Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Hey staycalm38,
I've started with non fiction in 2014 but then I switched to fiction for a year -just to give it a try- and published about 100 short stories (10-15k word/book; erotic love stories). I've realised that the income of my fiction books isn't stable enough for the long term success + I can't see other business opportunities for the future (eg. to sell own digital or physical products on a wibesite, to make money with affiliate products, advertising etc.) That's just my opinion and I don't want to say that you can't have success with fiction. But it's definitely not my passion so I switched back to non fiction and founded my own publishing company to compete with the big publishing companies + make money outside of Amazon by the traffic of my books. That's just possible with really high quality but I'm optimistic because I already had two #100 books in the past (overall ranking/paperbacks).

Now back to your question:
> If you're not financial free you should focus on quantity. With this strategy you'll split the risk, collect experience and improve your skills. On the other hand you have to be clear that this is only for the short and middle term success. You should improve the quality from book to book.
> If you're financial free you should focus on quality instead of quantity for the long term success. Don't care anymore about the quick bucks (even it's working for you) because there's much more to earn in the long run.

A series is a good way to combine both strategies. On the one hand you can publish smaller books and actively make money (for the short term sucess) and at the end you can bundle the whole series + maybe improve the layout, add photos, give bonus content etc. to create a high quality book (for the long term success). Create a good concept for your series that makes sense (random book bundles doesn't work for me).

At least:
- It's clear that a small number of pages doesn't mean low quality. But the customers can't see the value of a book. They just see the page count. I think a book with 6k pages is way too small even if you just focusing on the short term sucess. The sales will dry too fast so you will tread on a spot someday. Additionally you'll not be able to create paperbacks with less than 10k words because a papberback with less than 80 pages doesn't feel like a book (it feels more like a thin booklet). You'll definitely disappoint your customers = bad reviews.
- You should focus on a few pen names (maybe one per niche for the beginning) and branding these (eg. with strong biographies, social media, book trailers on your author page, logos etc.)
- Stay in one market and publish in different niches. Let's say your market is "relationships": You can create a pen name who's writing about friendships. A second pen name is writing about what womens really want. A third pen name is writing about family living. At the end you just need one email list, one facebook page, one twitter account, one website etc. to promote all your pen names/books. This makes more sense than to switch between the markets. So don't run the money afterwards and choose the market that you really like. Every maket has good niches and there's more than enough to earn.
 
Last edited:
Hey Pinger and everyone else in Kindle,
Do you do anything special to get more sales on your paperbacks/acx books?
Currently all I do is set and forget on those platforms, get two more categories added on Amazon on the paperback but that's it. I'm selling a couple of hundred paperbacks every month but I would really want to increase it since that's with about 20 books now.
 
Hi Pinger, brilliant post. I think I resonate with the quantity approach, whilst still trying to maintain quality.

Also, one thing that stood out is you said have 6K pages - 6,000 pages at 50-100 words per page is
300,000 to 600,000 words.
If you pay $1 per 100 words,
does that mean you're paying $600 to $1,200 per book.


Also, if you're producing low word-count books e.g (4,000 - 10,000 words) do you still think ACX is worth pursuing,
and without getting too personal could you share how effective ACX was for your business,

I know there's a lot of questions, but this will help me and everyone else reading this.
Just trying to learn from the veterans. :D



P.S

You can monetize fiction through creating a monthly recurring subscription where your customers will have to pay
for some premium content from you.
If you have a high ranking book, and people are receptive to your books this may be something worth pursuing.

Also, sent you a PM,

Thanks


-StayCalm38
 
Hi StayCalm, thanks for your PM but as I said in my last post: I'm definitely done with fiction.

I've also made a mistake in my last post: I don't mean 6k pages but 6k words. I've usually published short stories with 10-15k words and paid 100-150$ per book (+50$ proofread).

I don't think that ACX makes sense with low word-count books but you can create series. Another idea is a collection of different short stories.

@ kekmaw Hm, I'm doing nothing special to sell my books. Only the usual things like keyword optimization from time to time, strong author profiles, adverts in the back of my books, email lists and so on. The only thing I do differently: I use my own ISBNs for my books but I think that's just possible for publishing companies and I don't know if this point has an impact to the sales (just used own ISBNs for two books so far). But a couple of hundred paperbacks per month sounds great!
 
Last edited:
Whoof! Read the whole thread. Took me 3 days nice! I already have half ebook written, i will write some more and completel it or perhaps outsource it some other guy. Thanks for sharing your knowledge buddy! :)
 
For some, Kindle might be the ticket. But for most it isn't. The Op hasn't been around since 2014. Maybe he made it big with this?
 
For whatever it's worth my old roommate became obsessed with Amazon publishing about 3 years ago.. I guess at around the time of OP's post. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed and did terrible at first.

