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[How To](Amazon Kindle) E-book Publishing Business-All You Need to Know to Start/ Make Serious Money
.
Another reason for which I am starting this thread is that I receive tons of questions from new customers regarding the e-book business (eg: How can I create a new ebook without actually writing it? How can I publish a new book on Kindle? How can I make a book free on Kindle? Why should I make it free since I will lose money? How to get reviews? etc). Since the main object of my sales thread is not related to offering business consulting, I think it is a good idea to address all these questions here so that anyone could understand the e-books business by reading this free guide.
Now a few words about me and my expertise in this area: I started 3 years ago with the Kindle ebooks. Things went well, I teamed up with a couple of friends and now we have hundreds of books published on this platform. We learned that promoting our books seriously is the key of success in this business. We also offer a service on cracked because we need to diminish the costs associated with our book promotions. I'm not trying to promote my service through this thread, I just want to help the part of cracked community which is interested to find more about this type of business. Furthermore, I might learn new things from other members, as well. End of story.
What is this thread all about?
It’s intended to answer the most frequent questions and problems that people are getting when they start to publish e-books or while they are trying to expand this business. Several important steps in this journey will be described here, like:
1. Is the (Kindle) e-book market saturated?
2. What type of e-book should I write?
3. How should I earn from this e-book?
4. How to create/ get content for your e-book?
5. Where to publish the e-book?
6. How to publish the e-book?
7. How to price the ebook?
8. How to get reviews for this e-book?
9. How to promote it?
10. Where should I promote my e-book?
11. How to scale up the business
The a/m questions are the most frequent questions I receive from my customers and partners but I might discuss about other matters (if they come in mind :D). I strongly encourage you guys to post new questions, comments etc. because I would like this thread to contain as much (useful) information as possible.
Furthermore, I need to add the fact that the information in this thread will be based on my personal experience in this business. I will not re-invent the wheel here…my scope is to gather all the important information in just one thread. All the things that will be posted here can be easily found if you do a good online research but, because I want to ease up things, I will try to gather all this info here.
So, let's start:
1. Is the (Kindle) e-book market saturated?
A very short answer would be ‘Yes and No’. ‘Yes’ because there are millions of e-books being published each year and ‘No’ because there is always need for new e-books.
For example, let’s take the non-fiction niche. There’s always something new happening in the world. What did we have this year: we had Syria crisis, we had the worldwide fight against t3rr0rism, US Elections, Summer Olympic Games, Hurricane Matthew, Brexit, Zika Virus etc ( and this are just some things that I found on google Trends after a 5 minute research). All these ‘events’ are generating book sales in amount of millions of dollars (just like they generate $$$ for any other type of media.)
In the fiction niche, we have movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, Divergent etc. which generate new trends each year. Fiction books that follow these trends are booming: they generate 6-7 figures profit for their authors (entrepreneurs) that take their job seriously.
There is always a new niche appearing in this market (no matter if we talk about fiction or non-fiction books). So there is always a gap that you could fill in because niches are being born from people’s needs. When people need something, they are ready to pay for it.
The competition is tough on the e-books market. But, if it wouldn’t be tough it would mean that there is no profit here. For me, a decreasing or inexistent competition is always bad news.
Furthermore, ‘saturated’ is not synonym with ‘unprofitable’. You can still bank hard from this business. This is a billion dollar market and it’s still growing. Being saturated means that this market needs quality products in order to offer profit. So, if you will start your business in this market right now, you will need to do your homework much better than you would have done it a few years ago. You have to do your research better, you have to estimate a realistic profit figure that each new book will be able to generate, you need to provide quality content and you need to market/ promote seriously, because your competition is quite tough nowadays. Only then you WILL bank hard. Only then you can RINSE & REPEAT.
2. What type of e-book should I publish?
If you want to succeed in this business, you need to treat like any other business. Your scope is to make profit out of it. Therefore, you need to find a balance between your skills, your hobbies, the things you are good at and the niches that sell well. If you would like to write about grey ducks (just an example:) )but nobody is interested about them (there is no market), you should find something else. Find something which is complementary and which might sell well. Write about how to grow ducks (again...just an example).
We always get to this question, whether you’re new or established in this business (actually, if you’re established in this business the question would sound like this: What type of e-book should I publish next?).
So , is it going to be Fiction or Non-fiction?
There is no simple answer for this question. There are several things to analyze before deciding if you publish a Fiction or a Non-Fiction book;
• How will I earn money from this business?
