Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

[nihalsad]

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. How many books do you currently have in Kindle?

 

[dbk03]

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.

Are you guys experiencing a drop in sales during this time of year? Asking this because July and August are the worst months for me. And this is happening both for fiction and non-fiction books. Anyway, I'm expecting September to bring a huge boost, as it did during the last 3 years.

 

[Talyn]

Are you guys experiencing a drop in sales during this time of year? Asking this because July and August are the worst months for me. And this is happening both for fiction and non-fiction books. Anyway, I'm expecting September to bring a huge boost, as it did during the last 3 years.

Also for me, July and August are always the Worst for me. Especially August.
The best period is from September to May, November and December are crazy months.

This year (July and August), I focused on proofreading and extending my books already published and I will promote them during the second part of September, before it's useless.

In July, I tried to publish two "beach fiction books", but that was a fail.

Pinger > Did you tried Amazon targeted Ads for your bestsellers ? I tried it for one week with some "good results":
29,731 Impressions, 354 clicks, 180 sales.

 

[Pinger030]

@kekmaw What parts of your business is outsourced?

Publishing books on Amazon isn't my main business anymore. Since 2016 I'm focusing on other things (eg. selling digital products outside of Amazon, affiliate marketing etc.) Therefore I've resolved my "publishing structure" and just have one ghostwriter at the moment. I'm back on Amazon because my Kindle/CS income has dropped during the last time. I just want to bring it on a high level again and maybe get more reputation for my company. After that I plan to focus on my main business again. So I'm not really interested in building up a new "publishing team".


@nihalsad How many books do you currently have in Kindle?

About 150 books on Kindle and 20 paperbacks.


Update:

I told you that I'm looking for niches/type of books which are a) easy to scale b) easy to provide high quality c) in the market of my company (health care). I think I've found such a niche and will test it with some books during the next days. If everything tuns fine I would be able to publish one book every second day. Hope that works and I'll give you an update of my first numbers at the end of this month.

 

[Pinger030]

@Talyn Do you mean the advertising option in the KDP dashboard? My Kindle income is low in comparison to my CreateSpace income (30/70). That's why I've never tested it.

But I've seen a lot of "sponsored ads" of CreateSpace books in the store. Wonder how you can use those types of ads? Any idea?!?

 

[kekmaw]

@Talyn Do you mean the advertising option in the KDP dashboard? My Kindle income is low in comparison to my CreateSpace income (30/70). That's why I've never tested it.

But I've seen a lot of "sponsored ads" of CreateSpace books in the store. Wonder how you can use those types of ads? Any idea?!?

In order to just promote the CS books via sponsored ads I belive you need to do it via a FBA account. I haven't done this but my mate used to talk about it and said it was complicated but could be done.

 

[Talyn]

@Talyn Do you mean the advertising option in the KDP dashboard? My Kindle income is low in comparison to my CreateSpace income (30/70). That's why I've never tested it.

But I've seen a lot of "sponsored ads" of CreateSpace books in the store. Wonder how you can use those types of ads? Any idea?!?

I ran a few successful promotion for my book published in kindle format only, but I think that can also be duplicated for CS books.
Amazon allows you to run promotion where your ad appears as a sponsored products on book pages you specially targeted.
I took one hour to list all the books in the same niche, which are bestsellers and selected as targets for my ad, so my book appears as a sponsored product on every book pages I selected.
I reached pretty nice ranks and always had a positive ROI.

There are some other promotion that you could run, but they depends if it's fiction or non fiction books, strategies are completely different.

 

[Cognitive]

So the authors are able to select specific pages on amazon on which their ebook ads will be displayed?
Never tried Amazon Ads but they look interesting

 

[Talyn]

So the authors are able to select specific pages on amazon on which their ebook ads will be displayed?
Never tried Amazon Ads but they look interesting

Yep. It's pretty time consuming but it worth it.
Example: you have a fiction Romance/BDSM book.
Create a an ad, select books like 50 shades, all the top100 books in your genre/subgenre, then start crawling a few books in the TOP100 paid and select some similar books in the listing: "
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought"

I always add a positive ROI

 

[blackpenny]

Is this still profitable/not saturated? Thanks

 

[kekmaw]

Is this still profitable/not saturated? Thanks

It's definitely saturated. That doesn't necessarily means that it's not profitable. It's a real business and not just another method. Worker harder and smarter than the competition and there are some real money to be made.

 

[Pinger030]

Update:
I've published 9 new books during the last two weeks (with the help of one ghostwriter)

My results so far (14 days):


Rember that I've published these books day by day. So they didn't run together and they need time to rank. My prices are low for the beginning and I just make $1 per sale. Currently I make $1.16/day with one book in average. I think I can increase it to $3/day.

My plan:
I'll publish another 21 books until the end of September. Then I've 30 new books in total. I think I can achieve $3k/m with these 30 books in October. In October I'll also try to double the number of books.

 

[Cognitive]

Yep. It's pretty time consuming but it worth it.
Example: you have a fiction Romance/BDSM book.
Create a an ad, select books like 50 shades, all the top100 books in your genre/subgenre, then start crawling a few books in the TOP100 paid and select some similar books in the listing: "
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought"

I always add a positive ROI

I definitely need to try this

 

[Talyn]

Guys, did you ever try the Adult Coloring Book niche ?
It seems that it's now impossible to publish them in kindle format, they want written on the cover that's it's not an interactive book, no download link inside, no cross promotion (excerpts from other books).
Third time that I got my book blocked during the review process.

 

[Talyn]

Seems that Coloring book niche in Kindle format is dead:

"
Hello,

Thank you for your email.

Coloring books are intended to be interactive and would require additional resources aside from a Kindle device or Kindle application (phone/Mac/PC). The game, app or reading experience must work entirely inside the Kindle reader, without the use of the browser or manual work such as a copy machine or screen capture program to avoid confusing or poor costumer experience. Therefore, content such as coloring books, puzzles, or apps are not allowed.

If you have any questions regarding our quality assurance review process, please write to [email protected].

Best Regards,
Pierre M"

 

[Shipley18]

Seems that Coloring book niche in Kindle format is dead:

"
Hello,

Thank you for your email.

Coloring books are intended to be interactive and would require additional resources aside from a Kindle device or Kindle application (phone/Mac/PC). The game, app or reading experience must work entirely inside the Kindle reader, without the use of the browser or manual work such as a copy machine or screen capture program to avoid confusing or poor costumer experience. Therefore, content such as coloring books, puzzles, or apps are not allowed.

If you have any questions regarding our quality assurance review process, please write to [email protected].

Best Regards,
Pierre M"

It's odd because I still see coloring books on kindle and was thinking about tackling this niche, too

 

[Talyn]

It's odd because I still see coloring books on kindle and was thinking about tackling this niche, too

It seems that they now refuse new books, but keep those already published.

 

[Talyn]

If the guy behind the pen name Sophia Lynn is here on this forum, could you contact me?
Thanks!

 

[Pinger030]

Guys, CreateSpace is the ticket. Best month so far. Hope to reach 100k in November

 

[Ellisa Woods]

Guys, CreateSpace is the ticket. Best month so far. Hope to reach 100k in November

You have fiction or non- fiction book if I can ask?