Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

I have 34 ebooks and no one make 1 sales per day all month long.
I missed lot of things:

1) The cover
2) The description
3) Length of the books, don't count sale a 50 kindle page at 2,99$. No Way. It's pure fantasy and dream
take a look at the concurrence, you'll see that books are more longer. 10k words book ? Lol, even if at 99c it won't sell.
I think that before publishing any books it's mandatory to get a premium account on amazon, download all books of top 20 of target niches and read them
4) Promotion

To summarize : It's PURE HARD WORK, not a new eldorado to make money easily...
 
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Talyn said:
I have 34 ebooks and no one make 1 sales per day all month long.
I missed lot of things:

1) The cover
2) The description
3) Length of the books, don't count sale a 50 kindle page at 2,99$. No Way. It's pure fantasy and dream
take a look at the concurrence, you'll see that books are more longer. 10k words book ? Lol, even if at 99c it won't sell.
I think that before publishing any books it's mandatory to get a premium account on amazon, download all books of top 20 of target niches and read them
4) Promotion

To summarize : It's PURE HARD WORK, not a new eldorado to make money easily...
Click to expand...

Talyn,

While I don't disagree at all that hard work is a factor, your results are far below where they should be with 34 books.

Each of your points are valid, but I suspect you're targeting book topics that just aren't in a position to win. Choosing your battles is just as important as creating a quality book. There are plenty of book topics that are ripe for a new contender, these topics often sell very well with little to no promotion beyond Amazon's own efforts.

EDIT: I misread your post, I'll leave the original text and you may disregard my comments directed towards you if you do make far more than 1 sale per day.

Cheers!
 
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Carepolice said:
Talyn,

While I don't disagree at all that hard work is a factor, your results are far below where they should be with 34 books.

Each of your points are valid, but I suspect you're targeting book topics that just aren't in a position to win. Choosing your battles is just as important as creating a quality book. There are plenty of book topics that are ripe for a new contender, these topics often sell very well with little to no promotion beyond Amazon's own efforts.

EDIT: I misread your post, I'll leave the original text and you may disregard my comments directed towards you if you do make far more than 1 sale per day.

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I did see some 50-60 page books, priced high and selling well.
 
Carepolice: I agree with you, don't worry.

I've made a huge mistake: I'm in some niche that are full of competitors like cookbooks or romance.

So far, I still didn't find a method to select the right niche.
 
Although I personally don't publish kindle books, I do work with with clients that do (I provide promotional services for their books that get their rankings up) and I can definitely say that there's money to be made if you can consistently write well and publish many books. Like anything else just try to keep up the momentum even if you don't see many sales at first, and it should pay off in time. I am obviously going to sound biased with this, but I do suggest looking into promotional methods; I won't advertise my own personal services here in this thread, but I do work very closely with my clients and have had a chance to see how much it influences sales.

Also, most people are using black hat methods these days to promote their books, so the competition is becoming increasingly more brutal so try to learn to adapt and experiment with different genres :)
 
Lol! Funny comments in here, I think pinger gave you a solid method in here guys, now if there's a prob it's more related to the way you assimilate the infos and how you implemente it.

My personnal experience, I released two ebooks 4K words each $2.99, almost 15 days ago, up to now I made 40 USD from both. Now i'm launching 13 ebooks all in various niches (4 already ready for submission tonight). the formula is simple as for any business: Learn as much as you can even if it takes months, split test split test split test (while learning), find the winner niches and processes & duplicate(while still learning). Personnaly I spent months trying to understand how this shit work before taking action as i'm into other things at the same time. Now my ebooks ready to go cost less than 30 usd each, 100ebooks x $30= 3000usd amount I plan to invest, if every ebook brings 20 usd/month it's a total of 2000usd/month so 240000 usd year, investement 3k, profit 21000 USD. Simple!
 
