Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

[pirx2030]

Hey guys, is there a Skype group here that I could join? If not, please let me know your Skype name via PM and we can form something small to discuss our eBook journey. Thanks.

 

[NemoTheOne]

@kek
For non fiction: It's better to build a social media network around a niche (not a pen name). For fiction: Better a network around a pen name than a "publishing company". I made the mistake and tried it with my company but I had no success.

@nemo
Yes, that's my strategy with the different product classes. Compare it to other markets like the car market: You have different classes for different pockets. But that doesn't mean that cheap cars are bad. Now back to the books: I have 0.99, 2.99 and 4.99+ books in one niche. The target audience is different because some customers want to spend more money ...and some less. And my 0.99 books aren't bad. They have less content, no photos etc. The big advantage of my strategy is: You can build up one business around your different pen names (around your niche). You just need one blog, one Facebook site, one email list etc. The pen names can collaborate with each other, you can use existing content several times (I don't mean copy and paste!) For me it works.

I use this strategy for fiction too. I have a great writer who has his own pen name. But I also have worse writers under different pen names. And I have a "garbage pen name" where I just publish the really bad stories (the stories I got when I started with outsourcing and tried different writers). I just have a blog, fb site, email list etc. for my best fiction pen name.

Thanks Pinger.

So you do it based on the quality of work that you get from your writers. Got it. Fair enough. Perfect. Cheers

 

[Dayspring]

@day
I've uploaded a book a few hours ago. After 6 hours it was live. No problems. Btw. One of my books is also blocked. It from my beginning time when I tried different stuff. It was an erotic strorie and I think it's was too violent. This was my last pure erotic storie I've ever published and I had no more problems since then.

In my case, it turned out a competitor claimed to own the copyright on one of my books and Amazon was requesting proof that I owned it. In the meantime, they weren't letting me add more books in the series, but for some reason they waited 8 hours before sending me an email. It worked out in the end for me, though. The competitor got his account banned, so a bunch of my books ranked higher due to his being taken down.

 

[symbolon]

I wanted to try making money from Kindle in the past but some troubles came up. Maybe it's time to start this now

 

[NemoTheOne]

Do you sometimes pair your 'successful' pen names with 'new' pen names, to help give the new pen names some extra 'rub'?

 

[alkemist]

I'm in the beginning of my journey to $1k/month via Kindle by May this year.
So far I have 6 books out. All non-fiction. Only the ones with reviews make any sales.

I started the journey 3 weeks ago and have profited $24 thus far, but I know there is more success to come.
The OP and many others labeled Kindle a "Numbers Game". You must publish a lot of books and later will come the success. From my experience, and if you are writing all of the books yourself like I am, you're gonna need a hell of a lot of patience.

Right now I'm moving onto fiction. Which is gonna be even more time consuming, but more fun and gratifying at least.

 

[Pinger030]

@nemo
Yes, if I create a new pen name I publish the first books under the new pen name + an already successful pen name. I also cross-promote all my pen names and their books inside of the books of my other pen names.

 

[profitboy]

hey @pinger030 man do you believe that the kindle is a numbers game? i have 20 manuscripts already finished and been planning to put them all at once on kindle. all manuscripts are on the romance short novel ^_^

 

[kekmaw]

A question to you guys who has written books in Cooking/Baking, did you use the american cooking measurements or the measurements that every other country uses? Because I'm about to write a book and I'm not American and I'm already confused with the American measurements. I feel like if I write in the world standard measurements, it's easier for me to write aswell as all the markets gets it but not the american market, which is obviously the biggest on kindle. Would love to get answears here.

 

[OnMGrind]

Okay im planning on starting again and doing it right. first booj was nonfic too... but like 3 sales over 4 months.

I have 4 books completed and going to write a 5th. ( been writing them for a while nonfic)

I havent published them yet.

They will be part of a series. but what is better...

1. releasing them all at once?

or

2. releasing them spread out over time?

this subject was touched a while back... but i cant remember if it was about series and if it was non fic.


Im still debating if i should do the free days... im thinking of putting one of the books free and and leaving the others.

Also gotta find some covers for 3 of them. Its a pain finding good stock images without having to pay.
Also im woried the one good one that i did find may not be legit,.. because its so good that im thinking someone just added it to their fake site... to get pics on their site. (bloating a site to make it seem legit.. ie get people to pay for others)

my eventual goal... is to write fiction for fun..

 

[GringoMonkey]

I have found a lot of people ask the same type of questions, ultimately they think there is a trick to taking a shit book - doing some magic - and it suddenly becomes a top seller, then they do that over and over and become rich.

There is a business process you can use and things you can do to maximise income, but ultimately it has to start with a high quality book. Else it doesn't matter what else you do it simply won't sell. If your book is shit, by which I mean is not measuring up to your competition in the ways the reader expects, spending months deliberating a pen name won't matter. You can always go back and change things once a book is uploaded.

If you have the skills to do that then great. Do it. If you don't accept you are going to have to pay others to do it for you and if you don't you will have a shit book.

Write it ASAP, write it well and get it out as fast as you can. If it sells go back and scale marketing etc and turn it into a series. If it doesn't go back and start again. The faster you fail the quicker you will achieve success. So fail fast!

Almost every tip you will get on here is about IMPROVING sales. If you don't have that many sales to start with it isn't going to be worth the effort to implement them. It is a bit like me buying a $1000 pair of running shoes to improve my speed. I am so crap at running it isn't going to matter. But for Usain Bolt small % improvements make it worthwhile. Similarly why buy loads of reviews and other marketing things if the book isn't selling? Unless you are prepared to spend serious money on marketing you cannot sell a shit book. Your better off spending the money on making the book better or creating another book that does sell.

