Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

I have published 3 books so far in a little over a month. So far I have one sale, from my mom. I have one book on a free promo and it got about 60 downloads per day, my other 2 books are going for free tomorrow through Friday. So far, I haven't had a legitimate sale. I'm getting worried that guys like Pinger are selling snake oil, I mean he can barely write proper sentences yet he's banking thousands as an indie publisher?

Ill tell you how to make it on kindle, download the top books in any niche and pay a writer to copy them in their own words, then release them with slightly different titles and TOC, and at a lower price. I would love to hear somebody's results if they tried that, I'm getting burned out already, the amount of work is quite high- to edit,proofread, format for kindle style, and promote. Then add to it hiring ghost writers and all of the headaches and frustrations that Process entails...management, quality control, copy scape monitoring, topic selection, TOC creation, Did I mention cover design? outsource that to a freelancer, wait 5 days for a sample then another revision if there's mistakes...

Go on the kindle author forums, read the struggle and pain they're in trying to make it when there's more authors than readers by 10 fold.

Hey Cyrax-

Don't give up!

I've got 5 books, nowhere near some of the other posters, and I'm getting on average one sale/borrow per day. That isn't much. maybe $40 a month, but hey, that buys a couple pizzas and that ain't bad.

None of my books have been in amazing hidden niches, they have all been areas I've been interested in and can write decently in. Some of the books have been duds (the one I put the most time into has only made 2 sales) but others have been surprising.

Just keep at it and try out new areas and you'll find something that sticks.

But yep, definitely does take work, don't let others tell you otherwise.

Hi,

I published 40 books in about 45 days, and made only 350$.
It's a pure hardwork, don't give up, but don't tak einto account some magical experiences that Pinger030 or other people had, they are skilled, or they have a gift, I don't know.
With Kindle you won't be rich, but you can earn some cash to make nice travels

cyrax said:

I have published 3 books so far in a little over a month. So far I have one sale, from my mom. I have one book on a free promo and it got about 60 downloads per day, my other 2 books are going for free tomorrow through Friday. So far, I haven't had a legitimate sale. I'm getting worried that guys like Pinger are selling snake oil, I mean he can barely write proper sentences yet he's banking thousands as an indie publisher?

Ill tell you how to make it on kindle, download the top books in any niche and pay a writer to copy them in their own words, then release them with slightly different titles and TOC, and at a lower price. I would love to hear somebody's results if they tried that, I'm getting burned out already, the amount of work is quite high- to edit,proofread, format for kindle style, and promote. Then add to it hiring ghost writers and all of the headaches and frustrations that Process entails...management, quality control, copy scape monitoring, topic selection, TOC creation, Did I mention cover design? outsource that to a freelancer, wait 5 days for a sample then another revision if there's mistakes...

Go on the kindle author forums, read the struggle and pain they're in trying to make it when there's more authors than readers by 10 fold.

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This isn't really the right path for someone looking for a quick buck, and it's also not Black Hat, so this is almost the wrong forum for this type of work.

It is tough, and it takes time. Research is key. I put out 4 books in the fiction category long ago, and I did minimal research. I think it's been 5 months and they have made like $40 combined. I did more research, started using GOOGLE a lot. Search for trends, finally I found something that was listed as "breakout" and had about a 6500% search pattern over the last month. I then searched it on kindle, and found that there was a few books about it by the "pro's" that were priced at $4.99 all the way to $14.99. So I wikipedia'd the niche, I read websites, I wrote a book, made a fancy T.O.C paid someone on fiverr for a cover, and published.

That book made me $40 in the first day. Now it makes me about $10-$25 per day.

Since I switched to fiction, it's been much easier. With a good blurb and cover it will sell itself and it was much more fun to write!

There is no secret. I'm an ordinary guy like everyone else here. I also have to struggle with my tax payments, incompetent ghostwriters, aggressive competitors, bad reviews and so on. I've lost my AdSense account last month (it was part of my work before Kindle; $1,8k/month are gone from now).

