Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Rose111 said:

I can't understand how it's possible in romance, or do you mean other genders?

It's just 2 options:
1) stand alone novel, and than it's end up with happy ending (they are married and happy)
2) cliffhanger that lead to second part of the series.
If you make anything else beside those options, readers will eat you alive
I guess we are talking about different genders here.

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I can only echo what Dayspring says.

Amongst other things I have done romance.

You can turn anything into a series if you plan it right.

But that is a skill on it's own.

I think you mean genre - gender is male or female.

Yea, i mean genre, sorry

" -Second book: Marriage enters its 'slump' phase at the same time that the main female character meets another guy who makes her feel the way her husband used to make her feel. This story is about her falling in love with the other guy, with the cliffhanger being when the husband finds out. "

Well, all the romance writers say one thing:
If women cheat in the romance, this is a huge "no" for the readers, they can't accept it.
There is even jokes on this subject - if you want a book don't make sells, all you have to do is to make the girl cheat

Well, i understand how to torn a story to a series, it's not a problem.
But, readers need to know it at first place.
For example to call a book: " book 1 in xxxxx series"
But when you do stand alone, and than make part 2 - it can piss a lot of people and i can understand why.
I make a lot of research, and from what i can see, most decide from the beginning if it will be a series or a stand alone.
Well, maybe i am wrong and it's not the way.

Hi Rose111,

It is upto you how you do it. My point is simply that it is more lucrative to do a series than a standalone book and as I said yes this is normally planned from the outset.

The key is get your 1st book up as fast as possible to see if it sells or not. Then worry about the exact story line of book #2.

I made 6 sales with my first book but that took a month and I haven't gotten another sale since the 21st. Still if you get lucky and manage a hit or can churn out a couple books a week I can see how it can be a good hustle.

Do publishers contact you if they want a publishing deal if they see a good book or series?

@theconscience
We are the publisher and we hire the authors. We analyse the market before and tell them what they have to write. We are responsible for the cover desing, the correction, formatting, marketing etc. and we decide where we want to distribute it. That's our business so there is no reason to sell our products to competitors (even if they are bigger publishing houses).

And yes, the big publishing houses will ask you. They have scouts who are looking for already good running books (= less risk; it's also numbers game for them). So let's say you have a 3 part series and a bundle and you already make $500/month ($6.000/year) with this series. I would sell it for the annual income * 3 = $18.000. Do you think they will pay this sum? No, but everything less makes no sense (or they want to give you a deal because thats even less risk for them). But I guess there are tons of writers who sell their work even for less than 10k. It's a really good investment for the big publishing houses. It's a line of their business and they are making millions just with that. I would also do this but I'm just able to invest a few thousands per month. It makes more sense for me (now) to hire the authors and publish new books. But for the future I also plan to buy already running books like the big players because it's a safe investment.

Thanks
How do the publishers contact you if you have a Pseudonym name on Amazon?

Facebook and email. Thats how they have contacted me in the past.

GringoMonkey said:

Hi Rose111,

It is upto you how you do it. My point is simply that it is more lucrative to do a series than a standalone book and as I said yes this is normally planned from the outset.

The key is get your 1st book up as fast as possible to see if it sells or not. Then worry about the exact story line of book #2.

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This is strong advice. I've had a book series extend beyond 8 titles and it's very common to have buyers pick up every single one of them. Experiment with bundles, it's another great way to pick up extra sales.

You definitely want to find a solid niche to move into with several books and the only way you'll know for sure is to put something out there.

How do yo uget you Facebook o email on you rAmazon profile?

Do Amazon ot delet eany emails because of spam etc?

Take it in the product decription, author profile and/or inside the book. It's not against the Amazon tos.

It's taken me several days but wow I finally caught up on this thread! Sending gratitude to all that have shared their experiences here. :You_Rock_

(I'm almost finished with my first book- so I'm hoping to see a bit of success as I get more stuff out there).:banana:

Pinger030 said:

But for the future I also plan to buy already running books like the big players because it's a safe investment.

