Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Is there a group of review exchange ?

Talyn said:

Is there a group of review exchange ?

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Wondering the same thing. If there isn't currently an active one, you should start one... and can count me in.

nilbog said:

Wondering the same thing. If there isn't currently an active one, you should start one... and can count me in.

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A gmail group is ok for everyone ?

Talyn said:

A gmail group is ok for everyone ?

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Fine by me, or a Skype group.

BHWKDP (BHW-KDP name) on G+
Private group, it doesn't appear in the search engine

Talyn said:

BHWKDP (BHW-KDP name) on G+
Private group, it doesn't appear in the search engine

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Maybe it's because I'm on mobile but I can't seem to access the group either through search or a direct URL. Any ideas?

I dabbled in kindle books a while back, made a massive mistake and just assumed that writing a health and fitness book would equal loads of interest and buyers because it's a popular subject. For me that niche was really competitive.

I wrote the book myself, around 36,000 words, really high quality stuff that I researched extensively. Invested a fair bit in marketing it but the sales never really got close to being worth the effort I put in. I think my mistake was to try and write a bestseller, instead I should of just focused on quantity, having 15-20 decent books that all make 1-2 sales a day.

The health and fitness niche is hard to crack but if you can get to the top of the rankings the rewards are big, I'd definitely prefer to target other niches instead.

In the end I made $100 from book sales which is pretty pitiful considering how much time I put into it, a harsh lesson to learn but I definitely still believe this Kindle publishing method has massive potential, a few of the people in this thread are testament to that.

@dragon
Use MS Word for creating and formatting of your books. To prove your books on different devices use Kindle Previewer (it's a free desktop program of Amazon). Finally upload the doc file - I never had problems.

@kingc
I'm also in a health & fiction niche. The people who are ruling the bestseller ranks are often experienced experts in a specific niche. Mostly they have a huge fanbase in her background and published more than one book. For a compeletly new author it's hard to compete with such experts. So if you are looking for a niche you have to compare you with other ordinary selfpublishers. So if your niche is full of proven/well known experts and/or books from official publishers it doesn't mean that it's also a profitable for you a no name author even if the other books seems to sell very good. Differ between ordinary selfpublishers and professionals when you analyse a specific niche. BUT: That doesn't mean that you'll never be able to climb to the top. Because if you publish more and more books (and if you also build up a huge fanbase in your background) you can be perceived as an expert too. If other people can be experts and write bestsellers you can also do it.

Sooo yes, many people suggest that the mass of decent books is more important than longer books. I think that's true if you want to build up a nice income fast (and everyone of us (also me) want it). But for long time success I think it's more important to produce longer high quality content that you can sell more expensive. BECAUSE: Image you make $10k with your books. Do you really want to create more cheap books to earn just a few Dollars more with these books (and be scared that the quality is not good enough and maybe you get bad reviews)? I think if you reach the point eg. of 10k/month such cheap books (few Dollars more per book) doesn't play a big role for you. These are peanuts if you already reached that income level. But on the other hand it will be hard to publish an high quality expert book and being succesfull from the scratch.

SO MY ADVICE TO YOU IS: Start with many decent books in different niches where you can imagine to be an expert sometime. If you see that one niche is working publish more decent books. Then publish more books with a better quality in that niche. Make sure to build up a fan base in your background. And last but not least publish a expensive high quality book in your niche (that is comparable with the bestsellers in your niche). So with your standing (you always published many decent books in your niche; you have a big fan base in your backhand to get a lot of sales and reviews from day on) you can compete with the bestsellers. Think about that: You have already published many books in your niche. That's a lot of content and knowledge and it will be easy for you to produce your fat expensive premium book.

Devide the books in 3 classes like me:
$0.99 - low quality
$2.99 - decent quality
$4.99+ - high quality

Start with low quality books to find a profitable niche. Publish decent books (maybe series) to make good money and to develop your expert status with a fan base (fb fanpage, blog with email list and so on). Publish high quality books (eg. just a collection of all books of your series). And then publish more and more premium books until the niche is sated!