Raven13: It seems that i missed completely the righ niches
 
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One of my older erotica books has been banned. :( It was an short story with only 5k words. The cover was 100% clean (an ordinary clothed women) and I had a "18+ disclaimer" on the cover, product description and inside the book. Amazon has told me that the content is against their rules but I can't understand this. Yes, it's BDSM and has two explicit erotica scenes but it's well written by my girlfriend. It's really no crap. And there are tons of other ...harder... books with really disgusting content (incest and crap like that).

Maybe a competitor flagged me? I don't know and I don't want to risk my kdp account. So I'm out of the erotica niche and I'll publish more love stories with a bit erotica than prono stuff. :( It's not a problem for me because most of my books are love stories and I have success with this books. But it was easy to write the "porno books" to make some bucks more per month.
 
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Hi guys !

I live in France and I need an access for Kindle Unlimited... Do you have any idea to get one ?
In France Kindle Unlimited doesn't exist...
 
Pinger030 said:
One of my older erotica books has been banned. :( It was an short story with only 5k words. The cover was 100% clean (an ordinary clothed women) and I had a "18+ disclaimer" on the cover, product description and inside the book. Amazon has told me that the content is against their rules but I can't understand this. Yes, it's BDSM and has two explicit erotica scenes but it's well written by my girlfriend. It's really no crap. And there are tons of other ...harder... books with really disgusting content (incest and crap like that).

Maybe a competitor flagged me? I don't know and I don't want to risk my kdp account. So I'm out of the erotica niche and I'll publish more love stories with a bit erotica than prono stuff. :( It's not a problem for me because most of my books are love stories and I have success with this books. But it was easy to write the "porno books" to make some bucks more per month.
Click to expand...

So, to help my brain understand that.

Romance sells pretty good.
Erotica, which basically is porno on paper. Or, to be more literal, contains more explicit and descriptive 'love-making' scenes than those in the Romance genre? And they sell much better?
But the flip side is that they can be banned at any time due to the grey area of Amazon guidelines?

So, if I can make an anology --
Romance are the high-rated novellas on daytime television with high advertising rates.

Erotica is the late night premium channel goodnese that contain more body parts and an extra "fee" to watch, but isn't allowed in all houses?
 
Talyn said:
I have 34 ebooks and no one make 1 sales per day all month long.
I missed lot of things:

1) The cover
2) The description
3) Length of the books, don't count sale a 50 kindle page at 2,99$. No Way. It's pure fantasy and dream
take a look at the concurrence, you'll see that books are more longer. 10k words book ? Lol, even if at 99c it won't sell.
I think that before publishing any books it's mandatory to get a premium account on amazon, download all books of top 20 of target niches and read them
4) Promotion

To summarize : It's PURE HARD WORK, not a new eldorado to make money easily...
Click to expand...

You missed the point somewhere. My "books" are shorts and range from 5k to 15k words. They are all $2.99. Most get 1-2 sales a day, while 2 of them get like 4-10 sales a day. Also, Bundles are HUGE if you push multiple books.

I usually try for something like this.

3 stories in the same "niche"
Story 1: 5k words - $0.99
Story 2:7k-15k words - $2.99
Story 3:7k-15k words - $2.99
Bundle of all 3: $4.99

ALL of these will sell, but the bundle will usually outpace the rest easily. When I want more sales I will PROMO (kindle free promo) JUST book 1, then it will get 150-400dls a day and my bundle will get an additional surge in sales.

So, to help my brain understand that.

Romance sells pretty good.
Erotica, which basically is porno on paper. Or, to be more literal, contains more explicit and descriptive 'love-making' scenes than those in the Romance genre? And they sell much better?
But the flip side is that they can be banned at any time due to the grey area of Amazon guidelines?

So, if I can make an anology --
Romance are the high-rated novellas on daytime television with high advertising rates.

Erotica is the late night premium channel goodnese that contain more body parts and an extra "fee" to watch, but isn't allowed in all houses?
Click to expand...

