Amazon KDP Journey

Hi,

I want to start my own journey today.

First to keep track of my actions and to keep myself motivated (my biggest problem) and second (maybe) to inspire other people to come out of their comfort zone.

As German is my first language I need to excuse for my bad English - I hope everybody will understand what I'm saying...

I used KDP for German ebooks before and earned a nice amount of money and still doing it but my system is wrong. I bought the content I published for around 20,- EUR per ebook and sold them for like 2,99 EUR. In general it worked out and profit came in, but it is a lot of work and you have to do so much manually (paying the authors, checking if authors are still profitable, etc.). All this was more like a business. Made money, some month also heaps of EUR, but four to six hours daily work (even on weekends). So I stopped buying stuff, hired a girl for uploading the books (5,- EUR per upload) and clear my "stock of stories".

It took my around a year to rethink my system and now I'm here with a KDP system "black hat style". I'm sorry, I won't share my system completely. But if you think it through, it is not to heavy to figure out, what I am doing and copy it for yourself. But if you have questions please ask - I will answer as long as I don't have to openly show my system.

Actually I use porn ebooks with short stories (round about 2,500 words) but now I also have "big books" in stock (like 100,000 words), because I started to use createspace also.

My monthly costs at the moment are:
[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Nepali staff for five days a six hours (Mo - Fr)[/TD]
[TD]120,- USD + 10% of the profit[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Software[/TD]
[TD]100,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

So total costs per month are: 220,- USD
Also I have to pay 30% taxes for the US sales - but it is better for my to take the US tax then the German one (42%), because I already have a main job which is taxed in Germany.

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]KDP Accounts:[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Available eBooks:[/TD]
[TD]21[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks in review:[/TD]
[TD]20[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks ready to upload:[/TD]
[TD]550[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Status for April:


Profit so far: ~ 30,- USD

I started in the beginning of April with some test books and since last Friday I started with the process. Now I try to speed up everything and explained the job to my staff. He will now "produce" new stories and upload them in sets of 30 to 50 each day. As I said it is "black hat style" I will create new accounts every 500 books - my experience with KDP is, that they are only looking for the IP, but not for the payout account or check address. For my German ebooks I use two accounts with the same check address and no problem. But I lost two accounts because of the same IP.

We will see how it will go

Bye
Fruchtwein

Hi.
Thanx for your journey thread. I never tried kindle publishing and know absolutely nothing about it, but 500 books sounds massive. So, excuse my ignorance, I presume you don't write all those books by yourself, so where do you get the books from?
Thanx

Hi,

I find KDP is a good thing and also easy to learn.
In the beginning I wrote my own books, than bought them from students or writer but now I am "creating" them. There are millions of stories in the internet for free - sure you can't copy them to, because Amazon is doing a copyscan check (I thin they use own software for that) but with some twists it is possible to use all these stories for yourself. I took the erotic category on purpose. Not because I like to read porn, but the books are never listed. That means, even if they go viral and you sell with one book a couple of hundred copies per day it will never go to the top 100 list of Amazon Kindle. Stay under the radar.

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Available eBooks:[/TD]
[TD]58[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks in review:[/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sales per day:
[/TD]
[TD]3
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Royality per sale:
[/TD]
[TD]~ 2,- USD
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The sales per day are to less.

I have no real clue why - when I compare them to my German KDP sales.
Normally I could say every eBook I have online sales 0,6 times a day. Example: With 1.000 eBooks you would have 600 sales a day.

Maybe it is because German erotic category holds 12.000 books and the US one have more than 122.000 pieces. So it takes longer to get in the market. Flooding is still the plan, I want to have around 5 % market share this year. When people are going to have a look there, they should see on each page at least one of my books.

Also keywords are important here. People are looking for specific stuff like BDSM, Anal, Whatever.
Is there any tool to check adult keywords on Amazon? I can do a manually research with the Amazon search, but I don't want to have long tail ones.

A funny thing is, most of my sales are going to Germany.

Thank good, tomorrow is public holiday means I have a day off and people have time to read porn...
byebye
Fruchtwein

500 ebooks thats a massive amount of stories. Releasing them every day like in masses should boost sales like none other. I'm surprised you aren't seeing more sales. I have 14 books up and since I put up my first group I haven't been below 3 sales a day.

Charn said:

500 ebooks thats a massive amount of stories. Releasing them every day like in masses should boost sales like none other. I'm surprised you aren't seeing more sales. I have 14 books up and since I put up my first group I haven't been below 3 sales a day.

Click to expand...

Ja, with my German ebooks I have good amount of sales - around 0,6 sales per book per day.
Maybe it is like that, because it takes 24 to 48 hours for the books to appear in the Amazon store. So it would took a around two days to appear in the daily statistics.

Charn said:

500 ebooks thats a massive amount of stories. Releasing them every day like in masses should boost sales like none other. I'm surprised you aren't seeing more sales. I have 14 books up and since I put up my first group I haven't been below 3 sales a day.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a nice startup. Are you also publishing adult books?

Great journey, hope you can double and triple your profits good luck!

Yeah I am. Some written myself and some written by an oDesk freelancer.

sashablack said:

Great journey, hope you can double and triple your profits good luck!

Click to expand...

Thank you, honestly I hope to add two or three zeros

April is over - numbers are getting better.

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]KDP Accounts:[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks available:[/TD]
[TD]84[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks in review:[/TD]
[TD]9[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]April sales:[/TD]
[TD]29[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]April profit:[/TD]
[TD]~ 60,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

My expenses for April were 226,- USD.

In April 2014 I made a loss of 166,- USD.



As my numbers are growing I am confident, that I will get the money back soon. If the daily numbers only staying (14 sales a day) it will be around 850,- USD. No changes in the plan, mass uploads are still the way.