After about 12-18 months he finally had a good enough understanding of what he was doing that his books started making some money. At this point in time he has 6 or 7 books published that are bringing him about $5k a month of fully automated income.

I'm at a point where I am deciding what my next projects will be for the next year, and I am leaning towards Kindle being one of them. I know my old roommate is still doing well, but I feel like that might be because he struck while the iron was hot. Does anyone know if it's still worth it to get started in 2016? Is the market too saturated?
 
Its never too saturated man, just write a better quality book then what's selling....I hate to write so I outsource everything.
 
Hi StayCalm, thanks for your PM but as I said in my last post: I'm definitely done with fiction.

I've also made a mistake in my last post: I don't mean 6k pages but 6k words. I've usually published short stories with 10-15k words and paid 100-150$ per book (+50$ proofread).

I don't think that ACX makes sense with low word-count books but you can create series. Another idea is a collection of different short stories.

@ kekmaw Hm, I'm doing nothing special to sell my books. Only the usual things like keyword optimization from time to time, strong author profiles, adverts in the back of my books, email lists and so on. The only thing I do differently: I use my own ISBNs for my books but I think that's just possible for publishing companies and I don't know if this point has an impact to the sales (just used own ISBNs for two books so far). But a couple of hundred paperbacks per month sounds great!

How much are you making now Pinger?
 
For whatever it's worth my old roommate became obsessed with Amazon publishing about 3 years ago.. I guess at around the time of OP's post. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed and did terrible at first.

After about 12-18 months he finally had a good enough understanding of what he was doing that his books started making some money. At this point in time he has 6 or 7 books published that are bringing him about $5k a month of fully automated income.

I'm at a point where I am deciding what my next projects will be for the next year, and I am leaning towards Kindle being one of them. I know my old roommate is still doing well, but I feel like that might be because he struck while the iron was hot. Does anyone know if it's still worth it to get started in 2016? Is the market too saturated?

Definitely not too late. It's definitely much much harder than the original op made it sound. The days of shitting out garbage 30 page pamphlets and marketing them for lots of money is over. You gotta invest more time and money in your products and work harder to beat your competition since there are more people all doing the same exact thing. So either find a niche that you can exploit or write better quality stuff than your competitors and market just as well. It's not easy but definitely still do able if you know what you're doing

Even when kindle was easy it took me about a year to make decent money, so be patient! Or just work harder than I did. It was more of a side job for me
 
@ punk cash

The income of my fiction books has dropped down by 30-50% since KU 2.0. But that's okay because I've published lots of high quality non fiction books in the past. My current income is 8-10k/m (Kindle and CreateSpace).
 
@ punk cash

The income of my fiction books has dropped down by 30-50% since KU 2.0. But that's okay because I've published lots of high quality non fiction books in the past. My current income is 8-10k/m (Kindle and CreateSpace).

Nice work!
 
Hello All !
Do you know where can I find a good template for a ghost writing agreement ? I was using one but not so good, I had a case where the freelancer delivered sh****y work for the 1st milestone (of 5) and was blocked with him due to my sh***y agreement.
Thanks !
 
Has anyone of you guys tried to include Audible Naration in your ebooks? Never payed too much attention to this feature and I'm wondering if it really matters in terms of sales....
 
Hey guys,

here is another update of my journey:
My CS/Kindle income has dropped to <10k/month. The reason is that I had 1 best seller with which I made up to 6k/month (right now just about 600/month). My first 4 part series (published 2 years ago when I've started with publishing books) has also dropped from 2-3k/month to 400/month. But that's okay because I've made my 100k with those 5 books over the time.

I still have several other income streams (clickbank, adsense, amazon partnernet etc.) but I would like to make 10k+/m again with CS and Kindle. My problem is that I'm not able to publish tons of non fiction books. Even if I have some ghostwriters I'm not able to publish more than 1 HQ book/month. But 1 HQ book/month or 12 HQ books/year is too risky for me. I can make 1k+ with one book or just 100/month - too risky right now.

My plan for the next time:
I try to find types of books or niches where I can a) provide very high quality but also b) scale it easily to publish 10 or maybe 20 books/month. I glance in the direction of calendars, journals and stuff like that (just examples; don't analysed the market yet). My concrete plan is to increase my CS/Kindle income by 5k/month until the end of the year. Except of 2 weeks holiday in September and another 2 weeks in December, I've about 3 1/2 months to reach my goal. I'll work 10-16 hours/day, no weekends, no party's, no excuses. I'll give you the next update in September.
 
Thanks for the update Pinger.

I'm curious to see your process from idea to published book?

I've been at this for over a year, only releasing HQ books and I'm doing very well with that. However, like you, I only release 1-2 books a month.

Maybe I'm just lazy, I definitely don't spend as much time on this business as you. What parts of your business is outsourced?
 
Back
Top