As far as kindle is concerned, Erotica is actually Romance. It is simply a subcategory of romance. But yes, Erotica sells much more than anything else.

74% of kindle users are middle aged women.
Erotica/Romance accounts for something like %40 of all Kindle sales globally (It's an old number but probably pretty close)
Erotica is not ban-able or "grey", it is 100% allowed. Certain subject material is NOT allowed. Bestiality, Incest, Anything rapey, Breeding, stuff that implies no consent. The only thing that is "grey" is the rep looking at your stuff. It may pass 100 checks and one guy may see the word "forced" and think "IT'S RAPE BAN IT" even if you said "He forced her naked body up against the wall" they don't care, he makes min wage to do his job. In this case you file a dispute, 95% of the time they reverse it, and you have no problems, 5% they don't and you mirror it and change some things and republish.

Amazon also has a love/hate relationship with erotica publishers to say the least. We make them over 50% of their revenue, but we also attract the wrath of bad parents who think the responsibility of allowing access to certain content falls on the shoulders of Amazon rather than it being their responsibility to educate properly. Every once in awhile Amazon gets mad and implements something like the adult filter and we all have to work around it.
 
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vypersells said:
You missed the point somewhere. My "books" are shorts and range from 5k to 15k words. They are all $2.99. Most get 1-2 sales a day, while 2 of them get like 4-10 sales a day. Also, Bundles are HUGE if you push multiple books.

I usually try for something like this.

3 stories in the same "niche"
Story 1: 5k words - $0.99
Story 2:7k-15k words - $2.99
Story 3:7k-15k words - $2.99
Bundle of all 3: $4.99

ALL of these will sell, but the bundle will usually outpace the rest easily. When I want more sales I will PROMO (kindle free promo) JUST book 1, then it will get 150-400dls a day and my bundle will get an additional surge in sales.



As far as kindle is concerned, Erotica is actually Romance. It is simply a subcategory of romance. But yes, Erotica sells much more than anything else.

74% of kindle users are middle aged women.
Erotica/Romance accounts for something like %40 of all Kindle sales globally (It's an old number but probably pretty close)
Erotica is not ban-able or "grey", it is 100% allowed. Certain subject material is NOT allowed. Bestiality, Incest, Anything rapey, Breeding, stuff that implies no consent. The only thing that is "grey" is the rep looking at your stuff. It may pass 100 checks and one guy may see the word "forced" and think "IT'S RAPE BAN IT" even if you said "He forced her naked body up against the wall" they don't care, he makes min wage to do his job. In this case you file a dispute, 95% of the time they reverse it, and you have no problems, 5% they don't and you mirror it and change some things and republish.

Amazon also has a love/hate relationship with erotica publishers to say the least. We make them over 50% of their revenue, but we also attract the wrath of bad parents who think the responsibility of allowing access to certain content falls on the shoulders of Amazon rather than it being their responsibility to educate properly. Every once in awhile Amazon gets mad and implements something like the adult filter and we all have to work around it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your really informative post.

I think it's very very interesting how you initiate the fiction niche series with a shorter 5k word book then bump it up just a little bit for book 2 and 3 etc

Then rinse and repeat.

Thanks for the quality input.

But that 35% royalty gets to me for the .99center. :-\
 
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NemoTheOne said:
Thanks for your really informative post.

I think it's very very interesting how you initiate the fiction niche series with a shorter 5k word book then bump it up just a little bit for book 2 and 3 etc

Then rinse and repeat.

Thanks for the quality input.

But that 35% royalty gets to me for the .99center. :-\
Click to expand...

It used to get me too, but don't think of it as a book, think of it as your "Bait". I also put it on free promo all the time so I consider it a loss-leader or bait book. Many business rely on this type of device, you may even see it in your local town, places will sell something or operate at a loss just to bring you in the door, then you upsell upsell upsell. So my loss-leader has links to the sequel in the book, along with little "bait" blurbs about the next story. If you want to get technical... You're getting paid to advertise :). I also get a lot of refunds on my .99 book that I suspect are then replaced by sales of the bundle.
 
