model works is to keep making bundles out of the same existing stories. Singles for $0.99, 5-story collections for $2.99, 10-story collections for $3.95, 25-story collections for $4.95 and $5.95 for 50-story collections. This video shows he also has one with a title claiming to offer 101 stories in it, but it doesn't sell well and he doesn't address it. He then makes a ton of combinations of stories and makes more bundle/collections. 211 total books - 101 story books = 110 bundle books. That's clearly over-saturation in the bundle department if your goal is to increase your sales.
5) I'm too bad at math to figure out how many possible combinations of bundles one can make from 101 stories, but to make matters worse, he even admits to making some bundles out of changing the order of existing bundles. In other words, he doesn't even make different bundles with his other stories, he'll just get hyper-lazy and create a few anthologies out of the exact same bundle.This means his tweak on the typical eBook business model is to favor new customers over return customers (which is obviously stupid; you go after both).
6) Despite his business model being focused on creating a massive quantity of low-quality books (as in, minimum 1/day), he still only has 211 total books after 2 years for some reason. The people in this thread who are doing the opposite are matching or exceeding his output of 8/month. That's like opening up a dollar store to compete with a mega-retailer and then not bothering to fully stock it.
7) He lists his larger bundles on KOLL but not all of his smaller ones and he claims to refuse to offer his individual stories on it. His logic is that nobody would opt to purchase his other stories if they can get them for free. Meaning he's choosing to go for 35% commission on a $0.99 book rather than do both that and get the flat $1.33 download commission. There's an argument to be made for going purchase only over purchase+download combined, but he found a way to do that wrong, too.
8) Any book that's not eligible for the 70% royalty, he uploads to other eBook stores. This is smart! However, he stopped with Nook instead of doing every eBook store...
9) He doesn't print anything, so there goes another massive income stream.
10) He doesn't do any form of advertising.
11) He doesn't do email lists. Remember: I said he favors new customers over repeating customers.
12) He phones it in when it comes to making eBook covers. Fiverr workers can match or exceed his quality.
13) Despite calling it all "erotica," he publishes only smut. As has been discussed, smut has a huge possibility of being taken down by Amazon at random (in fact, all the books he suggests you look up HAVE been taken down) and the rest don't sell anywhere nearly as well as erotica books. Meanwhile, the fact that he refers to them as erotica titles means his odds of being taken down are higher than average, as some of his readers are more likely to report his books. (They bought it thinking it was erotica, found out it wasn't.)
14) He doesn't do any keyword or niche research.
15) His proof is for March 2014. March is one of the four lowest months for erotica eBook sales in the year (FYI: erotica does its worst in July and August, while all books typically do poorly during March and April. For books in general, August is actually the second highest in terms of sales, but I'm betting that has something to do with back-to-school so it would become niche specific).
Despite the 15-point (15!) failing that is his business model, he STILL made $2,100 in the month of March alone. Assuming November to January compensate for the low sales in April, July and August (they always do more than enough for every author in the romance/erotica/smut genres), then we know he's making more than $25,200/year. That may not sound enough, be we know it's much more than that since he says it's his full-time income.
All this tells me that I can write the stories myself (I'm a copywriter by trade and novelist by hobby) and get significantly better results than him. Now THAT is motivating!
Ultimately what he is doing is trying to game the customer.
It doesn't work long term. Of course you can sell shit to some of the people some of the time, but it is better to sell to all the people what they want all of the time.
You may be impressed that he made $2000 a month with what is quite a messy thing to manage for a low return per book. But quality wins every time, because his sales will just stop and so he has to produce another huge batch of books just to stand still. Worse he may well even get a quality warning from Amazon and his account closed!
I was a bit busy with Christmas and New Year so I only uploaded 3 new books. 1 makes about $300 per day, the other a little over $100 per day and the third about $50 per day.
It actually takes longer to manage the creation of shit, because your dealing with shit than just paying someone who is good to create something that is good.
Remember ultimately that is what the customer wants and it is they who determine how much you make by buying your book.
It is not rocket science people want good quality at affordable prices. So give it them!
If you pre-ocupy yourself with trying to work out how you can make money with a $25 shit book, by screwing everybody, don't be surprised if it all comes crashing down and you get screwed.
If you have the money, pay for quality creation, if you don't you will have to be clever and get around it but still create quality, if your talented, write something that is good.
The key is look what is in demand and then write a good quality book that meets that demand and guess what...? It will sell more and keep on selling!
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EXACTLY. That's why his "failure" motivated me to take on eBook publishing. If he can make enough to get by on with his gaming of the system, then it tells me I'm going to make a killing by creating more high-quality books and selling them at the prices people want. My plan is to write a bunch myself and then scale up by outsourcing to quality writers once I've reached the mark of averaging $94/day. That way, I know I've made enough to make a living off of (it's what I was grossing before I lost my job). My plan (before I start outsourcing) is to follow someone else's business model since we're in the same genre and she was earning $3,000 to $5,000 a month excluding earnings from downloads/borrows. Her model also used low word counts, so I know by creating longer, quality stories, I'll hit my own goals quicker and that book sales will be more stable.
Speaking of book stability, do you find there's a life cycle to each eBook? For example, do they all do well in the first month and then drop off in sales for the next few months? Do some even die? If so, can you give an idea as to what percentage of sales you make in the slower periods and how long it takes for them to reach that point?
Thanks and congrats on all your success! Seeing books make $50-300/day is hugely motivating since I don't need to match those numbers, I just need to hit my own goals and, once I do, scale up from there.
How many books total do you have right now?
- Dec 26, 2013
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EXACTLY. That's why his "failure" motivated me to take on eBook publishing. If he can make enough to get by on with his gaming of the system, then it tells me I'm going to make a killing by creating more high-quality books and selling them at the prices people want. My plan is to write a bunch myself and then scale up by outsourcing to quality writers once I've reached the mark of averaging $94/day. That way, I know I've made enough to make a living off of (it's what I was grossing before I lost my job). My plan (before I start outsourcing) is to follow someone else's business model since we're in the same genre and she was earning $3,000 to $5,000 a month excluding earnings from downloads/borrows. Her model also used low word counts, so I know by creating longer, quality stories, I'll hit my own goals quicker and that book sales will be more stable.
Speaking of book stability, do you find there's a life cycle to each eBook? For example, do they all do well in the first month and then drop off in sales for the next few months? Do some even die? If so, can you give an idea as to what percentage of sales you make in the slower periods and how long it takes for them to reach that point?
Thanks and congrats on all your success! Seeing books make $50-300/day is hugely motivating since I don't need to match those numbers, I just need to hit my own goals and, once I do, scale up from there.
Hi,
I will try and answer your points.
I can usually tell in the first 2 days if a book is a winner. I usually find sales increase over time before starting to fade a little, but not that much. The key is to scale into a high quality series. Then there is a point when it charts and gets syndicated and then you get a ramp up. But there is no specific answer, it really depends on the type of book as to it's slower period.
Do not get preoccupied with any of that though. Just concentrate on a good quality book in an in demand niche. If people want it Amazon will take care of the rest. I have had books crack #100 and lower in the whole of Amazon. Those are the ones that make you the $300+ per day.
I have not actually kept an exact count of how many books I have created. You see I have lots of side deals, sold the rights to publishers of some and all sorts of JV's and stuff, but probably about 500.
- Dec 26, 2013
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You need to make I think 15 posts to PM there is no other way to PM. In respect of my JV it is full now, so I have closed it to anyone I am not currently dealing with.