Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

[Nattsurfaren]

Is there any rules or logic that one might have in mind before creating a kindle e-book?
What I mean is when I check for example the marketing niche it is not written like easy articles but more like hardcore packed information that takes the reader from the very start of things.
What I mean is a book of network marketing have information of what an 'url' is and I believe it is to fill up the e-book and catch very fresh newbs. I wouldn't be surprised if some people starts to explain how a computer works before getting in to social media marketing.

I was thinking of trying out kindle marketing and I have a little experience with writing articles and longer experience with video tutorials. I'm thinking of instead of packing the e-books full of text I would rather try to concentrate more on images with less text. But I have no clue if those e-books would get accepted and what kind of experience it would give the viewer.
What do you think? Have you been there in your thoughts?

 

[Oscarthedog]

Well, through trial and error, I've found a system that works for me. If you enroll in KDP Select, you can list your book for free for up to 5 days in every 90 day cycle (I believe). So what I do, is when the book is first launched, I make it free for 5 days in a row, right away. Then, there are a number of websites that will post Free Kindle books, so I submit my free book to those sites, for some extra juice.


Usually this results in a lot of free downloads. These, in turn, make your book jump to the top of the chart for its genre. You'll also get a couple of reviews, if the book merits it. Then, after the 5 days of free, you have a book sitting at the top of the charts, with a couple good reviews, and people are MUCH more inclined to buy a book at the top of the charts with good reviews!

But, isn't getting into Kindle Select the hard part? I thought they were VERY selective, like only Stephen King's and James Patterson's. (?) Did you get in on your first try? Did you submit a finished work (cover and all) or just a manuscript? Was it already formatted to Kindle? Thanks

 

[GringoMonkey]

But, isn't getting into Kindle Select the hard part? I thought they were VERY selective, like only Stephen King's and James Patterson's. (?) Did you get in on your first try? Did you submit a finished work (cover and all) or just a manuscript? Was it already formatted to Kindle? Thanks

No it is not difficult. If they accept your book, you can enrol it in Kindle Select. You need to read BHW threads on Kindle and Amazon's own guidelines to answer your questions in detail though.

 

[looie89]

Th experienced guys in the thread, what is the optimal way to release a new ebook nowadays?

I'm expecting to finish my book today or tomorrow and starting to think about how to market it.

 

[GringoMonkey]

Th experienced guys in the thread, what is the optimal way to release a new ebook nowadays?

I'm expecting to finish my book today or tomorrow and starting to think about how to market it.

Your best working out all your marketing keywords etc BEFORE you write it, that way you can write what people want to buy!

If you write the book and then look to work out the marketing, unless you fluke it, chances are you will not make many sales as your book was not written with sales in mind.

 

[looie89]

Your best working out all your marketing keywords etc BEFORE you write it, that way you can write what people want to buy!

If you write the book and then look to work out the marketing, unless you fluke it, chances are you will not make many sales as your book was not written with sales in mind.

I'm writing it with a clear market in mind and did keyword research. I'm referring more to initial pricing. Earlier on in the thread the advice was to release it for free for the first week to get reviews.. etc. are we better off releasing it at 2.99 from the get go now?

 

[SombodyLoLz]

Holy damn, this thread is still alive!

Does the method still works? o.o

I remember I almost tried it when it first came out in 2013-ish

 

[kekmaw]

Holy damn, this thread is still alive!

Does the method still works? o.o

I remember I almost tried it when it first came out in 2013-ish

It's more of a business then a method tbh, but yes it works probably better then most stuff you will find here on the forum.

 

[wasabishot23]

awesome.... thank you for the post

 

[knattt]

Hey guys! I thought about a following method: you generate a number of book ideas, and you want to choose the best two or three of them. In order to do that you run 5 days of Adwords campaigns for every book idea. The adwords ads for each book lead to a respective sales page with an opt-in list, saying something like "this awesome book is almost finished, sign up now to get it free/discount". After 5 days you pick the ideas with the longest list of signups and start writing.

Pros:
This gives you some confidence that the niche is something people are actually interested in.
You get a list of potential buyers to whom you can immediately sell when the book is ready (giving you the critical early downloads and reviews).

Cons:
The adwords campaign will cost minimum of a couple of hundred $ per book idea.

What do you think? I've just had this idea, I never tried it, but does anybody actually do this?

 

[Vendor155]

I always knew the book selling is a good way to make a buck, but you guys are a bit on the wrong track, yes amazon has a big audience but it's much easier to make money. I am writing 2-3 pages [i wont tell what] and having a 4000-5000 person audience, I usually put the book full of ads and links and then make money from ad revenue. I won't specify the details here but it makes me 100-200$/day and I only started it a few months ago.

If you said you can write 200 page books in 1 day, then you can write 10x of what i`m doing, so you should make 2000$/day easily.

 

[GringoMonkey]

Hey guys! I thought about a following method: you generate a number of book ideas, and you want to choose the best two or three of them. In order to do that you run 5 days of Adwords campaigns for every book idea. The adwords ads for each book lead to a respective sales page with an opt-in list, saying something like "this awesome book is almost finished, sign up now to get it free/discount". After 5 days you pick the ideas with the longest list of signups and start writing.

Pros:
This gives you some confidence that the niche is something people are actually interested in.
You get a list of potential buyers to whom you can immediately sell when the book is ready (giving you the critical early downloads and reviews).

Cons:
The adwords campaign will cost minimum of a couple of hundred $ per book idea.

What do you think? I've just had this idea, I never tried it, but does anybody actually do this?

