Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Comradical said:

Thanks, that's good to know. I'm also wondering how those who publish things like cookbooks go about using images in their ebook. Can you just use images of the dish from Google or what? From looking at reviews I sense that a lot of people expect images of the final product if you're publishing recipes. I'm not much of a cook so actually cooking something and taking a picture is out of the question for me!

Click to expand...

I think you can't use the images from Google. You wold need to get a permission from the authors or buy royalty free images.

You provided us with some good info, thanks!

Smart idea mate!

I have a questions. about what are you writing? sci-fi stories or some informative books(nature, computers, etc)
I just want how to start.

Comradical said:

Hi Pinger, I don't have any experience in this area at all so take my thoughts for what they're worth. But my general impression is that women compose the majority of the audience in the erotica genre. Men are more visually stimulated and would prefer to jump straight to the action on a porn website and I don't know any guys who would bother to sit down and read erotica. On the other hand, the only people I know who have read 50 Shades of Grey were women. This doesn't mean that there aren't any men who read erotica but I suspect they make up a small percentage of the audience. I've also noticed that a lot of authors in this genre are either women or people who must be using a female pen name because most people probably assume that a male writer wouldn't understand the target (female) audience.

To continue, I would suspect that the reason for less explicit erotica having a good ranking is because females aren't just looking for sexual action; they're also seeking a good story and plot with great characters and sexual tension. You might notice that a great deal of the erotica selling to women is romantic erotica, which as I understand is basically a romance story with really good sex scenes. Note that women are going to be less forgiving if you have slipshod work that just keeps skipping to a sex scene whereas males probably won't mind.

These are all generalisations obviously and for someone who doesn't know dick about erotica this was quite the post. And by the way, i typed gangbang into Amazon search and it does seem that people are actively searching for these kinds of terms.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your answer. I also think that more women are interested in sex books than men. But I wonder why there are so many "hardcore books". A few hours ago I published my erotic book. I just want to try this category. Let's see whether the book will sell. If it works I already have several candidates who want to write me such books for 30$/5000 words. If my test is working, I'll outsource the work immediately.

(At first I thought that I write everything on my own. I dont wanted to invest money. Probably I had fears and doubts. Since I have outsourced the work for the first time it's normal. NEXT LEVEL. I love Kindle. Next Level: Make Audiobooks from my books.)

Where did you find the writer? Here on BHW or did you search on oDesk, Elance, etc.?

30 USD per 5.000 words is a low price. Don't you have any fear about quality issues?

Very interesting!
One of the more positive IM systems.

Thanks,
Dret1932

Hey Pinger... have you used images in your cookbooks? Or anyone else? Does Amazon charge a "delivery charge" or something like that?

notoriouskim said:

They have 7 days to refund iirc. Some of mine have 10% refund rate but I think thats also partially because I kinda miscategorized it.

Click to expand...

where do you look up your refund rate?

mrsray said:

where do you look up your refund rate?

Click to expand...

On the 15th of each month Amazon produces a statement for you. In that it has 3 columns: Units Sold, Units refunded, Net Units Sold or Borrowed.
[TABLE="width: 70"]
[TR]
[TD="class: xl63, width: 70"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
You can also get a similar idea as you go along by checking your daily sales in the realtime reports.

Amazon doesn't calculate refund rates you have to do that, lets say you made 10 sales, had 2 refunds, your refund rate would be 20%.

Some (quite possibly stupid) questions.

If you outsource the work, what do you do for the author? User your own name? Use a pen name?

How many pages = how many words? I mean just as a guideline how many words per page am I looking at?

How do I protect myself in case my outsourced works turns out to have been copied from somewhere (plagiarized) without my knowledge?

How can I guestimate how much some of the books I see have sold? I mean if I see a book with 20 reviews, is there any way to guess if it was only sold 20 times, or 30, or 100? (I mean is there some rough number like only 10% of people write reviews, so therefore good estimate is 20 reviews x 10 = 200 sales estimate?) just to use a random example

Thanks

Thanks for the thread and inspiration OP and contributors. Lot's of valuable knowledge hidden away in this thread.

Question: How many words do you recommend there be for a fiction novel? I've examined the best selling novels in my niche but I don't want to produce some 300-400 page ebook. Too time consuming.