If your income streams will not be limited to just the sales of your book, you should start thinking about non-fiction niches. That’s because it’s pretty easy to find a non-fiction niche that will allow you to promote other products (and, when saying ‘products’ I am not talking just about physical products; It could mean CPA offers, for example). Furthermore, you have to think about the buyers behaviors, too. People that are looking for buying a non-fiction book, are actually trying to find a solution for a problem. When trying to find a solution for their problem, these people are more oriented towards spending another sum of money on a ‘tool’ that will help them solve their problem. Even if your book itself solve their problem, there might be a ‘tool’ which is solving their problem faster. That ‘tool’ needs to be promoted in your non-fiction book, too.
Fiction books are not very good for promoting other ‘products’. Although they can offer some good results in this area, too. For example, some erotica book authors are promoting dating websites offers. While people buying erotica might be interested in this type of offers, they are not necessarily in the buying mode when reading an erotica book.
That’s why non-fiction books are better at promoting other products, when compared to fiction books.
• Am I good at creating a fiction book? Or I might be better at publishing a non-fiction book…
Yes, you need to ask yourself this question. But, you must notice that I didn’t use the word ‘write’. I used ‘create’ and ‘publish’. That’s because many of you will just say: ‘If I am not good at writing fiction, I will just hire someone. I just want to know which type of book brings the highest profit. Furthermore, some very big names in this business use ghostwriters’.
It’s not that simple :D
We will discuss more about hiring someone to write your book (ghostwriter) but, at this stage, I just want to highlight the fact that you should also have some skills in this area. Okay…you might not be good at writing a 100k erotica book…but you should at least be able to develop a script after which your ghostwriter will actually write your book. You will find out why in the next chapters of this guide.
The same principle applies to non-fiction books. You need at least to be able to research the niche you’re going to enter and understand its most important principles. Again, more details in the following chapters, where I will detail how to find a good ghostwriter and what to ask from him/ her.
A few advantages in each genre
Fiction
- It pays better (you can price your book higher because you are offering a solution)
- It could be easier (don’t need imagination, you just have to research)
- Easier to rank your book (keywords are an important factor, no matter what platform you’ll use to publish your book; non-fiction keywords are very niche oriented, therefore they are easier to find and rank).
Non-Fiction;
- While it generally brings less profit in the beginning, establishing yourself as an author could bring a much higher profit (world’s most known writers are in the fiction genre);
- You can create series of books which will also bring more profit;
- Bestselling fiction brings more profit compared to bestselling non-fiction
- You can use your imagination in order to bring profit …so it could be a lot more fun for some people :)
That’s it for today. I will try to write the next chapters as soon as possible. Would also ask you to come up with new topics from this business and address them here.
Thanks.
.
Another reason for which I am starting this thread is that I receive tons of questions from new customers regarding the e-book business (eg: How can I create a new ebook without actually writing it? How can I publish a new book on Kindle? How can I make a book free on Kindle? Why should I make it free since I will lose money? How to get reviews? etc). Since the main object of my sales thread is not related to offering business consulting, I think it is a good idea to address all these questions here so that anyone could understand the e-books business by reading this free guide.
Now a few words about me and my expertise in this area: I started 3 years ago with the Kindle ebooks. Things went well, I teamed up with a couple of friends and now we have hundreds of books published on this platform. We learned that promoting our books seriously is the key of success in this business. We also offer a service on cracked because we need to diminish the costs associated with our book promotions. I'm not trying to promote my service through this thread, I just want to help the part of cracked community which is interested to find more about this type of business. Furthermore, I might learn new things from other members, as well. End of story.
What is this thread all about?
It’s intended to answer the most frequent questions and problems that people are getting when they start to publish e-books or while they are trying to expand this business. Several important steps in this journey will be described here, like:
1. Is the (Kindle) e-book market saturated?
2. What type of e-book should I write?
3. How should I earn from this e-book?
4. How to create/ get content for your e-book?
5. Where to publish the e-book?
6. How to publish the e-book?
7. How to price the ebook?
8. How to get reviews for this e-book?
9. How to promote it?
10. Where should I promote my e-book?
11. How to scale up the business
The a/m questions are the most frequent questions I receive from my customers and partners but I might discuss about other matters (if they come in mind :D). I strongly encourage you guys to post new questions, comments etc. because I would like this thread to contain as much (useful) information as possible.
Furthermore, I need to add the fact that the information in this thread will be based on my personal experience in this business. I will not re-invent the wheel here…my scope is to gather all the important information in just one thread. All the things that will be posted here can be easily found if you do a good online research but, because I want to ease up things, I will try to gather all this info here.
So, let's start:
1. Is the (Kindle) e-book market saturated?
A very short answer would be ‘Yes and No’. ‘Yes’ because there are millions of e-books being published each year and ‘No’ because there is always need for new e-books.