Amazon blocked one book. I think it was because of the title. To specific maybe? I uploaded the same with another title and it got through there review phase. I don't know.

[Edit] AH, and I saw my staff did something stupid. He uploaded books under the pseudonym "Emma Watson" - not good. So I have to change manually 10 books and discuss that later. He will start in one or two hours today [/Edit]

Interesting read.

So you do a mix of German and English books?
What task do you use your Nepali worker for?
How many hours weekly do you spend on this?

Vielen dank.

ThreadKiller said:

Interesting read.

So you do a mix of German and English books?
What task do you use your Nepali worker for?
How many hours weekly do you spend on this?

Vielen dank.

Click to expand...

I used German books before.
But these were bought from writers - it was a complicated process in the end. You have to check every story for quality and maybe for to hard content. Amazon KDP can be complicated with some words (school in connection with porn is nowadays a no go) or cover pictures (naked boobs for example). Also I don't want to publish forbidden stuff, like abuse of children, animal or rape stuff. With my understanding it is also forbidden by law in Germany. I still have a stock of German stories and two nice ladies are uploading them for me.

But I stopped using German books, because the language is to complicated for most spinning software and also the group of buyers is small in the end - compared to English.

For this journey I only use English books.

Kshitiz, my Nepali worker, is basically doing everything. A few parts I hide from him, because I am a bit afraid that he will leave me and take the system.
He is creating new stories (maybe around two hundred a week) and is uploading them to KDP (atm 30 a day).
He is working five days a week for five hours a day.

I also work for new stories and uploading. Maybe two hours a day. Later I will stop with my own work or only do minimal tasks (like controlling, spending the money , etc.).
I don't know yet what later means - maybe after 500 or 1.000 stories, but he is new to this kind of business, so I have to explain a lot and do post-processing. I am sure he can do it later totally alone, but now he needs some hints and help.

People really buy 2500 words "book" for 2.99€?
Could be so easy to create.

Valkurm said:

People really buy 2500 words "book" for 2.99€?
Could be so easy to create.

Click to expand...

Yes, they do.
I don't know how it is in other genres, but with porn people are buying it in big numbers. Have a look at the Amazon Kindle erotic category and you will find a lot short stories.
But also to say, that you will have a refund rate around 8%. Short story means, going to a private room, read the story, jerk off and claim a refund.

I have a man in Sri Lanka that writes a majority of my books. I have to manually go in and fix grammatical errors and for some reason he confuses parts of the female anatomy, but for $4 a story at 3k words, I'll do the 1 hour of work. All I need to do is sell two copies of each to turn a profit.

Thank you Kumar lol

This sounds fascinating
Do you write or planning to write any genres other than erotica? If I ever decide to try KDP, I was thinking of trying some non fiction, popular science or something like that. Is this genre worth giving a shot in your opinion?
Also, where did you find the guys (Nepali and Sri Lanka guys) that are working for you?
Thanx

I found mine on oDesk. I have a few in another genre, and something like science should sell if it's relevant. I wouldn't expect $100s a month on one science book though, you'll probably need a bunch of different books in the same or a different niche.

Charn said:

I have a man in Sri Lanka that writes a majority of my books. I have to manually go in and fix grammatical errors and for some reason he confuses parts of the female anatomy, but for $4 a story at 3k words, I'll do the 1 hour of work. All I need to do is sell two copies of each to turn a profit.
Thank you Kumar lol

Click to expand...

Wow, four Bucks is a great price! I paid between 6,- and 45,- EUR for my German ones.
Also this one made my day: "for some reason he confuses parts of the female anatomy"

nix.feliks said:

This sounds fascinating
Do you write or planning to write any genres other than erotica? If I ever decide to try KDP, I was thinking of trying some non fiction, popular science or something like that. Is this genre worth giving a shot in your opinion?
Also, where did you find the guys (Nepali and Sri Lanka guys) that are working for you?
Thanx

Click to expand...

I am only using erotic category until now. But I have a friend who is uploading children books. Also nice short stories, maybe get some pictures.
As I'm living in Nepal, it was easy to find a Nepali.

I also thought about books like "How to quit smoking", etc. - you can find a lot of free information on the internet. But never change a winning system. I started with porn, it worked out, now I will stick to it. Only change is the language and more potential customers.

Charn said:

I found mine on oDesk. I have a few in another genre, and something like science should sell if it's relevant. I wouldn't expect $100s a month on one science book though, you'll probably need a bunch of different books in the same or a different niche.

Click to expand...

My best German book sold like 200 times a month. ~97% are selling less then 50 times a month.
It is all about numbers. The more, the merrier.

My numbers are growing every day. Don't get lazy...
[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Accounts:[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Books available:[/TD]
[TD]154[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sales (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]27[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Profit (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]~55,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Hm, numbers are still not growing as fast as I expected.

I will stop uploading for today and think about it. Maybe it is the quality of the stories or maybe of the description. Pictures are fine (I use bigstockphoto as source).

Here are my numbers:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]
[TR]
[TD]Ebooks available:[/TD]
[TD]190[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Sales (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]52[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Profit (Month-to-Date):[/TD]
[TD]~104,- USD[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Minimum sales per day at this level should be around 50. But it is less then 20 per day. Yesterday actually only 10 sales, today (so far) 2.



I think I will reorganize the description and let it sounds more legit.

great journey and quite inspiring
i have no knowledge about websites or even blogs
after reading bhw posts, i think kindle may be the one i am looking for
however, english is not my mother language either, and i dont have so much budget for hiring a writer

anyway will keep following your post op

I'm surprised, usually my sales double on Saturdays. Have you checked to see if your books are adult filtered?