This is my method and it works for me!!! I have 1 premium book in my niche that makes the half of my whole income. And actually I am working on a 3 part premium book series. And each book of this series has more quality than my actual premium book already has. So you can imagine what will happen to income. I will triple it with only 3 books more. I I would follow suggestions of some "kindle experts" an publish tons of cheap books I have to publish 30 or more books to reach that level. And some other thoughts: Imagine I would create a 3 in 1 package of these 3 upcoming premium books. And I will do it. And I can sell it for more that then $10 without being scared that I'll get bad reviews. Because this product will be better than every other book in my niche. And know think about this: When I published all these books I can easily take the whole content rewrite the content and republish it under a new pen name. I can easily create 10 more books of my already existing content. I can easily create a website with tons of articles. I can easily create a smartphone app of my whole content ...audiobooks, paper backs and so on - without big additional work.

So I hope you can see the chances and why you should NOT only count on cheap books.

And I have much more great methods and other marketing strategies that I will not share here because there are many many lazy people reading this thread. If I just read such questions like "I am not able to format my book. Can you help me?" and stuff like that. ...guys, we are here to make money, to create business, to change our fucking whole life ...and you are not able to search on Google for such basic stuff????? You are not able to search on YouTube for that????? You are not able to read a book about Kindle????? So tell me how do you want to earn any Dollar if you are not able to use your brain. Maybe your brainless behaviour worked in your 9 to 5 job. You can find every basic information in the Internet ...for free ...within a few clicks. So what's wrong with you guys? Should I even tell you how to breathe propeerly? Sry, I can't understand some people and I think more and more that some people are really born to fail.

It's absolutely okay if someone is new and need advices but I don't support laziness because that doesn't help you and you will fail again and again if you stay lazy and the next hurdle is coming.

I just wanted to say "Thanks" to everyone who contributed to this thread - I'm going to get on this ASAP.

My day job has been very successful the last couple of years but I am burned out on it. My income now is great but most days I hate the grind. I'm an entrepreneur by instinct and I think it's time to move on. I love the Kindle idea because I can do it in my spare time, test, revise, etc, without really taking a risk on my day job.

Anyway, thanks again - I've got one book written that needs some revision and another 2/3 done. I'll get those done, revise, and try to update in a month or two with how it's going.

One more thing: numerous places in this thread people mention failing at this or that - I've failed so many times it's ridiculous. If you can, fail fast, fail cheap, learn, and do it again better.

I totaly agree with Pinger030. It's a lot of effort and a hard work.
You can write some low quality ebooks, within one day, cover included. But a quality+ ebook, with pictures, proofreaded, well formated, with more than 60 kindle pages is hard work, fun, but you will take a week or more to write one.

Finaly, no one is interested in exchange reviews ?

Another question: I have a few images. What is the best dimension for them so they appear good on all screen types.

Dragon2010 said:

Another question: I have a few images. What is the best dimension for them so they appear good on all screen types.

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minimum 800x600 and if you upload your ebook in html format, kdp will resize the pictures to the best size.
If your image is under 400x300, kdp cannot resize automatically.

Nice! OP Thread! It's motivating!

@Pinger030
Thanks for the insights. As for the Q/A (Quality Assurance) I meant to know if you had somebody (similar to an editor, like another mate pointed out) that reviewed your work for quality books; details like syntax errors, fact checking, etc.

LMFAO I swear to GOD I followed every goddamned tutorial on formatting I could find, videos, KDP official instructions, spent a week in the publisher forum, book still came out as mashed up gibberish every time. I've never seen instructions on it as simple as MSWORD > save as .doc > upload, so I will definitely try that, and thanks. I don't need to defend myself against accusations of laziness and ignorance given in my 20 years in IM I've worked a 9-5 maybe two years in total due to my *hard work*, but I will defend that the formatting thing is a major problem for many people, and I know that for a fact due to the *extensive research* I did on my own before asking anyone here for help. And before I get barked at for 20 years in IM and can't format an ebook, I also don't know how to do media buys, POF ads, never had a check from clickbank and can't for the life of me get an EPN account, yet I have made money every single day from IM whether I work or not for longer than I can remember.

I know what it's like to deal with people that expect to be spoonfed, but not all of them will always fit into the mold you're trying to place them in. A major thing I learned over time is to have positive relationships with your peers if possible, regardless of where they stand in relation to you at the time. You never know when you may find yourself in need of that person's services or advice in the future, and no one wants to work with a prick. Taking the time to hurl out a big berating paragraph aimed at folks asking a valid question doesn't jive with your previous statement that "I'm not better than everyone else here and I know a lot of people who are also successful with self publishing. I just want to motivate you with my post.". After all, this thread is 29 pages long and the question was asked twice on this page alone, leading me to believe it's a pretty damn valid question.

