Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

For me, it can be pure gold. I have some cookbooks without any sales...
I thought that because 30 recipes was not enough, but I did no sales with a 90+ recipes cookbook... So perhaps the cover is my problem ?

dsavior said:

Anyone care to share the cover or info on one of their failing books? My first book seems to be doing decent sales-wise, and I did not run a free promo when I put it out. I'm curious why some are getting 0 sales.

Perhaps some advice can be given if we can see figure out what you're doing wrong?

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Maybe the cover is too bad, maybe the niche and keywords are not good enough, maybe the price is too high, maybe the product description is not catching the readers attention etc. - nobody knows.

Start from the scratch and try to do every step as much perfect as you can (and if you are not sure about one step you have to read about it and learn how to do it perfectly - you'll find every information for free in the internet but there are also tons of soild buyable A-Z guides for low prices and for every topic.

So if you think your cover is the problem for your less sales: Sit back, try to feel like a reader and browse through your niche while you are looking at the covers of your competitors. Which cover catches your eyes? Which titles sounds interesting? These are the two most impotant things where the reader decides to take a closer look (and then read the product description and hopefully decides to buy it) or not. So if you see a nice cover... open your own cover, place it next to it and compare both. You can also get ispirations if you look at the covers of other niches. Do they have a special layout that catches your eyes? Do they have a special looking color combination or particularly large letters which catches your eyes.

So again: Every step has to be done as perfect as you can. And if you click on the publish button there should be no more questions like "Is my cover really good enough? Is my content good enough? Is my product description catchy enough?" etc. If you publish your book you have to be sure that everything is good enough or even better than you competitors.

There is no magic reason why some publishers are more successful than others because everyone has the same fair chances to be successful (except the author is famous). There are not hundreds of factors you can do wrong like in other businesses (maybe 10 ...category, niche, keywords, product description, price, look inside feature, page length, content quality, reviews etc.). Everyone knows about the importance of these few factors. So where is the problem to learn everything about these 10 factors to give your best?

Published my first book right now. I feel that my niche is good, my title is good, I like my cover, my pen name is solid and unused, my paragraphs are properly spaced, no grammatical or spelling errors at all, description properly formatted, tax information sent, has quality content that I spent a long time writing. After waiting this long, I can't stall on 1 book for so long. All that is left to do is to play the waiting game.

cyrax said:

Ya well after talking with Pinger, I think the rate he's at is around 1,000 words = $10.00. I'll PM you when I get 15 posts....

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That's okay. Cool

Well, what I've done for my initial book(s) is I've actually hired two writers:

One who seems very versed in my rather esoteric, but buoyant, niche topic and the other from Sri Lanka or something, who seems kinda versed but is included for budgetary purposes. I hired one for 7,000 words and the other for 6,000 for a total of $138. I plan to infused my own edits and writing that I have to bump the total word count to approximately 20,000 words.

If I can somehow dish out 13,000 more words 'by myself' then I will save freelancer's #2 work for another work, a freebie or something.

I already have my cover set. The 'rest' of book #1 is due on Friday. Hopefully the freelancers submit on time so I can do most of my proofreading/personal additions/edit over the course of next weekend. After, I will hire a proofreader. Then hopefully my book is ready by US Holidays' Thanksgiving, the spark of the shopping holiday season.

For my next book, which I'm currently accepting applications on the freelance sites for, I will pay for quality - because, I understand, the idea here is to hire someone to ghostwrite and remove that aspect of writing, almost completely, from my hands so that i can concentrate on MARKETING MARKETING MARKETING. Essentially, I'd like to simply do the intro and maybe intro and outro to each chapter.

This will be my 'first'/test. The niche needs not testing - it's my execution on this, the marketing etc. that I am 'testing'.
I've been looking at other books in my niche, their make-up, layout, table of contents, intros etc.

I'm also going to have a squeeze page set up prior to book being released. Maybe I can have that done this week if I push myself.

Although, like i said, I'm aiming for U.S Holiday T-giving, throwing in a couple of unexpected delays - I hope to get (both) book #1 published by 1st Dec, in time for Holiday shopping and 2nd book by 15th December to get a little more of Santa's secret touch.

Also, I'm using the majority of income that I receive from my other online ventures to pipe into this one.

nt1

Hi everyone,

With my main book achieving quite reasonable success, I've recently spotted the first copycat book appear on the market, with an attempt to mimic my title, cover and keywords.

