Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

[kekmaw]

I published my first book in late March. It's been selling well, it's only a 99 cent book but it has been averaging 3 sales a day and I never even used any free promo etc. But the last 5 days I have only sold 1 a day, I wonder if this is common when it's the begining of a new month that sells drop abit? I do plan do make my first free promo in a week or so however, 2-3 days.

 

[Morgadeshou]

I published my first book in late March. It's been selling well, it's only a 99 cent book but it has been averaging 3 sales a day and I never even used any free promo etc. But the last 5 days I have only sold 1 a day, I wonder if this is common when it's the beginning of a new month that sells drop abit? I do plan do make my first free promo in a week or so however, 2-3 days.

This may not be true for everyone, but when I put out books they tend to do the best in the first/second month and then drop off a little bit and stay steady. This could just be the drop off point for you, but who knows, ive seen some weird patterns with my books so I wouldn't get too freaked out or try too hard to figure it out. Just keep making new ones and eventually it should stabilize more

 

[pirx2030]

Amazon now has an option to advertise your books. Is it worth advertising 2.99 USD books? Can you make a profit while advertising, or with such a small selling price, you're hoping to spend some advertising money and earn money later on from increased sales and rankings?

 

[Nabukodonosor]

I hate when people say "I'm in the kindle business for 2 month, I have 2 books and I'm making 100$ per day". Or some lie like that. I also hate those online courses where they sell stories how they made hundred of thousands of dollars with their first book and now they want to share their experience. Like that asshole Stefan Pylarinos from Project Money Mastery. All lies. I don't know why people have to do that.

Let me tell you my story. I have over 20 books. I finished my free promo 10 days ago for a romance/erotic short novel. And I've been told by several people that it's a great read. Also, I have a professionally done cover. I also have a website for my books. In all of my books I have a "call to action" where I offer a free gift with a button which leads to my landing page. Before starting a free promo I had 18 reviews for my book, so I had a good start before my free promo. Before I started the free promo, I added my book to over 60 ebook directories. During the free promo I advertised my book on twitter and asked about 100 major book twitter handles to retweet my post. Also posting on over 50 facebook groups every day of the free promo. When my free promo started I sent out over 200 emails to top 10000 reviewers from my niche and got great response. They loved my book and they gave me some great reviews. During the free promo my book was #1 in 2 categories among the free books. So, I did my free promo good, everything by the book.

And now....after the free promo has ended, I ended up with over 90 reviews. But my book is still around #39 000 in paid books and I'm selling 1-3 copies per day.

So, can some of those guys with 1 or 2 books which make them thousands of dollars each month, without any work or free promo, tell me what I did wrong there?

Please don't believe everything you read online.

 

[Pinger030]

You say that you hate people who say that they make $100+ with a few books and you call them liars? And on the other hand you want an advice from these (successful) people?....

 

[Nabukodonosor]

That was sarcasm. If you don't know that.....Of course I don't want an advice from liars. And you know they are successful how? They have told you that? And that's it? Nice.

 

[Morgadeshou]

That was sarcasm. If you don't know that.....Of course I don't want an advice from liars. And you know they are successful how? They have told you that? And that's it? Nice.

Haha I like that you hate Stefan Pylarinos. I wonder how much money he actually makes on kindle. I mean when he started his kindle it was MUCH easier, but I just cant imagine he can make 7k a month with low quality outsourced books .

To Dennis:
As much as admire people like Stefan who know how to exploit a market and make $$, people like him are the reason why there is so much more competition. His system promotes 30 page books that are outsourced by foreign writers for 25-50$, so of course they'll never be up to quality. Sometimes I feel like I should stop selling kindle books and sell "tools for authors" since so many people are buying into the kindle craze now and people like stefan are getting rich selling advice to authors.

But yeah, I've definitely noticed a significant increase in competition and difficulty of kindle since I started last year

 

[Pinger030]

@Nabukodonoso
Yes, I know that because when you have had read the thread you would know that I'm one of these people who has big success with Kindle. I have some ebooks that bring me $1k+/m (per book) and I also make $5k+/m only with five paperbacks for example. I have no reason to lie, I don't sell any coaching programs and I know a lot of people who have much more success. Not because they told me about it but because we send us our earnings at the end of every month and I know some of them personally.

We are all on a level where money is not so much important. If someone makes 10 or $20k/m more or less - who cares? It's nothing more than a number so there is no need to lie. The scammers, lairs and hater are mostly these people who have no money.

