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MJ DeMarco
I followed the science; all I found was money.
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I'm new to the Fast Lane Forum and British, so I might not be understanding everything in this thread correctly. But I do understand Amazon Publishing.
DON'T GIVE UP.
I've been publishing on Amazon since 2012. In 2017 I closed down my other business (very profitable but a big demand on my time) to focus on my publishing business; it's supported me since that day. My example is probably different from you because I'm a non-fiction author, but it's in a relatively small niche of photo editing.
When I started out, there wasn't much competition but then within 12 months my niche became flooded with rubbish and people trying to make an instant profit for no work. I managed to survive and ultimately prosper as I'll explain.
At one time I became fixated on writing more books because of the boost when one launches. Then I realised that's the road to being like the competitors trying to make a fast buck. Instead, I doubled down on quality to produce the best books I could and raised the price (but still within the 70% commission rate).
Next, I focused on building what I call a business ecosystem.
To give an example, when you buy one of my books it contains examples for you to follow. It directs you to my website where you can download the sample images to follow the examples. Whilst you're there I encourage you to join my monthly newsletter as everyone does. But this isn't your standard newsletter, I share more valuable tutorials and interesting things I've found on the internet each month that relate to my niche. As well as tutorials I publish YouTube videos which I embed in my tutorials. Best of all, I can include links to the videos in my books to better illustrate examples. On my website, you can either buy my books directly or you buy from Amazon. I earn affiliate commission from the Amazon links and some other affiliate schemes (but only for products I buy and use myself).
I won't bore you with more details of my "ecosystem" other than to say I'm always looking for ways for each element to feed the other elements. When I launch a book it goes in the newsletter and I have a single email announcement. I do Amazon advertising as well but only to maintain sales and all ads are profitable. I honestly believe the ecosystem idea and focusing on quality has made a big difference.
Reading through the thread (as much as I could because it's very long) there are lots of great promotional ideas but I don't think these sparks will ignite your business. What you need is more fuel before putting a spark to it. Your books aren't the fuel though, your customers are. Spend your time off thinking about how you could build a business ecosystem. How can you use this to give your customers more? How can you make contact with them and stay in contact? What are their expectations when they buy one of your books and how can you blow those expectations out of the water?
I could be very wrong but reading this thread it feels like you are focused on production (writing) and marketing the product. Sorry for the tough love and may not make me any friends but I can feel your pain and I don't want you to give up. Take time out yes but use it to think about how to come back stronger.
Good luck (unless you decide to give up).
This reflects something I stressed in The Great Rat Race Escape .
There are two elements to a successful Fastlane venture with scale and passive income potential -- the specialized unit and the business system. Too many people focus on the specialized unit (the books) and few time on the business system (your platform, lists, systems) so much so, they have no business system.
Publishing a book and throwing it on Amazon is not a business system. Placing a few ads for books you wrote is not a business system. This is how most new authors go about publishing with starry eyes and big dreams.
You've described your business system, which is working well. It also is a bit of a different game with you (and me) because we publish non-fiction. This forum, my lists, my YT channel, my social media outreach -- all part of the business system -- it helps me sell books, year after year after year.
Question is, how can we modify a non-fiction business system for fiction? Lists are great, but there has to be much, much more.
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