I think my book is definitely the better of the two in terms of quality, but it could definitely take away a few of my sales. It has made me realise that even if you do find an awesome idea, your book is VERY visible to the world, and it isn't hard for another person to come along and steal your ideas -- to be honest I also use other people's books for ideas, so it's something we all do, but this was a shameful copy.

I've seen a number of niches completely saturated by copycat books, to the point where no book stands out at all and they all only pick up a few sales. I guess there is no way to protect against that, but my (modest) success so far does feel far more vulnerable now.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks

dennis_797 said:

Hi everyone,

With my main book achieving quite reasonable success, I've recently spotted the first copycat book appear on the market, with an attempt to mimic my title, cover and keywords.

I think my book is definitely the better of the two in terms of quality, but it could definitely take away a few of my sales. It has made me realise that even if you do find an awesome idea, your book is VERY visible to the world, and it isn't hard for another person to come along and steal your ideas -- to be honest I also use other people's books for ideas, so it's something we all do, but this was a shameful copy.

I've seen a number of niches completely saturated by copycat books, to the point where no book stands out at all and they all only pick up a few sales. I guess there is no way to protect against that, but my (modest) success so far does feel far more vulnerable now.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks

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Wouldn't the difference of success be on the Marketing?

For example if you do great marketing, get super reviews etc., would'n't yours be more favourable to the Amazon algorithm?

Also, I thought Amazon protected against duplicate content?

Welp, I published an erotica book. About 11k words, and the best written in my category by far. Sales took off first couple of days and everything was going well.

Next thing I know, my sales tanked to 0 randomly. I checked out what was going on and saw the book got flagged for being "Adult."

There was no BDSM, NO incest, and nothing revealing on the cover either. Just a couple a few graphic sex scenes in between a great story. Pretty sad, indeed as I spent a lot of time on that book. Still no sure why I got flagged, but I'm bummed.

dsavior said:

Welp, I published an erotica book. About 11k words, and the best written in my category by far. Sales took off first couple of days and everything was going well.

Next thing I know, my sales tanked to 0 randomly. I checked out what was going on and saw the book got flagged for being "Adult."

There was no BDSM, NO incest, and nothing revealing on the cover either. Just a couple a few graphic sex scenes in between a great story. Pretty sad, indeed as I spent a lot of time on that book. Still no sure why I got flagged, but I'm bummed.

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How is having a few graphic sex scenes not make it an adult book? I thought the whole erotica section is adult.

dsavior said:

Welp, I published an erotica book. About 11k words, and the best written in my category by far. Sales took off first couple of days and everything was going well.

Next thing I know, my sales tanked to 0 randomly. I checked out what was going on and saw the book got flagged for being "Adult."

There was no BDSM, NO incest, and nothing revealing on the cover either. Just a couple a few graphic sex scenes in between a great story. Pretty sad, indeed as I spent a lot of time on that book. Still no sure why I got flagged, but I'm bummed.

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You need to review your Title, Description, and Blurb.

You've been filtered by the amazon adult algorithm it will take some tweaking to get you back listed, I've had some issues similiar so lets talk about what it OK and what is not

Beastiality is a non
Mythical Creatures are ok

"Taming the wolf" in erotica would get flagged as adult
"Taming the wherewolf" would not

Incest is a nono

Brother = insta filter
Step Brother = Ok
Daddy = Filtered
Stepdaddy = Not filtered

Certain words get you busted pretty easy
gangbang is a nono
breeding of any form is a nono
rape is a nono

Your cover is important as well, 0 nudity, crack/clevage can get you busted, handbra's are a nono. I wont ask you to link it but basically you have to find out why it got caught and fix it, then send amazon an email and ask to have it reclassified.

I have already sent Amazon an email asking why. None of the things you mentioned above are in my book. No rape, dads, fathers or anything. In fact the only sex that happens in my book are between 1 guy and 1 girl who are boyfriend and girlfriend. No animals, sister, brothers, etc... No rape, no breeding, etc.

The only possible reason I can think why is because my cover is too hot. It's a picture of a girl pouring liquid on herself. She's completely clothed, but she is showing a tiny bit of cleavage because she's a busty woman. Funny thing is that there are people in my same genre who have near naked girls on their cover, so I don't think it's that.

