Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Thanks for the tip whtgryblk. What level of sales per day do you consider makes a 'winner' and worth the effort of uploading it to createspace? I'm surprised to hear you're getting more from createspace than kindle, I was only expecting one or two sales of physical books but that's great to hear. Do you earn more per book for createspace sales?

Do you pay attention to style of writing when setting it up? I would say my writers (and my editing) are done primarily for ereaders and so a little more informal than I'd probably expect myself in a physical book. Not as casual as a blog post, but way more informal than a textbook.

Thanks profitboy. I'm not using sigil or any other service/trick (yet). I'm just testing the waters and the book seems to be doing ok because of its quality!

good post... so how many pages in each book?

gary2 said:

good post... so how many pages in each book?

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The correct answer is typically "just the right amount".

I'll explain. When choosing a topic for your book, you'll be looking into important factors like:

Page length of successful books
Price of successful books
etc

When you're ready to attack that market then you'll want to create a product that appeals to that audience, which means your book should be about the same length as the successful books (sometimes longer or shorter, check the reviews for great clues here).

I've had some awesome sellers as short as 20 pages, and some that are well over 200. When you're outsourcing, the shorter books are cheaper but even writing them yourself means you'll complete them quicker.

Bottom line, with the right topic you could rake in sales with books that don't even pass 10 pages. It all depends on the audience.

So I wrote novels that came out to be about 150 pages each. They're fiction novels and extremely good quality, however the niches are horror and western which I'm not sure are popular. Should I be selling these for 2.99 or more?

saltyleaves said:

So I wrote novels that came out to be about 150 pages each. They're fiction novels and extremely good quality, however the niches are horror and western which I'm not sure are popular. Should I be selling these for 2.99 or more?

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You really just have to analyze what sells well in your genre and try to match that. If the best selling books in that niche are 2.99 then sell it for 2.99.

good suggestion``

it is not good method..... even come up with one book in a week is unbelivable.

Hey,
I have a new cookbook series ready to publish. The series contains 3 small books (each book has 101 recipes) and 1 big book (a collection of all 3 small books). I have also formatted all books for CreateSpace. The whole series has a very high quality (you can not distinguished it from a prof. publisher book - so I can price it high).

I already have published 5 books in that niche so I know that my new books will sell very well.

My question is:

What's the best strategy to publish my series? Should I publish all at the same time? Should I publish them week by week? Or should I publish just the first 3 small books and wait with the big "3 in 1 package)? I don't know what's the best strategy?!?

(Btw: I also have a facebook page for my niche with 150 fans and an email list with 100 people. I think that this is to small to make a "big launch" so I don't count on this for the release of my series).

Pinger030 said:

Hey,
I have a new cookbook series ready to publish. The series contains 3 small books (each book has 101 recipes) and 1 big book (a collection of all 3 small books). I have also formatted all books for CreateSpace. The whole series has a very high quality (you can not distinguished it from a prof. publisher book - so I can price it high).

I already have published 5 books in that niche so I know that my new books will sell very well.

My question is:

What's the best strategy to publish my series? Should I publish all at the same time? Should I publish them week by week? Or should I publish just the first 3 small books and wait with the big "3 in 1 package)? I don't know what's the best strategy?!?

(Btw: I also have a facebook page for my niche with 150 fans and an email list with 100 people. I think that this is to small to make a "big launch" so I don't count on this for the release of my series).

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Hi,

You should launch the 3 small books first - see how they do over a few weeks and then sell them all as a big book (usually discounted from buying the 3 books separately)

In terms of pricing just remember most recipe books are usually endorsed by a celebrity chef, hence the higher price.

dragon5 said:

Is it just me or do the numbers quoted by OP seem a little far-fetched?

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If you choose the correct niche you can get some pretty big numbers.

I have a few books that sell over 100 copies per day. My average is 5-10 and I don't bother with following anything up that sells less than 3 copies per day.