And it's everything else than sarcasm if you call other people assholes. I started with KMM by this Canadian and it gaves me a great overview for my beginning. I didn't expect a manual about how to make money with guarantee because such a manual doesn't exist. It's all about your implementation.

Kindle is not a wheel of Fortune - it's a serious business!

You have published a short novel and you made 2-3 sales/d. Maybe you get 1 or 2 borrows/d so let's say you earn $4/d with this book = $120/m. 100 short novels = $12k/m = $120k/y. So where is your problem? You talk about fiction short stories and this result is absolutely okay. I don't know what you expect but you can't compare fiction with non fiction. Fiction is a good way to build up a nice passive income. If you are able to make $120/m with one book you can easily scale it up. On the other hand: Non Fiction is more time consuming and there is a bigger risk that you miss the market or can't provide high quality. But if you do it right you can make $1k+ with one book. KMM don't teach you how to make money with fiction and I guess no one in this thread said that he has made $1k+ with one of his first FICTION books. With non fiction it's definitely possible - but not with fiction.

I also publish 10 short novels/m additionally to my non fiction business because it works for me and I can increase my income by $1k/m without a risk (I calculated with $100/book based on my results). At the end of the year I make about 10k/m or 100k/y more. I take it because I've automated all processes but my focus is on non fiction. Now where is the problem to make 10k/m? Your results are okay and you just have to scale it up.

@Morga
Stefan Pylarinos has a YouTube channel and a blog where he breaks down his income (sources) every month. It's very inspiring. I don't know about his exactly numbers but I guess he doesn't focus so much on Kindle like one year ago because on this (income) level you make bigger investments. He focuses on physical products now.

I agree with you that it's harder to be successful than one year before but that happens with all businesses. Saturation doesn't mean that it's impossible to have success. It just means that the quality barrier is higher than before. I always measured my books with the books by the big publishing houses and that's the reason why I have no problems with saturation now. The quality of my books is very high and so a new selfpublisher can't reach my quality without very hard work and creativity - I'm protected against 90% of the competitors.

I hire good writers, photographers, experts for reputation (even if they just write the introduction), illustrators. I create nice looking layouts for my paperbacks (and not only convert my word documents to pdf) etc. I have tons of ideas for the future like cooperations with companies in my niches or maybe it's possible to buy licenses to use the name or a photo of a famous person. There are tons of possibilities that no one has done before, worldwide! Some ideas are better than others but creativity is the big difference between successful people and unsuccessful people (who just follow a tutorial and do what thousands of housewifes already do. Be a visionar!)

You don't have to focus on the money - You have to focus on the quality and create outstanding books that the readers will love. Eg. I have a new book in the pipeline and I know that I'll make $1k+ with this book but on my level 1k, 2k or $3k more or less doesn't interested me anymore. Sure, it's nice and I take it gladly but the money is not my motivation. My primary intention is to kick the big publishing houses in their asses and outrank the scammers who want to make the quick buck with shitty books. Money comes automatically if I slap them hard enough. Sounds a little bit harsh but I don't do this with blackhat methods but with quality books. That's business and I enjoy the competition more than the money.


Ps: I am not a fanboy of Stefan Pylarinos. I've never paid for his stuff and got his tutorial for free from BHW.

 

[dsavior]

I'm glad to see that the tone of this thread has changed. Quite a few pages back I left with a bad taste in my mouth as it seemed like most were saying things like "Cover/Title/Keywords" is more important than the actual quality of the book. This was very poor advice which I'm sure lead a lot of people down the right track.

I've started making enough money that I quit my already existing 6-figure day job as I make far more from my books. The books I've written myself sell like hotcakes as they are on topics that I'm an expert in.

I've also outsourced a bit. I'm still not a big fan of it as the amount of time it takes me to review the content and edit it to be up to par exceeds the amount of time for me to just write it the way I want and have a higher quality, but some of my outsourcing has done okay.

Quality content in the book is KEY. Amazon is now blocking books that they perceive as low quality or have high refund rates. So outsourcing to foreign non-native speakers who don't know squat about the topic they are writing about is not really viable for the long term, and I wouldn't dare risk my KDP publishing account by doing this.

I still write myself and have a couple of really top notch ghostwriters who supplement my writing as well. I literally invested in like 50 or so ghostwriters and blew thousands of dollars on trash to find a mere two that could come close to writing at the same level as me. I pay them top dollar for their work too...