How many kindle pages is 10,000 words?

loybond said:

Hey Pinger... have you used images in your cookbooks? Or anyone else? Does Amazon charge a "delivery charge" or something like that?

Click to expand...

Yes, they do. But only if you for the 70% revenue model (2.99 USD or higher price of your eBook). But Google images are no good - you would need to buy some royalty free images. I guess these two reasons are the main cause for lack of images in recipe eBooks.

Xexist said:

Some (quite possibly stupid) questions.

If you outsource the work, what do you do for the author? User your own name? Use a pen name?

How many pages = how many words? I mean just as a guideline how many words per page am I looking at?

How do I protect myself in case my outsourced works turns out to have been copied from somewhere (plagiarized) without my knowledge?

How can I guestimate how much some of the books I see have sold? I mean if I see a book with 20 reviews, is there any way to guess if it was only sold 20 times, or 30, or 100? (I mean is there some rough number like only 10% of people write reviews, so therefore good estimate is 20 reviews x 10 = 200 sales estimate?) just to use a random example

Thanks

Click to expand...

I use pen names and create author profiles for them.

30 A4 pages = 10.000 or so words.

You can check your work by submitting it to copyscape. Also, if the work is plagiarized, Amazon will find out too and unpublish your eBook.

Reviews can be faked and are most of the time. I'd say that less than 10% people leave ratings. Overall sale position is much better. If the books is in top 20.000, it sells VERY good. If the eBooks is 100.000 or lower in overall rank - it maybe sells a few copies per day.

Speaking of Amazon, anybody heard of the new Amazing Selling Machines? It sounds promising, although they've already closed their doors. Sounds like an interesting way to sell on amazon (that I certainly never thought of at least)

Pinger030 said:

1. What do you think what I'm doing for the author? I pay him and let me override the exclusive rights of use. Thats all! Then I publish the books using own pen names and author profiles..

Click to expand...

I didnt mean what do you do FOR the author, I meant only do you list your own name, or a pen name etc. I think you explained it.

PS. I want to start my own Journey doing this. Any comments or suggestions are welcome

Xexist said:

PS. I want to start my own Journey doing this. Any comments or suggestions are welcome

Click to expand...

Maybe that sounds stupid, but when I started a few years ago with Internet marketing, I did not know what it means to be successful. I do not mean such sayings like "Think big and belive in your dreams" or those already known things. If you seriously want to build a successful business, you will come to points where you are in conflict with yourself (also in private). Then you have to be a personality to handle such situations.

There are tons of people who are suddenly successful but they can not handle their success. And there are tons of people who are really clever and have great ideas, but they fail with the first problem and make not even one dollar. And we see such people almost every day on TV. The reason for this is that these people have no personality. They are not stupid and I do not talk about problems/decisions like "Should I invest or not?". It's hard to describe, but if you're successful or not is entirely up to your personality.

You can have the best method or step by step tutorial on how to become successful but there is never a guarantee that it really works for you. Because no one knows how you will handle it. It only depends on your personality.

When I started a few years ago with IM I knew nothing about it. "What should I have to learn about me? It's just a waste of money." If I had known how important "personality" is, I would be much more successful today.

Yes, you grow with the tasks. And yes, everyone has to make his own experiences. But with this advice you can avoid many problems. Believe me. Just read a few articles in the Intenet about "personality development", "quantum healing" and "matrix transformation" and decide for yourself if you eg. want to buy a book to learn more about this.



A specific suggestion for kindle: If you analyze the market for good niches, write down what you have done. "How I came to the niche? Who are my competitors? What keywords are good? Why I have given my book the Title X ?" and so on. So you develop your own method. And you can easily optimize your method in future. It sounds simple but it works (for me). From time to time you internalized the steps so you no longer need the plan in the futre.

Pinger030 said:

Small update of my erotic book (2,99$):
I made about 80$ within the first two days only with this book. I decide to create a series of 4 books an finally make a big expensive book with all 4 stories.

Everything runs great. I think I will reach 2.500$ this month (8 books).

Click to expand...

If I may ask, how many pages was your book?

just 21 pages. I just wanted to try out the niche.