Mate, I could pay someone just to tell me what I missed out...

vypersells said:
You missed the point somewhere. My "books" are shorts and range from 5k to 15k words. They are all $2.99. Most get 1-2 sales a day, while 2 of them get like 4-10 sales a day. Also, Bundles are HUGE if you push multiple books.

I usually try for something like this.

3 stories in the same "niche"
Story 1: 5k words - $0.99
Story 2:7k-15k words - $2.99
Story 3:7k-15k words - $2.99
Bundle of all 3: $4.99

ALL of these will sell, but the bundle will usually outpace the rest easily. When I want more sales I will PROMO (kindle free promo) JUST book 1, then it will get 150-400dls a day and my bundle will get an additional surge in sales.



As far as kindle is concerned, Erotica is actually Romance. It is simply a subcategory of romance. But yes, Erotica sells much more than anything else.

74% of kindle users are middle aged women.
Erotica/Romance accounts for something like %40 of all Kindle sales globally (It's an old number but probably pretty close)
Erotica is not ban-able or "grey", it is 100% allowed. Certain subject material is NOT allowed. Bestiality, Incest, Anything rapey, Breeding, stuff that implies no consent. The only thing that is "grey" is the rep looking at your stuff. It may pass 100 checks and one guy may see the word "forced" and think "IT'S RAPE BAN IT" even if you said "He forced her naked body up against the wall" they don't care, he makes min wage to do his job. In this case you file a dispute, 95% of the time they reverse it, and you have no problems, 5% they don't and you mirror it and change some things and republish.

Amazon also has a love/hate relationship with erotica publishers to say the least. We make them over 50% of their revenue, but we also attract the wrath of bad parents who think the responsibility of allowing access to certain content falls on the shoulders of Amazon rather than it being their responsibility to educate properly. Every once in awhile Amazon gets mad and implements something like the adult filter and we all have to work around it.
Click to expand...
 
@vypersells
Nice to see that you have such a great success.

My method is a little bit different (just an example):
If I have a good niche I plan 3 series for the beginning (with 3 different pen names):

Series #1 (low class products):
- a 4 part series
- each book has 5k words
- sell it for $0,99
- make a big bundle for $2,99
- plus paperback of the bundle
- important: each book has a different story; books can stand alone; you are faster because you can hire different writers

Series #2 (middle class products):
- also 4 parts
- 10k words each book
- sell the first part for $0,99 and the others for $2,99
- make a bundle $4,99
- paperback
- important: same like above but make sure that the first (cheap) book has the best quality

Series #3 (high class products):
- 3 parts
- each part hast 15k-20k words
- sell all parts for $2,99
- bundle for $6,99
- paperback
- important: NO stand alone stories; it must be written by one (your best) ghostwriter

So at the end you have 11 books + 3 bundles. Now you can mix your books to create another bundle + paperback = 15 books in total. Now cross promote your different series (eg. in series #1 you can promote the bundles of series #2 and #3 and so on.

Next step: Repeat everything!
Eg. Make another low, middle and high class series. Create part 5, 6, 7, 8 for your series #1 and #2 and part 4, 5, 6 for your third series. At the end you have 15 new books again. Now you can bundle the bundles of your three series. Series #1, #2, #3 (bundle 1 + 2). You can also mix your books to create 1 or 2 bundles again.

So at the end you have 22 books, 12 bundles, 9 paperbacks.
Another advantage: You just have to make 3 different cover layouts at the beginning (for every series). You just have to analyse the market for a niche and keywords one time. If you hire ghostwriters you are able to publish these books within 2 month.

After 1/2 year you have 66 books, 36 bundles and 27 paperbacks.
After 1 year you have 132 books, 72 bundles and 54 paperbacks.