But it's been worth it as I now have an organic mail list of thousands and I have made the KDP all-star list on one of my pen names 3 times. Nothing shady about anything I publish though... If it isn't a quality piece of work that I would want to read myself, then I don't publish it.

 

[Morgadeshou]

dsavior:

Very impressive that you were able to build such a kindle empire while you still had a job (probably working 10 hours a day since you say its 6 figs). I'm doing my kindle stuff while working and it can be tough managing it all when you're writing them on your own plus working.

Do you guys have any advice on making your book look as good as the publishing houses? I feel like no matter what I do, as long as I'm formatting on MS Word it never will look as good as those books that the publishing houses directly port to kindle. They just look so much prettier.

When I upload files from word they look decent, but then like half the fonts aren't supported, tables and charts don't come out the way you want them, and pictures sometimes are not centered and its a struggle to fix it all, plus at the end of the day when you fix everything it still looks meh.

Maybe I just suck at formatting, but if there is anything special you guys are doing, maybe importing from creatspace? or hiring professionals to do it? Let me know if there is anything special you guys are doing, or if you're just way better at MS Word than me

 

[dsavior]

I personally only use limited amount of formatting... When I first started I spent a lot of time Photoshopping images, making fancy line breaks and used different fonts, trying to make everything fancy, but that didn't really translate to sales. So I slowly cut that down and now I only spend a minimal effort on formatting the inside of my book. So long as it is a good read, I don't get any complaints.

For certain non-fiction I will spend more time formatting... For example a recipe book or a how-to book. But still I do very very little.

My opinion is to spend more time focusing on the "flow" of books. I don't solicit for reviews, pay for reviews, or do any kind of advertising that would generate reviews. They are all organic. The thing that will kill your reviews faster than anything is spelling errors or poor writing. There are some English nuances that a native English speaker will know when writing vs any other English writer. Someone from Netherlands might be able to write perfect English, but it doesn't read or "flow" well. I can't really explain it. This is why I spent such a long time finding people who actually could write at a very high level. Over the course of the last 6 months I also try to read when I have a chance to improve my own writing skills. There are writing mistakes that I made when I first started that I don't make now.

Yes, I definitely worked more than 10 hours per day while I had a full time job. I worked 8 hours at my regular job and then came home and wrote non-stop for hours on end... I had absolutely no social life for like 2 months. It was well worth it, because once I started making enough money to hand in my notice- It was refreshing. And now I have a job that I thoroughly enjoy and get satisfaction from. I am lucky however, because I am naturally a good writer. The only reason I never perused writing as a career was because I thought writers couldn't make money. I finally decided to try it out after reading this thread and getting inspired. I'm still a bit shocked at my own success to be honest.

 

[Nabukodonosor]

I don't solicit for reviews, pay for reviews, or do any kind of advertising that would generate reviews.

OK, let's say you have the best book in the world. So, to earn some good money of it, people need to download it, and then to review it, cause you need reviews to sell books. How can anyone know of it and download it if it's burried among the millions of books on amazon, and maybe on 10th or 15th page for your niche? You have no reviews, you don't advertise your book...there's no way it can be on first two pages, not even if the book is the best in the world in that niche. Those are bed time stories...

 

[Seven4]

Its really an interesting idea.

Can you share with us more details on how do you outsource, how do you choose your niche and, in general, write everything you can think of?

 

[lewiansto]

Its really an interesting idea.

Can you share with us more details on how do you outsource, how do you choose your niche and, in general, write everything you can think of?

Have you bothered to actually read the thread?

 

[dsavior]

OK, let's say you have the best book in the world. So, to earn some good money of it, people need to download it, and then to review it, cause you need reviews to sell books. How can anyone know of it and download it if it's burried among the millions of books on amazon, and maybe on 10th or 15th page for your niche? You have no reviews, you don't advertise your book...there's no way it can be on first two pages, not even if the book is the best in the world in that niche. Those are bed time stories...[/COLOR]

The first mistake you're making is that you are looking at where your book "ranks" on Amazon by page. Amazons algorithm is nothing like Google's so trying to "rank" in on a certain page for a certain keyword is meaningless. Amazon has its own algorithm for relevance and there are several places you can show up beside the search results page. You should choose the keywords that are most relevant to your book without any regards to ranking for certain term on a certain page.