To measure quality head to the Amazon website and look what the top books in your niche are doing, how many pages, does it have images etc? Then understand you are going to have to do it better. Look at the price point. How many reviews does it have, it's quality of writing, how is it structured etc. Then ask yourself can you do better?

If your book isn't up to the same standard or beyond no matter what you do you will not sell many. Because they are setting the benchmark for your niche.

The days have gone when you can release any old crap on Amazon and it will sell, there are too many self publishers now, so your book will get lost in the maelstrom of new releases.

Your better off producing 1 high quality book that sells well than 10 low quality ones that don't. Then you can play the numbers game with something that sells and make real money, rather then putting all your efforts into something that doesn't sell well.

The trick is creating a high quality book that sells and even if you do that there will come a point where you are simply treading water to maintain your income unless you scale. The higher the quality the book the less you have to tread water. Do it right and it will start to sell off it's own own back. Then scale marketing just like you should successful books.

I am going to be starting another joint venture soon. Where if you create the book I will sort the sales for you in return for a minority %. The book can be in any niche, though I have the most success in kids books and I will only have one condition: that it is of high enough quality that I can achieve sales with it. Feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss that further.

 

[Angus862]

Hi GringoMonkey, I'm interested in the joint venture you talked about in your post but I can't still PM you. I already have two books ready in english and italian and I work with a great illustrator that we could use for kid books and comics. Please drop me a PM for contact.

 

[alkemist]

I have found a lot of people ask the same type of questions, ultimately they think there is a trick to taking a shit book - doing some magic - and it suddenly becomes a top seller, then they do that over and over and become rich.

There is a business process you can use and things you can do to maximise income, but ultimately it has to start with a high quality book. Else it doesn't matter what else you do it simply won't sell. If your book is shit, by which I mean is not measuring up to your competition in the ways the reader expects, spending months deliberating a pen name won't matter. You can always go back and change things once a book is uploaded.

If you have the skills to do that then great. Do it. If you don't accept you are going to have to pay others to do it for you and if you don't you will have a shit book.

Write it ASAP, write it well and get it out as fast as you can. If it sells go back and scale marketing etc and turn it into a series. If it doesn't go back and start again. The faster you fail the quicker you will achieve success. So fail fast!

Almost every tip you will get on here is about IMPROVING sales. If you don't have that many sales to start with it isn't going to be worth the effort to implement them. It is a bit like me buying a $1000 pair of running shoes to improve my speed. I am so crap at running it isn't going to matter. But for Usain Bolt small % improvements make it worthwhile. Similarly why buy loads of reviews and other marketing things if the book isn't selling? Unless you are prepared to spend serious money on marketing you cannot sell a shit book. Your better off spending the money on making the book better or creating another book that does sell.

To measure quality head to the Amazon website and look what the top books in your niche are doing, how many pages, does it have images etc? Then understand you are going to have to do it better. Look at the price point. How many reviews does it have, it's quality of writing, how is it structured etc. Then ask yourself can you do better?

If your book isn't up to the same standard or beyond no matter what you do you will not sell many. Because they are setting the benchmark for your niche.

The days have gone when you can release any old crap on Amazon and it will sell, there are too many self publishers now, so your book will get lost in the maelstrom of new releases.

Your better off producing 1 high quality book that sells well than 10 low quality ones that don't. Then you can play the numbers game with something that sells and make real money, rather then putting all your efforts into something that doesn't sell well.

The trick is creating a high quality book that sells and even if you do that there will come a point where you are simply treading water to maintain your income unless you scale. The higher the quality the book the less you have to tread water. Do it right and it will start to sell off it's own own back. Then scale marketing just like you should successful books.

I am going to be starting another joint venture soon. Where if you create the book I will sort the sales for you in return for a minority %. The book can be in any niche, though I have the most success in kids books and I will only have one condition: that it is of high enough quality that I can achieve sales with it. Feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss that further.

Quoted for truth. It's really important to have high quality stuff. But why I stress it as well, is because I don't want the market to be flooded with sh*tty books, tainting the trust shoppers have for authors.

 

[seismic blast]

A question to you guys who has written books in Cooking/Baking, did you use the american cooking measurements or the measurements that every other country uses? Because I'm about to write a book and I'm not American and I'm already confused with the American measurements. I feel like if I write in the world standard measurements, it's easier for me to write aswell as all the markets gets it but not the american market, which is obviously the biggest on kindle. Would love to get answears here.

I have no idea what people are doing, but maybe the answer is to publish a "US version" and an "International Version". Write it in the way you are familiar with, and then go through and use a conversion tool (or get someone else to do it).

Alternately, double the length of your book by putting both versions of the recipe on facing pages. Just some thoughts. Use it as a selling point though, so your readers don't feel scammed. Maybe find a way to work it into the cover/title/sub-title or whatever.

 

[Angus862]

Someone here in BHW has experience in comic publishing on kindle? I would like to know if it is better to use comic creator by amazon or use a pdf file. Thanks

 

[sikandar]

Great thread with so much valuable info shared by OP and others ... subscribing. I'd be launching my first book in healthy lifestyle niche soon.

 

[GringoMonkey]

Yes I publish comics amongst other things and comic creator basically doesn't work properly.

PDF have issues too, you are best creating it as a website and uploading it in html.

That goes for all things that are heavily graphic based as well.

 

[theconscience]

How do comic sales do?

 

[GringoMonkey]

How do comic sales do?

My comic sales make me about $1500+ each comic per month.

 

[SEO365]

This is awesome Share mate ... thanks a ton....