Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

[Astro Zombie]

A novel? That's a tough one. If it was non-fiction and reference I would say you're committing suicide NOT breaking it up into volumes especially if it covers more than one "interest" field in a related topic.

BUT...what I HAVE heard people doing is putting out their 1st chapter as a "hook"...just a promo gimmick. But that first chapter needs to be solid, well written and leave the reader (obviously) with questions. A little free time, a credit card and a "What happens next?" attitude will flick a few sales your way.

If you find any trend in breaking up fiction novels then I am all ears cause I would love to check it out and see if that is right for me as well! Thanks!

 

[psychotix]

Hey guys, can you recommend a good Plagiarism checker for books?
Copyscape isnt very accurate when it comes to book plagiarisms.

I write my own content, but I also outsource. SMashwords and Kindle sometimes flag my submissions for being suspected of being spun and/or plagiarized.

 

[psychotix]

On another matter.

Nonfiction authors, did you get out of KDP or you stayed? I personally got out the day after I saw my KDP Normalized Pages earnings. They're way lower than it with the original KDP program.

Im now with Smashwords, but its so damn painful to meet their guidelines, super dumb meatgrinder program, that I just cant imagine going through that ordeal with my future books. They've earned millions in commisions, you'd think by now they'd atleast invest some back to a better formatting software!
So I may have to change the style of my future Kindle books. Currently they're only about 7k words each. Will it make much of a difference to make each book say 15k words than 3 books at 5k words each?

I also tried Draft2digital and they're just hype! Sure its simple and supposedly a lot smarter than Smashword's meatgrinder, but that comes at a price. Make too many formatting errors and the ebook retailers themselves will blacklist you! Atleast with Smashwords, its going through the eye of a needle, but instead of blacklist or bans, they just send you a ticket request for modifications.

Im currently trying publishdrive.com. It's been several days now, none of the 10 books I submitted as a test, havent been approved yet. Well see.

 

[JimBean04]

Does anyone want to post a method?

 

[digga]

My earnings have dropped about 80-90% since KPD pays per read page. I don't submit my new books to KPD anymore and will see if it still makes sense to invest more time into this. I hope many other authors will also stop submitting their books to KPD, then it will become less and less interesting for readers to pay this montly subscripton and Amazon may do something about it.

 

[NemoTheOne]

Well, Kindle def is the ticket.
I recently put out a book related to events overseas -
Sold about 8 copies in 2 months.

Something recently happened overseas, and thus, since then, I've sold almost 300 (e)copies of the book in the last few days.

Wow.

 

[xupix]

Is someone making money in non-english countries kindle store?

 

[GringoMonkey]

Is someone making money in non-english countries kindle store?

Yes I translate my books as well as selling English books.

However since July, when Amazon changed the way they pay on Kindle select, it used to be a flat circa $1.35 per download and now it is about $0.0058 per page read, it has become a license to print money if you have a bigger book.

So I have concentrated on that and my income which was already pretty good has nearly doubled.

These changes have hammered lower quality and short books.

But if you provide good quality books and are looking to expand by translating, first consider making your English books bigger and enrolling them in Kindle Select it is a lot easier.

 

[xupix]

Yes I translate my books as well as selling English books.

However since July, when Amazon changed the way they pay on Kindle select, it used to be a flat circa $1.35 per download and now it is about $0.0058 per page read, it has become a license to print money if you have a bigger book.

So I have concentrated on that and my income which was already pretty good has nearly doubled.

These changes have hammered lower quality and short books.

But if you provide good quality books and are looking to expand by translating, first consider making your English books bigger and enrolling them in Kindle Select it is a lot easier.

The point is: my english is not good enough to write a good book. And I'm not earning money enough to outsource the production. In some days I will upload my first book in non english store and hope earn some money.

 

[GringoMonkey]

The point is: my english is not good enough to write a good book. And I'm not earning money enough to outsource the production. In some days I will upload my first book in non english store and hope earn some money.

Which language are you considering writing in?

 

[xupix]

Which language are you considering writing in?

I'm writing in portuguese.

 

[GringoMonkey]

I'm writing in portuguese.

I am afraid I have not found much joy selling books digitally in Portuguese, there does not seem to be much demand.