If your true goal is to educate then you should know that insults aren't the best learning tool. The truly lazy aren't going to succeed anyway and aren't worth the wasted time. When you say things like "don't ask stupid questions", you're naturally going to scare away those who can't read your mind, don't know if their question is stupid or not, and instill an atmosphere of fear. It's a public post on a public forum, you can't control responses, you are always going to get similar responses, and it's best not to throw out the baby with the bathwater by using blanket insults to reply to people politely asking questions. I understand you don't care about the insulting others aspect of it, but one should at least consider the future business partnership aspect, at least.

I'm glad you found success. I respect your hard work. I respect your efforts give back. It's not my intention to put you down at all. My intention is to do my part to try and make BHW a little bit better. I could yarn on about how BHW used to be and all that, things change and I accept that, but ever since the FTC crackdowns several years ago things got hushed and stressful, and it sucks to see everyone at each other's throats. This is an important thread on a good method with a fair amount of shared ideas involved and it would be so cool to have it help as many as possible. That's all.

singingsleep said:

LMFAO I swear to GOD I followed every goddamned tutorial on formatting I could find, videos, KDP official instructions, spent a week in the publisher forum, book still came out as mashed up gibberish every time. I've never seen instructions on it as simple as MSWORD > save as .doc > upload, so I will definitely try that, and thanks. I don't need to defend myself against accusations of laziness and ignorance given in my 20 years in IM I've worked a 9-5 maybe two years in total due to my *hard work*, but I will defend that the formatting thing is a major problem for many people, and I know that for a fact due to the *extensive research* I did on my own before asking anyone here for help. And before I get barked at for 20 years in IM and can't format an ebook, I also don't know how to do media buys, POF ads, never had a check from clickbank and can't for the life of me get an EPN account, yet I have made money every single day from IM whether I work or not for longer than I can remember.

I know what it's like to deal with people that expect to be spoonfed, but not all of them will always fit into the mold you're trying to place them in. A major thing I learned over time is to have positive relationships with your peers if possible, regardless of where they stand in relation to you at the time. You never know when you may find yourself in need of that person's services or advice in the future, and no one wants to work with a prick. Taking the time to hurl out a big berating paragraph aimed at folks asking a valid question doesn't jive with your previous statement that "I'm not better than everyone else here and I know a lot of people who are also successful with self publishing. I just want to motivate you with my post.". After all, this thread is 29 pages long and the question was asked twice on this page alone, leading me to believe it's a pretty damn valid question.

If your true goal is to educate then you should know that insults aren't the best learning tool. The truly lazy aren't going to succeed anyway and aren't worth the wasted time. When you say things like "don't ask stupid questions", you're naturally going to scare away those who can't read your mind, don't know if their question is stupid or not, and instill an atmosphere of fear. It's a public post on a public forum, you can't control responses, you are always going to get similar responses, and it's best not to throw out the baby with the bathwater by using blanket insults to reply to people politely asking questions. I understand you don't care about the insulting others aspect of it, but one should at least consider the future business partnership aspect, at least.

I'm glad you found success. I respect your hard work. I respect your efforts give back. It's not my intention to put you down at all. My intention is to do my part to try and make BHW a little bit better. I could yarn on about how BHW used to be and all that, things change and I accept that, but ever since the FTC crackdowns several years ago things got hushed and stressful, and it sucks to see everyone at each other's throats. This is an important thread on a good method with a fair amount of shared ideas involved and it would be so cool to have it help as many as possible. That's all.

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Don't really know what were you actually doing while formatting. I've converted my first ebook using simplest of methods and it turned out great in Kindle Previewer. As I didn't include images, only text, maybe image converting is your problem - try to format text only and see the results.

Pinger, congrats on your success! Since you plan on having writers bang out books at $100 per pop, I'm just curious what kind of word length you are expecting. How long have your smaller books been? What's your smallest?

I have a few tiny books sitting around, but I never really thought to publish them because of their small size.

Talyn said:

I totaly agree with Pinger030. It's a lot of effort and a hard work.
You can write some low quality ebooks, within one day, cover included. But a quality+ ebook, with pictures, proofreaded, well formated, with more than 60 kindle pages is hard work, fun, but you will take a week or more to write one.

Finaly, no one is interested in exchange reviews ?

Click to expand...

Would love to... but since neither you nor I can PM and since I can't find the google group you mentioned then that is going to be a challenge! : \