My life isn't perfect ...I'm not perfect ...but I don't cry and try to improve every part of my life ...every day. And maybe that's the secret: I try to improve my business knowledge every day even if I already have financial success. I read about 4 hours per day about Kindle and marketing in general (price strategies, how to improve the relationship to my customers, how to analyse the market in a better way etc.).

I think this "theoretical work" is more important than to publish blind book for book. Every housewife can publish a book. But if you do it like everyone is doing it you'll get what everyone gets (= less success).

So yes ...it's important to keep on with publishing but you also HAVE TO improve every step during the publishing process. Make sure that you do everything as perfect as you can/know. And if you have absolutely no talent in eg. cover design or writing like me (because English isn't my mother language) you have to hire someone for this task(s).

Again: There is no reason why you can't have the same success like others. Everyone has the same chance. If you have less success than someone else in your niche you missed something. Maybe your cover is too bad, maybe the value of your content is too bad etc. - there is a logical reason for your failure. Success has nothing to do with luck...

At the end I just want to give you some details of my last 3 part book series ($0.99/book, 15k words/book). I have no bestsellers and want to show you that it's just a numbers game:

- Book #1: $4/day
- Book #2: $3/day
- Book #3: $2/day
Total: $9/day or $270/month

Sounds not so great but then I've published a 3 in 1 collection of my already existing content for 2,99€. This collection brings $10/day or $300/month.

Total: about $600/month.

I've invested $400 the writing so I had my money back after 20 days. I'm able to publish about 10 books per month or 3 series. 3 x $600 = $1800 more/month.

I can not publish more than 10 books per month because I have to do the correction, the cover design, the formatting, the book description and so on alone. 10 books is my personal limit. Next step is to automate other processes (cover design, formatting etc.) to publish 15-20 books. But I also have to struggle with the outsourcing of this work but that's the only way I can grow. If I have success I can bring it to the next level. But with every new "business level" I have to increase my "personality level".

It works for me but that doesn't mean that it will work for you because only the knowledge of this method is no guarantee for success. Everyone knows that a series + collection works. And everyone is doing it. But again: If you do it like everyone is doing it you'll get what everyone gets (= less success).

I don't know what else do you want to hear. There is no instruction for success. It only depends on your personality. You don't believe in you and I am sceptical with outsourcing the formatting etc. ...we all struggle just in a different way. And if you really want to struggle with the problems that I have (but also enjoy all the positive things like financial freedom) you first have to master the basic levels. Success is a process and you have to master every level perfectly. Think about it...

Pinger030 said:

There is no secret. I'm an ordinary guy like everyone else here. I also have to struggle with my tax payments, incompetent ghostwriters, aggressive competitors, bad reviews and so on. I've lost my AdSense account last month (it was part of my work before Kindle; $1,8k/month are gone from now).

My life isn't perfect ...I'm not perfect ...but I don't cry and try to improve every part of my life ...every day. And maybe that's the secret: I try to improve my business knowledge every day even if I already have financial success. I read about 4 hours per day about Kindle and marketing in general (price strategies, how to improve the relationship to my customers, how to analyse the market in a better way etc.).

I think this "theoretical work" is more important than to publish blind book for book. Every housewife can publish a book. But if you do it like everyone is doing it you'll get what everyone gets (= less success).

......

....
.... Success is a process and you have to master every level perfectly. Think about it...

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Thanks for your honesty...appreciate it!

vypersells said:

This isn't really the right path for someone looking for a quick buck, and it's also not Black Hat, so this is almost the wrong forum for this type of work.

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Not really . . . We do WhiteHat here as well.

I noticed what's really missing from all of this is marketing efforts. Maybe it's being done - it probably is, but it's not really covered much here. I think, for this reason, many people are misconstrued by the success by some people are having - they are wondering how they can have much success without marketing.

Pinger030 said:

[...] If you have less success than someone else in your niche you missed something. [...]

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This is actually one of the lessons teached in the book "The Millionaire Mind" by Harv T. Eker (which I highly recommend btw). As simple as it sounds, this advice is golden. I agree with Pinger on this one: It's all about the mindset.