When you first start out a pen name it's a bit harder as you do not have any followers, but if you've followed my advice and put together a top-shelf book then a % of readers will favorite your pen name and automatically get notices when you release something again on Amazon. If you are releasing a short outsourced scamlet, no one is going to favorite you so you hindering your potential. You can also have your own mailing list to notify them... If you are enrolled in KU, you can run a free promotion for a period of time which will help you show up in "Customer's also viewed" section of other books. KU subscribers might also borrow your book as there is no risk for them other than wasting some time.

Even without these tactics Amazon is incredibly good at putting the right books in front of the customers if you have chosen relevant keywords. I just started a new pen name and released only one book on April 20th. That one book is still ranking about 4,000 in the Amazon store 3 weeks later and generates something like 40 transactions per day. I never ran a free promo or anything on that book and there are hundreds of books out there just like it. The cover is great, the blurb is great, the keywords and categorization is accurate, and the content of the book is great. 4 and 5 star reviews started appearing on their own.

For my books on old pen names? I don't really have to do anything... I just release and they take off, because so many people have favorited my pen. If for some reason I want an extra boost, I'll send an email to my mail list. I only send mailers around once per month as I don't want to be flagged as spam or have unsubscribes. To date only two people out of thousands have unsubscribed from my mail list, and usually a blast is enough to put one of my books in the top 20 of it's category for extra exposure.

Keep in mind that there are thousands of authors who have written countless full-length novels and put them on the Amazon store. I don't know if their books are good but most of them aren't making big bucks or many sales... If you visit any writing board for authors you will find many of them struggling. I don't know why exactly... I think there are a few of us who eventually "just get it." I also struggled during the first month that I tried this out and was very close to giving up, but all of a sudden everything clicked and I could see into the Kindle Store matrix and started pumping out content that readers were thirsty for.

I can't really share how I decide what to write a book about, but I can tell you I have never touched a piece of software that tells me. I think over time you just start to slowly understand the Amazon customer base or something. When I got bad reviews I listened to the reviewers complaint and did no make the same mistake on the next book. Also, every category sells. Don't try to find a magic category... I have written all sorts of different books, both fiction and non-fiction and all categories sell!

I think there is more "Blowout" type success to be had in non-fiction and the staying power of a non-fiction book is also much higher. Fiction is easier to put together, but a fiction book that is hot today will be mostly forgotten tomorrow as newer books are released.

 

[Nabukodonosor]

Great post but you still didn't answer my question. Sorry, but I don't believe you. I know, you don't care, but this is a forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion. There is no logic in what you're saying. People wont be able to find your book, even if your book, like yours, is the best book in the world, if it doesn't have any reviews, if it's not ranking. And you're saying that you've just published a book and by itself the book got ranked 4000 in the amazon store (!?!?!) and you have 40 sales per day?! I mean come on man...People pay thousands of dollars to BookBub for the promotion and they never get results like that, but you get them with just publishing a book. )) I think even Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings had to do some promotions to generate sales. But I guess you didn't have to, somehow.

I don't know, using what magic, people find your newly published book??? Let's say your book is about cancer treatment, just as an example. And I type in the search "cancer treatment". There are hundreds of book in that niche, all with bunch of reviews, all ranking high, and somehow people skip all those books, and say "no, I don't what to buy these books with 1200 reviews, or that best seller" and go on page 11 and download your book?? And now you're saying "yes, but my book is the best, the content is great". But how can readers know that?? Your book doesn't have a single review.

 

[golaso9]

Struggling on where to start because i want to do this properly this time. I dove into kindle last year and researched for weeks about it, i was very interested. In total i made about 130$ with 4-5 books. Most were non-fiction (self help type of books) and 1 erotic fiction. I do not have much starting capital and am wondering if i should write my own fiction (even though i do not think i would be great at it) or try again with non-fiction and produce longer/more high quality books than i did a year ago.

In regards to researching for non-fiction topics, would you say something with less than 1000 results and a few books with low reviews but with under 75,000 ranking in the paid kindle store be a good start for niche selection? It is hard for me to tell what a good niche is that isn't too saturated and am wondering what kind of system you guys have for finding this out.

 

[SEO365]

Great Post mate .........

 

[Pinger030]

@Nabu
That's why the niche and keyword analysis is so much important. If "cancer treatment" has too many results you have to go deeper. Maybe "cancer treatment food" or "cancer treatment cure" are the better niches. When you analyse carefully enough you can estimate which rank you'll make/how much money you'll earn.