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Pinger, huge thanks for your contributions to this thread, and congrats on building your business so fast- totally amazing!!!

The quote above assumes that a book will continue to sell well into the future. Are you looking at fiction or non with this...? Cause I am assuming it's much easier to build a fiction series where the sales continue on and on and not so much in the non fiction realm. Most of the fiction titles seem to do ok at first and then slide down.

What are your thoughts on this if you don't mind me asking..

@nonamejoe

Thanks. It's just a rough plan to buy already good running books in the future like the big publishing houses. I think I would buy high quality non fiction books because my own non fiction series are running very well. I would try to establish my own brand before doing this. High quality non fiction books are more recommendable than fiction books because good information are always consumed. But if I come to this level where I can make such big investments ...maybe I have found better investments in this time. That's why I don't care about buying books of other authors.

For now it makes more sense for me to hire ghostwriters and publish fiction books (3 part series with bundles). With this tactic I'm able to increase my income by $1.000 per month. For now it's okay for me and there are already some points in my system that I can automate in the future (higher investments for me) to increase my monthly income. But let's say I'm reaching 25k/month. On this level I don't want to increase my income only by 2k per month. Then I need bigger investments (like buying already good running books). Or maybe I produce physical products around my non fiction niches. I don't know. But that's only my tactic and no guarantee for someone else. I start with fiction (cheap and fast to produce - fast mony - but no long term success), follow with non fiction books (takes longer to produce and is more expensive - not so fast money - but better for long term success), and than let's see what investments will come. And I have no doubt that other people have better tactics but for me it works and I'm happy with my results. If I can reach 20k/mo at the end of this year only with books. I'm happy with that. It's just a numbers games for me without hard work. If someone else is making more - congrats! But there is no reason for me to try other tactics.

Pinger030 said:

If I can reach 20k/mo at the end of this year only with books. I'm happy with that. It's just a numbers games for me without hard work. If someone else is making more - congrats! But there is no reason for me to try other tactics.

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Wow. From $0 to $20,000/mo in roughly 9 months (you started in May 2014, right?). Congrats on all the success! How many books would you say you have now? Do you remember how many it took before you saw $3,000/mo?

Very inspiring thread, thank you for all the information!

Didn't even now you could write your own kindle books, definetly not the method for e as I'm a poor writer but seems good

Dayspring said:

Wow. From $0 to $20,000/mo in roughly 9 months (you started in May 2014, right?). Congrats on all the success! How many books would you say you have now? Do you remember how many it took before you saw $3,000/mo?

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Fiction sells way more than non fiction. So if you wish to outsource / or are good at creative writing I would look into that.

To answer your question you can achieve $3000+ with one book if you design it well enough. I have several books that generate me more than $3000 each per month. But more realistically, you wont do that to start with. Create a series as it is easier to scale to reach $3000.

GringoMonkey said:

Fiction sells way more than non fiction. So if you wish to outsource / or are good at creative writing I would look into that.

To answer your question you can achieve $3000+ with one book if you design it well enough. I have several books that generate me more than $3000 each per month. But more realistically, you wont do that to start with. Create a series as it is easier to scale to reach $3000.

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Gringo, do you have any advice on finding high quality writers for 300-1000$? I have enough capital to produce several books at that level, but not enough to experiment with like 10-20 different writers before I find one good one. Right now I'm paying writers 100 dollars which is easy, but my books will never be as good as yours, and reading what you've said has really made sense to me in terms of trying to produce the best book you possibly can in your niche, so ideally I want to pay more for better writers/illustrators and so fourth, but I dont really have the cash to mess around hiring 10 1000$ ghost writers to just find out that none of them are that good. Just curious as to if you had any screening methods you'd be willing to share, or if you just ended up experimenting with several writers before choosing

Thanks to Pinger for the reply!

You are a serious publishing badass. :top:

If I manage even part of the success you've had I will be way too happy!