It just goes to show how random their "Adult dungeon" classification can hit you. I actually published the book 4 times as I obsessed over getting the grammer/editing perfect. First 3 times publishing it went Live with a "Non Adult" label in the erotica section as it should have. Then the last time I published it got hit with adult.



ForgottenProdigy-
You would think that "Adult" means erotica, but it's not that way on Amazon. Their hidden "Adult" label is applied only to books that they feel are "offensive" to the general population. Basically extreme sex, torture, pseudo-incest etc. Erotica authors do not want to get hit with this label because your book does not show up at all in the search results, promotions, or "people who bought this bought also bought..." People will only be able to find your book if they search with it's exact name AND then also turn off their "adult content" filter.

How do you figure out pricing the book?

In searching through Amazon titles, why do some titles have publication dates so far in advance?

Also, my SEO Marketing mind can't get by fiction book searches....
So in the case of fiction the ideas are
1) There are so many people constantly looking for these niches, so there is 'always' a demand.
2) Because of the plethora of interest, reviews are REALLY key here - so if you put out something quality, it will almost 'naturally' rise to the top, therefore nullifying the idea relying on SEO as much as non-fiction.
3) Key Marketing (although, having read through this ENTIRE THREAD from 2013-now) it seems that some do well with no marketing and good reviews, others don't do so well with reviews, or no marketing, marketing/reviews, it's just a mixed bag - but majority seems to do well with good content.

Thanks

I saw a lot of descriptions with a tag list at the bottom. Amazon allows this ? Or not ?

Just published my 3rd book last night... A bit discouraged since my first book that was doing well got flagged as Adult and has since tanked to no sales. Amazon sent me a canned response saying it contained adult content when I asked for clarification. Oh well, time to move on.

My other books are not really taking off, but have only been up 1 and 2 days. One fiction, and one non-fic.


Pinger, I'm beginning to think your success is an anomaly, or there is something you have figured out (and a few other anomaly publishers have also) that most of us haven't yet. I have one 20k word book, and two 10k word books. Have another 10k word book that I have yet to publish. But, I am definitely not seeing anywhere near the kind of results that you are.

I'm not ready to give up yet, but sheesh! Now granted, I have not purchased reviews or tried to get reviews yet, so maybe my lack of promotion and lack of reviews is the issue... not sure. Even if I was getting 3 or 4 sales per day on each book I'd be perfectly fine with that. Definately been a bummer so far though.

Are you using a tool for your keyword research? And is there a particular strategy that you use when you add keywords to your book? That's another thing I might have messed up on..

dsavior said:

Just published my 3rd book last night... A bit discouraged since my first book that was doing well got flagged as Adult and has since tanked to no sales. Amazon sent me a canned response saying it contained adult content when I asked for clarification. Oh well, time to move on.

My other books are not really taking off, but have only been up 1 and 2 days. One fiction, and one non-fic.


Pinger, I'm beginning to think your success is an anomaly, or there is something you have figured out (and a few other anomaly publishers have also) that most of us haven't yet. I have one 20k word book, and two 10k word books. Have another 10k word book that I have yet to publish. But, I am definitely not seeing anywhere near the kind of results that you are.

I'm not ready to give up yet, but sheesh! Now granted, I have not purchased reviews or tried to get reviews yet, so maybe my lack of promotion and lack of reviews is the issue... not sure. Even if I was getting 3 or 4 sales per day on each book I'd be perfectly fine with that. Definately been a bummer so far though.

Are you using a tool for your keyword research? And is there a particular strategy that you use when you add keywords to your book? That's another thing I might have messed up on..

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Before you ditch your book,, why don't you unpublish it, work up a new cover and look at the blurbs for other books in your catagory. Then write a new blurb and republish. It should take maybe 1 hour and is far better than just letting it rot.

@dsavior
I don't have any other (secret) information than anyone else has. And I don't use any black hat methods like fake reviews or something like that because I don't want to risk my kdp account. I'm daily reading books, blogs, forums etc. about kdp, businesses in general and self development for more than two hours - not for fun! So again: The method how to make money with kindle is simple and absolutely clear for everyone. But why are some people more successful than others? Because it's not enough just to know how it works but how you working with it. And that's a mind thing. Success is a mind thing. The method/information is the same for all but the minds are individual. Everyone can change/grow his own mind but most of the people don't believe in this fact because everyone of us (me too) is educated to be an ordinary/unsuccessful person.