Just wanted to say:

If you think you can, you can.

If you think you can't, you can't.

Either way, you are right.

I think it's a dead dog, that's my 2 cents. I could get on here right now and say my new book is pulling 200 sales a week, but the majority of people here are having little to no results except for one guy who really doesn't even go into any detail except to tell you how many books he sells and how much he makes, and why you're too stupid to do it...

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

In the last 30 days, 83,888 books were published on Kindle. That's about 2600 books a day. You're a mino in the Atlantic Ocean...

Add to the equation, that the top publishers in the world are slashing prices of best selling author's books.

It sounded too easy, too good, then the work started...and it got very stressful and ultimately was a waste of time and energy. It was a dried up Well. All of the fresh water is gone. There's mud and some damp water, you can ring out some water, boil it, make it into drinkable water, but, why waste so much time when you can just go find another well? That's what I'm doing.

I wish you guys the best, I hope one of you has it in you to make the next indy smash hit. But, I don't. This system is not for me and I doubt it's for anyone reading this, the time to get in was when Kindle first started getting big.

I didn't make this post to bash anyone, I made this post so anyone lurking or a new guy reading this doesn't blow a couple months on this dead dog for no reason, trying to get fresh water out of a muddy dried up well.

cyrax said:

I think it's a dead dog, that's my 2 cents. I could get on here right now and say my new book is pulling 200 sales a week, but the majority of people here are having little to no results except for one guy who really doesn't even go into any detail except to tell you how many books he sells and how much he makes, and why you're too stupid to do it...

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

In the last 30 days, 83,888 books were published on Kindle. That's about 2600 books a day. You're a mino in the Atlantic Ocean...

Add to the equation, that the top publishers in the world are slashing prices of best selling author's books.

It sounded too easy, too good, then the work started...and it got very stressful and ultimately was a waste of time and energy. It was a dried up Well. All of the fresh water is gone. There's mud and some damp water, you can ring out some water, boil it, make it into drinkable water, but, why waste so much time when you can just go find another well? That's what I'm doing.

I wish you guys the best, I hope one of you has it in you to make the next indy smash hit. But, I don't. This system is not for me and I doubt it's for anyone reading this, the time to get in was when Kindle first started getting big.

I didn't make this post to bash anyone, I made this post so anyone lurking or a new guy reading this doesn't blow a couple months on this dead dog for no reason, trying to get fresh water out of a muddy dried up well.

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This is all relative though, Lets keep in mind Amazon controls half of a 14 BILLION dollar per year industry. Amazon refuses to release numbers, but rough math tells us that that means they are selling roughly 7 Billion dollars worth of e-books every year. It's hard to lose the fact that when you are referring to a BILLION you are saying ONE MILLION MILLION's.

If you are interested in writing, there is plenty of money to be made. 84k books in a month does not come close to saturating an industry this big. If you do your research, you write frequently, and you publish quality material, you will not lose out. You just have to stay with it and work hard. You're only a failure until you succeed, so just keep going. I'm sorry to say, but it's this attitude that leads to failure so frequently. You will fail over and over, until you stick with something. Bouncing from idea to idea and giving up after a month or 2 means you will always fail.

"The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint, the greats were great because they paint a lot."

cyrax said:

I think it's a dead dog, that's my 2 cents. I could get on here right now and say my new book is pulling 200 sales a week, but the majority of people here are having little to no results except for one guy who really doesn't even go into any detail except to tell you how many books he sells and how much he makes, and why you're too stupid to do it...

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From what I've read around the web it's a slow grind, requires a lot of money (if you are outsourcing writing and covers), and is about volume. Serious volume.

From what I've summarized it takes about 100 to 200 books to get a sustainable passive income ie. 1.5K to 2K a month from book sales/borrows. But you can also get revenue from your affiliate links on a 'resource' site page that you link in the book. And you can of course send them to a squeeze page.

It's a long commitment, but for someone like me it's doable because I have a full time job and can afford to have a 'slow grind'.