But not only the amount of results and their rankings are important. You have to look:
- How many reviews do they have?
- Can I provide a better cover?
- Can I beat the price?
- Can I write a better blurb?
- How many pages do they have?

And also:
- Are they really successful because of this keyword? Or is another keyword the reason for their success? Maybe they have a website or a Facebook site and that's the reason for their success. How many Facebook likes do they have.

And so on...

At the end of your analyses you have to decide if it's worth to go in or not. But if you go in you can estimate: "Okay, if I provide a book with this cover, this price etc. I'll rank between book A and book C. In this position I can expect this ranking so I can expect about $1.000/m."

If your analysis is good you could even provide an empty book and have success with it. But you want long term success and that's why you have to provide high quality to get reviews with the time. The more reviews you get the stronger is your position (and a new competitor can't outrank your book).

So reviews are not important when you publish a new book. They can be helpful but they'll come natural if your quality is good. It makes no sense to push your book with hundred reviews if you missed the market.

But there is no step by step guide about how to analyse the market right because every niche is different. It's a very creative part based on personals skills, experiences, knowlage etc. The "Kindle gurus" can just give a overview about the analysis. The rest depends on you.

Compare it to a tutorial about cover designing. The tutorial can show you how to use the different tools in photoshop etc. but that's no guarantee that you are able to create perfect cover that sells. You have to go to the market and check out your niche: - Do they prefer a special colour, a special typo or art style etc.?

You have to connect to other people and change experiences with them. You have to make own tests, read tutorials, blogs, forums etc. That's the only way to improve your skills to be successful with Kindle.

I know that this is not the answer you've expected but that's the truth (and it's guilty for every business). But if you don't believe that it's possible to be successful with Kindle and successful people are liars and assholes there is no reason for you to connect with other people, read tutorials etc. (Improve your skills) so you will be unsuccessful furthermore. Success is based on a right mindset and you've definitely the wrong mindset. You should develop your personality firstly.

 

[dsavior]

Great post but you still didn't answer my question. Sorry, but I don't believe you. I know, you don't care, but this is a forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion. There is no logic in what you're saying. People wont be able to find your book, even if your book, like yours, is the best book in the world, if it doesn't have any reviews, if it's not ranking. And you're saying that you've just published a book and by itself the book got ranked 4000 in the amazon store (!?!?!) and you have 40 sales per day?! I mean come on man...People pay thousands of dollars to BookBub for the promotion and they never get results like that, but you get them with just publishing a book. )) I think even Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings had to do some promotions to generate sales. But I guess you didn't have to, somehow.

I don't know, using what magic, people find your newly published book??? Let's say your book is about cancer treatment, just as an example. And I type in the search "cancer treatment". There are hundreds of book in that niche, all with bunch of reviews, all ranking high, and somehow people skip all those books, and say "no, I don't what to buy these books with 1200 reviews, or that best seller" and go on page 11 and download your book?? And now you're saying "yes, but my book is the best, the content is great". But how can readers know that?? Your book doesn't have a single review.

Trust me, people who do Bookbubs get way better results than that... Lol. Many Bookbubbers are getting thousands of sales per day. Getting 40 sales/borrows per day on a book is actually pretty simple once you know what you're doing. It won't just happen on any book you want it to happen on though. I failed numerous times before I figured things out, and I truly believe that most people will probably fail as well.

Let me reiterate though that you cant just publish anything and expect stellar sales. Every niche sells, but even with keyword and niche analysis you're not going to reach your potential if you're just publishing anything. I see some people who look for niches and and think "Wow, there's a lot of bestsellers about this niche" and then they try to make a similar book in a saturated market. Then there those who say "Wow there's not a lot of competition in this niche" only to find out that the reason there isn't competition is because there isn't a lot of demand.

Why not try something different? Write about something that isn't already in the Kindle store that you know people would want to read. All of my best sellers have been books that were unlike any other books in the store. They had unique titles, unique writing style, and quality content that readers could see when they opened up the "look inside." My books are usually much lengthier than spammy crap as well. And yes... When other authors saw my books rising in the chart, they started copying my books!

You're right: If there is already a book on a particular subject, and you can't make a better book than that one, why would you write another book about the same thing? I don't know if it is a total waste of time, but it certainly isn't the best strategy.

You don't have to believe me that I hit those numbers on a book under a brand new pen name. I don't really gain anything from lying about it though.