Gringo, those numbers are really impressive. Obviously the niche and quality of the books are an important part of your success but how do you go about promoting your new books? My first book hit number 1 in my topics and was selling 15 a day but has slowly slid back down and seems to have settled on around 5-7 sales per day.

GringoMonkey said:

Hi,

You should launch the 3 small books first - see how they do over a few weeks and then sell them all as a big book (usually discounted from buying the 3 books separately)

In terms of pricing just remember most recipe books are usually endorsed by a celebrity chef, hence the higher price.

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I have two relatively large books, 150 pages each, fiction western and horror both with threads of romance. Would you recommend splitting my books into 3 smaller books, short novellas, and selling them as a series, like what you mentioned? Or is this method just for nonfiction?

I want to monetize this as best as possible. Not even sure if 150 pages is considered big at this point for a fiction kindle book...

A winner in my opinion is a book that generates $100+ on Kindle in Ebook Form, I know it sound weird my idea is that because I publish books in a lot of niches that dont readily have tons of Paper backs available i,e the market is flood with ebooks... hence having a paper back version has a certain value to it. @mazon also allows you to o kindle match were you can discount your ebook with the purchase of your paperback book. I set price of my createspace books anywhere from $19.95 to $39.99.... again taking advantage of not a lot of books being available in my niches.

saltyleaves said:

I have two relatively large books, 150 pages each, fiction western and horror both with threads of romance. Would you recommend splitting my books into 3 smaller books, short novellas, and selling them as a series, like what you mentioned? Or is this method just for nonfiction?

I want to monetize this as best as possible. Not even sure if 150 pages is considered big at this point for a fiction kindle book...

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I would Split that 150 page book up, and cross promote. Set one up as a permafree download... grow a mailing list, blast that list with the listings of the other two books, also in the back of each book have a links going to the other books

dennis_797 said:

Gringo, those numbers are really impressive. Obviously the niche and quality of the books are an important part of your success but how do you go about promoting your new books? My first book hit number 1 in my topics and was selling 15 a day but has slowly slid back down and seems to have settled on around 5-7 sales per day.

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I don't really do any promotion - I just create a series so I own the Amazon front page of the niche. So yes sales do slide off, but then my next book in the series comes along, so really it is me who knocks me off top spot rather than someone else.

So my promotion would be to create a second book in the series you have that sells 5-7 per day.

Thanks again for the info. I've invested in a good cover for Kindle, and have spent a lot of time formatting it for the platform so I'll be looking into CreateSpace next week. Do you get your cover creator to create a backcover in the same style as the front one, or is this a waste of time and money? My only fear is that as my book is reasonably long for Kindle (it comes in at 100 pages) it will seem very short in a physical book, which could lead to negative reviews. That's why I want to make the physical version as professional as possible, and a back cover is irrelevant for Kindle, but an important consideration for print.

Do you rewrite sections for print or leave everything the same? Again, I'm conscious that, although my book is well written, it's in a style that more appropriate for a digital platform, rather than in a physical book.

I know how important reviews are and I don't want to do anything to hurt them, especially as my book only has a few reviews for now!

Thanks for the tip. My writer has been working on a second in the series since my first was published, so hopefully this will be released over the next two weeks. It will be interesting to see if this leads to an uplift in sales in my original book.

Although I was top briefly, I'm no longer top spot. Sales of my original book fluctuate a lot, between 5-10 is typical, but I get the odd day where I hit as high as 20 or as low as 2. Fingers crossed my second book will do well, and also support the original one, but unfortunately my writer is probably unable to write a third (other commitments) so this might have to be the last one.

How do other authors approach writers only being able to commit to 1-2 books when you're looking to pad out a series to 5-6? Although I'm not against using different ghostauthors for the a specific pen name, I also want writing style to be consistent....

dennis_797 said:

Thanks for the tip. My writer has been working on a second in the series since my first was published, so hopefully this will be released over the next two weeks. It will be interesting to see if this leads to an uplift in sales in my original book.