Now the earnings (I talked about it a few posts above):
- 1 book = $100/month
- 132 books = $13.200/month
I don't want to add the earnings of the bundle and paperback because it's clear that an income of 10k/month is easily reachable within one year.

I think the biggest problem of most people is that they don't have a system. They are climbing from niche to niche and waste their time with analysis and so on. Yes, niche and keyword analysis is important but you just have to do it one time and then concentrate on the publishing task.
 
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vypersells said:
It used to get me too, but don't think of it as a book, think of it as your "Bait". I also put it on free promo all the time so I consider it a loss-leader or bait book. Many business rely on this type of device, you may even see it in your local town, places will sell something or operate at a loss just to bring you in the door, then you upsell upsell upsell. So my loss-leader has links to the sequel in the book, along with little "bait" blurbs about the next story. If you want to get technical... You're getting paid to advertise :). I also get a lot of refunds on my .99 book that I suspect are then replaced by sales of the bundle.
Click to expand...

Thanks vypersells. Excellent point, and fully see the effectiveness of the 'bait' technique.

I noticed also that there are some books that are put up there with an advance date, allowing for 'Pre-orders". It's not really pre-orders I'm after, but wondering if I can post the cover to book #2 coming out [future date] so that the readers could see that there will be a new installment in the series. Or at least can mentally prepare for it with a captivating cover, via the link(s) inside the book as you mentioned.

Basically, can you upload a cover/book slot in a "coming soon" sort of thing, with a projected future release date?
 
Pinger030 said:
@vypersells
Nice to see that you have such a great success.

My method is a little bit different (just an example):
If I have a good niche I plan 3 series for the beginning (with 3 different pen names):

Series #1 (low class products):
- a 4 part series
- each book has 5k words
- sell it for $0,99
- make a big bundle for $2,99
- plus paperback of the bundle
- important: each book has a different story; books can stand alone; you are faster because you can hire different writers

Series #2 (middle class products):
- also 4 parts
- 10k words each book
- sell the first part for $0,99 and the others for $2,99
- make a bundle $4,99
- paperback
- important: same like above but make sure that the first (cheap) book has the best quality

Series #3 (high class products):
- 3 parts
- each part hast 15k-20k words
- sell all parts for $2,99
- bundle for $6,99
- paperback
- important: NO stand alone stories; it must be written by one (your best) ghostwriter

So at the end you have 11 books + 3 bundles. Now you can mix your books to create another bundle + paperback = 15 books in total. Now cross promote your different series (eg. in series #1 you can promote the bundles of series #2 and #3 and so on.

Next step: Repeat everything!
Eg. Make another low, middle and high class series. Create part 5, 6, 7, 8 for your series #1 and #2 and part 4, 5, 6 for your third series. At the end you have 15 new books again. Now you can bundle the bundles of your three series. Series #1, #2, #3 (bundle 1 + 2). You can also mix your books to create 1 or 2 bundles again.

So at the end you have 22 books, 12 bundles, 9 paperbacks.
Another advantage: You just have to make 3 different cover layouts at the beginning (for every series). You just have to analyse the market for a niche and keywords one time. If you hire ghostwriters you are able to publish these books within 2 month.

After 1/2 year you have 66 books, 36 bundles and 27 paperbacks.
After 1 year you have 132 books, 72 bundles and 54 paperbacks.

Now the earnings (I talked about it a few posts above):
- 1 book = $100/month
- 132 books = $13.200/month
I don't want to add the earnings of the bundle and paperback because it's clear that an income of 10k/month is easily reachable within one year.

I think the biggest problem of most people is that they don't have a system. They are climbing from niche to niche and waste their time with analysis and so on. Yes, niche and keyword analysis is important but you just have to do it one time and then concentrate on the publishing task.
Click to expand...

What do you mean "low-class/high class products?"
 
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