Also from what I've gathered because the market is over-saturated you have to do marketing and not rely on zon's algorithm to get you sales. (ie. list building, blogs, video marketing.)

(The above is theoretical. I am not earning.)

I'd advise you to search on youtube for the following vid:

How much money did I make publishing erotica on kindle.

To see the volume of books required for around 2.1K income. He says he has 211 book. From what I can gather this is what the 'average' writer or outsourcer can probably expect.

To complete the post of thedude1984, 2.1k with 211 books it's an average income of 9.95$ per month for each book.

Imagine that all of his books are priced at 99c. For each sales he earns 34c.

To make 9.95 he needs to sells 29.24 books so 1 sale per day.

Now assuming that it's 5k words story, that he found a freelancer at a bargain price of 20$ per book so 211 books x 20 $ = 4 220 $

It always seems good for me.

Now my experience on the field told me that you won't sell 1 copy of each book per day, 99% of kindle books don't reach that.
An average of 1 sale every 4 days is more acceptable. So to make an income like him, you'll need over 800 books.

Good luck !

thedude1984 said:

From what I've read around the web it's a slow grind, requires a lot of money (if you are outsourcing writing and covers), and is about volume. Serious volume.

From what I've summarized it takes about 100 to 200 books to get a sustainable passive income ie. 1.5K to 2K a month from book sales/borrows. But you can also get revenue from your affiliate links on a 'resource' site page that you link in the book. And you can of course send them to a squeeze page.

It's a long commitment, but for someone like me it's doable because I have a full time job and can afford to have a 'slow grind'.

Also from what I've gathered because the market is over-saturated you have to do marketing and not rely on zon's algorithm to get you sales. (ie. list building, blogs, video marketing.)

(The above is theoretical. I am not earning.)

I'd advise you to search on youtube for the following vid:

How much money did I make publishing erotica on kindle.

To see the volume of books required for around 2.1K income. He says he has 211 book. From what I can gather this is what the 'average' writer or outsourcer can probably expect.

Click to expand...

Talyn said:

Now assuming that it's 5k words story, that he found a freelancer at a bargain price of 20$ per book so 211 books x 20 $ = 4 220 $

It always seems good for me.

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I can't see $20 per 5K producing anything but garbage.

Maybe I'm wrong. Props if you've found a good ghostwriter for $20 a short story.

You have the wrong conception of a business. You'll never be the only supplier in any market for a long time. Because if a market is profitable, competitors will come. The entry barrier (the quality of products) is growing with the competition. If you have no succuss your products don't meet the quality standards. And if there are people who already have success (because they are providing decent quality products) there is NO excuse why you can't also provide decent quality products and have the same or even more success. Because Kindle needs no big investments or special knowledge. The entry barrier is "just" good quality and anyone can do it yourself.

But even if you are not able to provide a book that meets the quality standards (even though you have infinitely more time to make sure that your book has a great quality) how do you want to tell a ghostwriter what you want? How should he create a good book for $20 within a day (or maybe a week) if even you are not able to create a good book within one or two month?

And yes, at the end it's a numbers game. But that doesn't mean: Produce as much crappy books as you can. Even if you are jumped on the Kindle-train two years ago where the quality were low and crappy products worked ...today they would be dead. And this happens to every business/market/niche.

So if you are not able to be successful with a business where the entry barrier needs NO big investment, NO special knowledge NO special skills (even a housewive can do it) why the hell do you want to be successful with any other business??? That's impossible.

The People are reading so many ebooks as never before. The readership is still growing. We are getting more and more new marketplaces. There are more and more selfpublisher who have great success. And you tell the people that it doesn't work? Are you kidding us?

I think you have the wrong (or no) idea about businesses and success in genereal. You are just looking for a method to make fast money without much work. Okay, that's possible if you upload stolen videos on YouTube and shit like this. But this has nothing to do with success. The people here are looking for a good way to have long term success. It's the same in every business: Provide value (good products or services) and invest money to automate processes to provide more and more value. The more value you can give the more money you'll make. And what options do you have to provide value/products in the Internet? Audio, video and written "products. So writing is the most easiest thing because it needs no special skills. So you already have your written content but what options do you have to make money with it? Niche websites, paperbacks and eBooks...I don't say that Kindle is the key to get rich but it's the easiest way to start. You can also start with videos on YouTube, a website or an audio book but I think Kindle is the easiest way.