The only way I was able to make inroads was to get a physical book deal in Brazil and so I have a publisher over there who physically prints and distributes my books.

 

[skyfallsdown]

Can anybody here help me with choosing the right niche ? I uploaded 3 ebooks so far but I think there's someting wrong I don't know , I stopped getting any sales at all .

Please pm me if you can help me , I will apreciate it .

 

[Morgadeshou]

Finding a good niche that's profitable is the hardest part in my opinion, and it takes a while. My best advice to you is to not give up and to keep publishing different things in different niches until you find one that works for you. It took me months to find a niche that actually worked for me. Gotta be tenacious in the face of failure or else this method won't work for you

Do a bunch of keyword searches, look at kindle categories, look at books and their rankings based on keywords searched, look at competition. Then, pick a niche and test run it with a book of medium quality, and if it works then start writing high quality books in that niche and try to dominate it. Rince and repeat.

I'm pretty small time on kindle, only making about 1000 a month, so other bigger players may have different advice

 

[Pinger030]

Generally there are no "right and wrong niches" because you can be successful in every niche if there is a customer demand and if you're able to provide the quality that is needed in your chosen niche. Every niche has its own quality barrier and you have to descide for yourself if you're able to provide the quality or not.

I try to keep it simple. There are two kinds of niches:
- wide niches: high demand (much money to earn) but also many competitors and a high quality standard.
- tight niches: low demand (not so much money to earn) but less competitors and a lower quality standard.

Your job is to analyse the market for tight niches. Look at the number of competitors and compare it with the demand (rankings of the competitors) in your chosen niche. Now compare this niche with a second and third niche. Is the supply-demand ratio better or not? (If you are clever enough you're able to calculate this ratio).

The supply-demand ratio is the most important fact but the niche with the best ratio is worthless if you don't compare the other facts: Can you beat the price of your competitors but also sell it high enough? Can you beat the covers? Can you beat the product descriptions, the formatting etc.? Sometimes it's better to publish in a niche with a worse ratio (but you are able to provide the best product overall) than to publish in a niche with a good ratio but on page two (for example) because you're not able to provide the standards.

That was just an simple explanation for beginners. The niche analysis is absolutely necessary for beginners and there are more than enough tutorials, blog posts, youtube videos etc. about this topic. If you've done it right and published a few books successfully you don't need such a deep niche analysis anymore. For the beginning it's important but if you have the experience you are also able to be successful in the wide niches (where the big money lies). Go into tight niches first (and make the "guaranteed" money), grow and make experiences and then go into the wide niches and make the big money.

@sky Sorry that I can't reply to your pm but I've no time for personal coaching. I hope I could help you with this post here.

 

[mcjohn]

Hi GubBluthJD, Will do thank you sooo much your post is the best! I have one quick question? In ebay I can upload any e-book for sell it?
and thank you again

 

[NemoTheOne]

Great point! I am still, I would consider a beginner, because I'm not making 10k a month. That's my goal.

But anyone that wishes to talk to me about publishing feel free to skype me at mike.i.am777

I'm not good at posting things that emit responces in this thread, but I would love to talk with people who are exploring this great avenue. And again, although I'm no beginner to I.M. (look how long I've been a member!), I am a beginner to something works, non blackhat, consistently and for a long period of time. And that is what is working at this point.

But GubBluthJD, and Pinger but def some great inspiration here. I had my first 'crazy' week selling 100+ in one day, which I quietly posted some time ago, and so that was my big inspiration to continue what I'm doing and build a catalogue of residual love.

 

[JadMac]

Since the update, this method is no longer viable unless you are going to be writing a good quality, lengthy novel. However this takes much more time and money, making the risk far greater.

 

[Alpha.]

Since the update, this method is no longer viable unless you are going to be writing a good quality, lengthy novel. However this takes much more time and money, making the risk far greater.

That spammy 10 pages crap never made enough money anyway! A HQ well written & researched ebook can still make you a ton of cash

 

[NemoTheOne]

Since the update, this method is no longer viable unless you are going to be writing a good quality, lengthy novel. However this takes much more time and money, making the risk far greater.

Actually, it's the other way around.

Writing spammy 6-10 page pamphlets is greater a risk than writing high quality material. High quality material will survive most "updates" because at the end of the day, it's something people actually will pay for