The school, the university, the media and even your parents (because they also don't know it better) tought you to do/learn this and that to be "successful" in life. You just had to follow exactly what they've said to be "successful" in life. We are trained to become experts to work in a specific positition/business structure - but the head of this structure is the only really successful person! Why? Because he didn't follow the ordinary way like 95% of all the people. He developed his personality/mind to break out of the ordinary structure, to get free of the wrong believes.

And that's the reason why no one told you before how to be really successful in life because our society can't exist with 95% successful people and only 5% experts/workers. Look at the statistics of the harverd university: The people there getting the best education ...but only expert education to work in a specific position ...but only 1% of them become successful business mans.

And now compare it to Kindle: Everyone has the same knowledge. Everyone knows that a good title, cover, product description etc. is important. Everyone follows the same way. But this is only basic knowledge! If you only rely on this basics like 100.000 other people it's no wonder why you are not successful. Everyone can buy an A-Z guide about how to publish a book but that's not an instruction how to print money.

If you are healthy you don't have big muscles automatically. But you know that you can get big muscles because other people did it before. But it's not enough to know that you have to move your arms to get muscels. You have to train, train, train your body but also learn eg. about the right nutrition and implement it in in your life.

If you are doing business you are also not successful automatically. But you know that you can be successful because other people did it before. But it's not enough to follow the basic tutorials. You have to train, train, train your skills but also learn how to be a big personality and implement it in your life.

Do you think you get big muscels if you train 3 month? Do you think you'll ever get big muscels if you don't change your nutrition? So do you really think you are successful if you publish 3 books? Do you think you'll ever be successful if you don't grow up your personality?

It's not only the knowledge that you CAN change your nutrition or that you CAN change and grow up your mind - you have to implement it in your training/business (learning and repeating).

Why do you think I'm writing this? It's simple: if I write down my mind I repeat it and that helps me to implement it even more in my life. And if I can help other people with my knowledge it's nice.


My success is not an anomaly, it's not based on luck and it's no result of dirty methods. It's a result of the basic knowledge that everyone has + a strong personality. I have no reason to lie and I know a lot of people who have more success within a shoter time. We all have the same chances - Success is a mind thing! Belive it or not...

I'll definitely try new covers for anything that doesn't sale after a few days. Updating the cover on the book flagged as adult won't help as it's not selling because it's hidden from most people. My covers are pretty good though, so not sure if that's the prob.

My second book was a romance book which got a couple of sales. I immediately gave it a free sales promo day which is still running and now it's sitting in the Top 50 of free romantic books on Kindle. I'm sure I could get it in the top 10 if I let it run another couple days, but giving it away to everyone and their grandma to get in the free book charts isn't going to help me do anything.

Just released my 4th book last night. Only been up few hours but no sales yet.

Like I said, I won't give up... But if I'm not seeing consistent sales after 10 books then I've missed something somewhere.

Pinger-

I think you perhaps misread my post. Your success is an anomaly as there are hundreds of thousands of struggling authors who are in the same boat as you who are putting out great books, with great titles, covers, and great content and not doing well. They can sit around telling themselves they're great all day and read Kindle forums for hours and they will still fail. And then there are a few who stumble across untapped niches, great recipes, or release something that takes off better than they ever expected (50 shades of grey, The Passage, The Alchemist) are good examples. I don't think those guys became successful just because they were sitting around thinking they were going to be successful every day.

I never said you used any sort of black hat or dirty tricks or just had random luck. I just said that you know something that some of us don't. Perhaps your niche research is better. Perhaps your keyword implementation is better. Perhaps you have discovered a cover/title combo that works great and grabs readers attention.

Do I think that I will become "Successful" with 3 books? No, of course not. But while I am not looking for success with 3 books, I am trying to generate a small amount of sales and optimize, so that I can be more successful with my future releases.

I appreciate all the valuable information you've provided in this thread, so don't think I am trying to flame you back- but I hardly think I need to "grow up" in my personality for asking for further details about your strategy. I'm not going to become successful by just sitting around thinking about flexing my muscles. I'm already successful with my other businesses and I didn't get there by playing philosophical mind tricks on myself. I got there through hard work, and discovering the recipes for success in those businesses which is what I am trying to do for this new venture.