I started to write my first books. I analysed the market for niches (good niche = lower entry barrier) and had sucess. The next step was to create paperbacks of my content. I also created a facebook site, mailing list and a blog. Even if I didn't earn so much I had 4 different income streams (kindle, create space, my blog (adsense), facebook/mailing list/blog (affiliate). Now I had a nice small network. I published more ebooks, more paperbacks, more content for my blog + facebook site and increased my income. I wanted to publish more but the day has just 24 hours and I just have two hands. So I invested my money to automate some processes. First the writing and then the correction and formatting. That's my current situation/system. Now I have to invest month by month to keep my system "alive". If I have constantly success I will bring it to the next level and hire people for the cover design, book description, audio books (another income stream), a programmer for different mobile apps and maybe someone who manages the whole process and my freelancers. So at the end I have a fully automated business.

That's the intension of EVERYONE who starts a business. It makes no difference if you want to be successful with a restaurant, with a hotel or with Kindle, because mostly every business works the same. You are starting small and automate different processes step by step.

But even if I know how to build up my system I can't miss any step because success is process and needs to grow naturally. A process needs time and the time brings me new experiences and a stronger personality to bring my business up to the next level. Again: success is something that you can not buy. It has to grow naturally.

And I think some people don't understand this. They see that some people are making good money and that they outsource the work successfully ...and want it too. NOW! But you can't skip any levels to be successful like others. You have to start from the scratch. Write your first books, try different niches, learn as much as you can about your market, businesses in general, personality development and so on. And even if you have to work 12h+ per day or if you have to write 10 books to see any results - you have to do it and you can't skip it. Improve every step and if you see that it works THEN you can outsource the work.

THEN it becomes to the numbers/investment game and you can lean back more.

I'm not writing 100 books or 200 books, or 800 books. I wrote 3 books and I'm ready to jump off a bridge. They were only about 10,000 words each, too. Good luck.

This really is do-able, provided you find the right niche. I have two books which made just short of $900 combined last month.

However, anyone who says Kindle is completely whitehat is wrong. It isn't.

Because my books were topping bestseller lists, I've had a number of competitors joining the space. As Pinger says, that's fine, expect it, and just make sure you're doing a better job.

I am doing a better job, but this month my books have been targeted for negative reviews, and sales have dropped to the point where I'm only looking at $400. It sucks, but because I'm committed to playing fair, there's nothing I can really do except write more books.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how to get negative reviews pushed to the bottom of the review page? I'm not sure how, but the fake negative reviews are the top review on my product pages, but he has managed to push all his negative reviews (not from me, his book actually sucks!) to the bottom of his page.

nice post. Thanks!

Keep posting such information

dennis_797 said:

This really is do-able, provided you find the right niche. I have two books which made just short of $900 combined last month.

However, anyone who says Kindle is completely whitehat is wrong. It isn't.

Because my books were topping bestseller lists, I've had a number of competitors joining the space. As Pinger says, that's fine, expect it, and just make sure you're doing a better job.

I am doing a better job, but this month my books have been targeted for negative reviews, and sales have dropped to the point where I'm only looking at $400. It sucks, but because I'm committed to playing fair, there's nothing I can really do except write more books.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how to get negative reviews pushed to the bottom of the review page? I'm not sure how, but the fake negative reviews are the top review on my product pages, but he has managed to push all his negative reviews (not from me, his book actually sucks!) to the bottom of his page.

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Each comment has a little "did this review help you" blurp at the bottom with a yes or no vote. Comments with the highest "yes" are moved to the top vs the worst yes to no ratio are moved to the bottom. So all you have to do is get a friend or sign into a different account and vote no on the bad ones and they'll be pushed back, unless of course your bad comments have a ton of "yes" already in which cases it will be harder. Hope that makes sense