Ultimately you are trying to short cut writing the book, bang out a few sales pages, see what people want and then go and write that book.

Unless your already famous in your niche it is very difficult to get pre-orders for your book on Amazon BEFORE it is written.

This is a kindle thread, so that idea won't really work as the majority of people you would be targeting on KDP are not looking on Google for an opt in list! They would head straight to Amazon and search for a book.

If you analyse the Kindle market place properly you can see what people are looking for in your niche. It is not difficult, there are plenty of threads on here that explain how. That's what I do, then give the reader what they want and save your Adwords money to improve the quality of your book.

 

[kekmaw]

Where can I see what the value was on the KU downloads for April?

 

[GringoMonkey]

Where can I see what the value was on the KU downloads for April?

You will get a statement on 15th of each month, so on May 15 you will get one for April in excel/equivalent format and you can see the KOLL downloads you had there for each book. Then just divide by the number of books downloaded. So if it says you had 2 KOLL downloads, divide by 2. It usually works out at about $1.40 per download.

 

[NemoTheOne]

I always knew the book selling is a good way to make a buck, but you guys are a bit on the wrong track, yes amazon has a big audience but it's much easier to make money. I am writing 2-3 pages [i wont tell what] and having a 4000-5000 person audience, I usually put the book full of ads and links and then make money from ad revenue. I won't specify the details here but it makes me 100-200$/day and I only started it a few months ago.

If you said you can write 200 page books in 1 day, then you can write 10x of what i`m doing, so you should make 2000$/day easily.

Informative post. Thanks. If someone told me I could make money out of publishing horse manure, i'd move to a barn made of books.

 

[Nabukodonosor]

Yeah right. Amazon does not allow ads in their books. Not even affiliates without their knowledge. And this guy makes 200$ per day after 3-4 months. As I said, yeah right. A lot of liars here.

 

[herzit]

Like the others said before, that's definitely NOT the way you should make a kindle book.

Not only that ads are'nt allowed, you're also losing the trust of the customer and you get negative reviews.

Do you think after 10 people buy your eBook (5 out of them write a negative review), you will get one more sale? I don't think so.

Quality and Overdelivering is the "magic secret" in kindle books (in the information/solving problems niche).

If you believe in the kind of kindle you're writing and you're self confident => "SKY's THE LIMIT" guys...

Im publishing my 3rd book now in the area of information product in different niches, where I have experience in. I like to write those books and people know that Im good at it, because they can feel it. You should never sell a customer in your kindle. The only profit you're making is A.) someone borrows it from "kindle unlimited" or B.) some buys actually the book. THAT's it.

You may can catch the reader into your eMail list for backend sales if you link to your homepage at the end of the book. (What I can recommend you all - Because of the magic word "TRUST") With the homepage you're proofing that you're an expert in the topic you're writing. Sure, it's hard work, but it's worth. Especially in kindle where the word "passive" comes live!

Hope you all guys could pick up a little bit from my post.

Wish you a great and productive day.

Best regards!

 

[GringoMonkey]

Yeah right. Amazon does not allow ads in their books. Not even affiliates without their knowledge. And this guy makes 200$ per day after 3-4 months. As I said, yeah right. A lot of liars here.

While I cannot comment on the amount made. I do have ads in some of my books. It depends on how you place them and what they are for as to whether they pass Amazon's quality test.

But I agree 100% Quality and Overdelivering is the "magic secret" in ALL kindle books. That is where the real money lies as it is highly unlikely readers would purchase from your referrals or sign up to your email list if they thought the book was rubbish.

 

[mthomas1]

So Vendor155, if it can't be saturated why don't you spill the beans and tell us what you're doing?

 

[dennis_797]

I've been dipping in and out of this thread every month. I have a main niche which I work hard on and I'm investing heavily to publish more and better books. Currently my four books in the niche make around $1000 which isn't too bad.

My problem at the moment, which many others here might be experiencing, is that the niches do become saturated. Like really, stupidly saturated.

I work in a relatively obscure niche. When I published my first book around 9 months ago, competition was scarce -- it's why I picked the niche. I'd estimate that a book in the niche was being published about every week. Now, there are 1-2 every single day. It's getting crazy. Lots of the books come and go, but there's just so many these days that I am seeing these books taking my sales. So while this method does work, it's getting more difficult.

You really need to consider how you are going to stand out from the crowd. There are so many duplicate books -- all 30 or so pages long and paying for fake reviews -- and I can't believe these authors aren't asking themselves how they are planning to differentiate. Most people are just mindlessly putting out the same stuff and expecting better results. It doesn't happen. If you rip off a book making 10 sales a day, you won't make 10 sales yourself. You'll just start eating into that other author's sales and make 5 sales each. Then more and more books will come along and all of a sudden everyone is making less than 1 sale per day. The market is flooded and it's ruined for everyone.

I worked hard to make sure my book was the best in the niche when it launched. Although my sales are dwindling a bit at the moment, it's still top of the niche. I can honestly say, nobody has even tried to create something to rival my books' quality. I honestly can't understand why. If you're reading this and want to make money with this method, you really have to work a little bit harder and create something of QUALITY.

If there are 100 average quality, 40-page books in your niche, why do you think your average quality 40-page book will beat the rest? It won't, you have to try harder!

Even though my success isn't particularly large, I'm trying to figure out how to leverage the name I've made for myself in my niche into something that succeeds outside of Amazon. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of the successful publishers on here on this topic! Have any of your attempted to get traditional book deals for your best books?