Creating Low-Cost eBooks for Amazon etc?

Hello: I've worked on producing "regular" books (which literally required hundreds of hours of writing/editing), but now I'm interested in some quick-turnaround publications, offered for under $5 on Amazon. I'm not sure what they're called - picture books? Flip books?

Or maybe just some quickie cooking publications with recipes and some photos? It's a dirty little secret in my world: Lots of cookbook "authors" simply hire out ghost writers to do recipes, compile and sell them

Has anyone had any experience/success with this approach?

thanks

chef

I wrote some quick children's books for Amazon and I did OK for the time and effort involved. Does Amazon still pay for books you give free access to on Kindle? That's where I had my success mostly. Did sell a few for $0.99 and $1.99, but mostly free reads. Can pump them out in 1-2 hours with a couple of stock photos of Animals included. You can just take any short story you find online and change the dog to a cat, change the names around, change the gender etc. Add in a unique feature like a disability or aliens or same-sex parents.

SocialManager said:

I wrote some quick children's books for Amazon and I did OK for the time and effort involved. Does Amazon still pay for books you give free access to on Kindle? That's where I had my success mostly. Did sell a few for $0.99 and $1.99, but mostly free reads. Can pump them out in 1-2 hours with a couple of stock photos of Animals included. You can just take any short story you find online and change the dog to a cat, change the names around, change the gender etc. Add in a unique feature like a disability or aliens or same-sex parents.

Click to expand...

I'm both impressed and appalled (hah). Throw in a "unique feature like a disability or aliens..." But when you consider how much there is on TV that is just the same formula with a new coat of paint eg copycat stuff...

rocknrollchef said:

I'm both impressed and appalled (hah). Throw in a "unique feature like a disability or aliens..." But when you consider how much there is on TV that is just the same formula with a new coat of paint eg copycat stuff...

Click to expand...

I was watching a cheap Steven Seagal film last night. Just the same standard crap he has put out for the last 20+ years in Europe. These are bad films, but I really enjoy them when I am bored. As soon as I saw the blonde woman in her early 20s, I knew Steven Seagal was going to have a sex scene with her where she is fully nude. Her role has no purpose in the film. She is maybe in it for 4 minutes. But yep, halfway through, Seagal had her completely naked for a sex scene. It's become very standard for him, and I am guessing he negotiates this himself. It's really uncomfortable thinking about it.

So yeah, no need to reinvent the wheel. There is enough of a market out there that will watch (or read) anything once. Keep it simple.

You got tha right hah. FYI do you also know the ins/outs of distributing books on Amazon? One of my clients has an ebook with a little video/audio in it, which apparently makes things a little trickier to upload (I'm clueless about this stuff). Thoughts?