For example, let’s take the non-fiction niche. There’s always something new happening in the world. What did we have this year: we had Syria crisis, we had the worldwide fight against t3rr0rism, US Elections, Summer Olympic Games, Hurricane Matthew, Brexit, Zika Virus etc ( and this are just some things that I found on google Trends after a 5 minute research). All these ‘events’ are generating book sales in amount of millions of dollars (just like they generate $$$ for any other type of media.)
In the fiction niche, we have movies like Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, Divergent etc. which generate new trends each year. Fiction books that follow these trends are booming: they generate 6-7 figures profit for their authors (entrepreneurs) that take their job seriously.
There is always a new niche appearing in this market (no matter if we talk about fiction or non-fiction books). So there is always a gap that you could fill in because niches are being born from people’s needs. When people need something, they are ready to pay for it.
The competition is tough on the e-books market. But, if it wouldn’t be tough it would mean that there is no profit here. For me, a decreasing or inexistent competition is always bad news.
Furthermore, ‘saturated’ is not synonym with ‘unprofitable’. You can still bank hard from this business. This is a billion dollar market and it’s still growing. Being saturated means that this market needs quality products in order to offer profit. So, if you will start your business in this market right now, you will need to do your homework much better than you would have done it a few years ago. You have to do your research better, you have to estimate a realistic profit figure that each new book will be able to generate, you need to provide quality content and you need to market/ promote seriously, because your competition is quite tough nowadays. Only then you WILL bank hard. Only then you can RINSE & REPEAT.
2. What type of e-book should I publish?
If you want to succeed in this business, you need to treat like any other business. Your scope is to make profit out of it. Therefore, you need to find a balance between your skills, your hobbies, the things you are good at and the niches that sell well. If you would like to write about grey ducks (just an example:) )but nobody is interested about them (there is no market), you should find something else. Find something which is complementary and which might sell well. Write about how to grow ducks (again...just an example).
We always get to this question, whether you’re new or established in this business (actually, if you’re established in this business the question would sound like this: What type of e-book should I publish next?).
So , is it going to be Fiction or Non-fiction?
There is no simple answer for this question. There are several things to analyze before deciding if you publish a Fiction or a Non-Fiction book;
• How will I earn money from this business?
If your income streams will not be limited to just the sales of your book, you should start thinking about non-fiction niches. That’s because it’s pretty easy to find a non-fiction niche that will allow you to promote other products (and, when saying ‘products’ I am not talking just about physical products; It could mean CPA offers, for example). Furthermore, you have to think about the buyers behaviors, too. People that are looking for buying a non-fiction book, are actually trying to find a solution for a problem. When trying to find a solution for their problem, these people are more oriented towards spending another sum of money on a ‘tool’ that will help them solve their problem. Even if your book itself solve their problem, there might be a ‘tool’ which is solving their problem faster. That ‘tool’ needs to be promoted in your non-fiction book, too.
Fiction books are not very good for promoting other ‘products’. Although they can offer some good results in this area, too. For example, some erotica book authors are promoting dating websites offers. While people buying erotica might be interested in this type of offers, they are not necessarily in the buying mode when reading an erotica book.
That’s why non-fiction books are better at promoting other products, when compared to fiction books.
• Am I good at creating a fiction book? Or I might be better at publishing a non-fiction book…
Yes, you need to ask yourself this question. But, you must notice that I didn’t use the word ‘write’. I used ‘create’ and ‘publish’. That’s because many of you will just say: ‘If I am not good at writing fiction, I will just hire someone. I just want to know which type of book brings the highest profit. Furthermore, some very big names in this business use ghostwriters’.
It’s not that simple :D
We will discuss more about hiring someone to write your book (ghostwriter) but, at this stage, I just want to highlight the fact that you should also have some skills in this area. Okay…you might not be good at writing a 100k erotica book…but you should at least be able to develop a script after which your ghostwriter will actually write your book. You will find out why in the next chapters of this guide.
The same principle applies to non-fiction books. You need at least to be able to research the niche you’re going to enter and understand its most important principles. Again, more details in the following chapters, where I will detail how to find a good ghostwriter and what to ask from him/ her.
A few advantages in each genre
Fiction
- It pays better (you can price your book higher because you are offering a solution)
- It could be easier (don’t need imagination, you just have to research)
- Easier to rank your book (keywords are an important factor, no matter what platform you’ll use to publish your book; non-fiction keywords are very niche oriented, therefore they are easier to find and rank).
Non-Fiction;
- While it generally brings less profit in the beginning, establishing yourself as an author could bring a much higher profit (world’s most known writers are in the fiction genre);
- You can create series of books which will also bring more profit;
- Bestselling fiction brings more profit compared to bestselling non-fiction
- You can use your imagination in order to bring profit …so it could be a lot more fun for some people :)
That’s it for today. I will try to write the next chapters as soon as possible. Would also ask you to come up with new topics from this business and address them here.
Thanks.