Although I was top briefly, I'm no longer top spot. Sales of my original book fluctuate a lot, between 5-10 is typical, but I get the odd day where I hit as high as 20 or as low as 2. Fingers crossed my second book will do well, and also support the original one, but unfortunately my writer is probably unable to write a third (other commitments) so this might have to be the last one.

How do other authors approach writers only being able to commit to 1-2 books when you're looking to pad out a series to 5-6? Although I'm not against using different ghostauthors for the a specific pen name, I also want writing style to be consistent....

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In terms of fluctuating sales - welcome to retail - people buy when the mood suits, some days more than others, some times of the year more than others.

The key is having a range of products so you have a high baseline of sales, so the peaks become a bonus.

The key to a book series is the book structure and if it is fiction the characters. It is better if you can have one author but pretty much impossible to achieve.

A decent ghost writer picks up the core structure. Think like tv episodes they have different writers on say something like Law and Order, but it shouldn't matter as they have a core structure that is retained throughout, you need to make it that core structure that the reader is buying into not the writer.

So you manage the series, have some strong key elements that you maintain and then when writers come and go the reader doesn't notice so much.

I was hoping GringoMonkey, Pinger030 or anyone else who is seeing even reasonable success could give me some feedback.

I wrote and put my first book on KDP a few weeks ago, doing the promotion on Saturdays and Sundays. Almost every day was about 200 downloads, with the last Sunday being around 500.

The book is a cookbook type containing recipes, and I tried to make it reasonably long at around 11,000 words. I found it quite difficult to fluff it up to be honest. There are three 5-star reviews, one verified, and all were commissioned by me, not left "naturally."

Despite what seems like decent enough downloads, I have not seen any paid sales whatsoever. Is there any way to figure out what went wrong here? Was there too much competition? Is it priced too high at 2.99? Is it simply the wrong topic?

Do you guys have duds like this? If so, have you determined what causes this?

Also, if anyone could provide more/better insight into how they choose non-fiction topics, I'd appreciate it. Right now, I'm looking at various topics that people often make minisites around, and looking at how much competition there is. Also considering how easy/hard it is to fill up a book with a topic (given how recipe books don't add up fast in terms of word count).

I'm looking at writing some more, and let's just take a look at a particular topic here - Hydrogen peroxide.

If you look at the hydrogen peroxide books, it looks like they're all a copy of the first one, in content, length and even style of the cover. Many of them seem to sell (comparing to my book, which doesn't sell at all). In my estimation, this niche appears to be too crowded. Would I be right in that assumption?

Also, If you look inside, many of these books contain really bad advice, in some cases, advice that could actually kill someone. I can't justify writing BS (eat some tree leaf, your chest pains will be gone, or drink some hydrogen peroxide and possibly die)... do you guys ever encounter this problem?

loybond, my books started slow at first then gradually picked up momentum. I only have two reviews, but both are legitimate and not commissioned by me. I'd give it more time, especially if you've only been waiting a few days/weeks. I got a trickle of sales at first, but this number quickly picked up.

I remember seeing the hydrogen peroxide books when I was researching. I decided to stay away as there are books being launched most days, and sales seem ridiculously (almost artificially) high, when you look at their sales rank. Flick through a few pages of them and you'll see that these books are utter trash, yet they all have phenomenal reviews. This is a battleground for spammy marketers, and as you seem to be putting effort into the quality of your books I'd stay away from it.

Amazon says they want to stamp out any foul play in the Kindle marketplace, but all they have to do is take a look at some of these books and they'll see that all the authors are faking reviews. Unfortunately, they do nothing, which is disappointing. It's like the authors don't realize that literally anyone can pay a few bucks for fake reviews, but the moment one person buys 20 everyone else needs to to keep up and the marketplace is destroyed as the legitimately 'good' books by authors who won't manipulate the system aren't at the top. In my opinion, these people are actively ruining the marketplace they're hoping to make a living from -- it's stupidity.