Kindle publishing

[Jeffrey Luke]

Hey congrats on the first sale! That said, you've gotta create a stronger blurb. And get reviews on your book (you can gift them to get them rolling). Without those factors to increase conversions (sales) your marketing won't be as effective.

After that, price to 99c blast with promos (search kboards for a list of sites.) And that'll rank you to page 1 with visibility for some organic sales for both of your current kindle categories (yours are not very competitive). Swap the pricing to a higher one when you're there and ride off that momentum. Since you're in KDP Select now, if you haven't changed your price in X period of time, you can explore countdown deals which give you a 70% royalty on the 99c component and allow you to place artificial scarcity on the price increases to create urgency.

The marketing will probably cost $100-200 and you'll likely breakeven from those efforts. Again, it really depends on what you're trying to do here. I don't see your portfolio being big enough to shoot your kindle royalties to the stratosphere so a profitable method would be using the book as a lead gen to your site which then sells video courses or hitting "best-seller" status and using that as credibility to get higher paying photography jobs. Ebooks as a distribution medium might be sub-optimal here for photography lovers; I don't suspect many people go to a book to learn photography and instead would prefer video courses and definitely a live, hands-on course.

Hope that helps.

Hey Omni,

Thanks so much for your encouragement and solid advice. I definitely gotta create a stronger blurb. Will do that now. BTW, the book was purchased from someone I helped out a lot with advice on Reddit. He actually bought another title of mine, UNSNAPSHOTS and wrote a nice review for it. It's my first review on Amazon.

I will look into pricing to 99c blast with kboards to gain visibility. I will take your advcie on swapping pricing to a higher one when I get momentum. Will try the countdown deals too as I haven't changed the price in a couple of weeks.

I don't mind if I breakeven with marketing, or even lose some money. I suppose I should have a clearer vision of "what I'm trying to do here" and I'd say that finding a market for my books and exploding the growth there would be great. As an example, Tim Ferriss serves his following really well with his podcast and videos, etc, and then periodically he sells his books with great success. I realize I'm not celebrity status as he is, but he's a model for filling a niche well.

Reddit has been super useful. I find many people are asking detailed questions and I'm able to help them. There are probably hundreds or thousands of people with similar problems. I think I've found a place to solve problems.

Thanks again for your detailed advice.

I'm going to start putting it to work.

Jeff

 

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[Jeffrey Luke]

My advice is geared toward fiction and a series book strategy where you can price the first book for free or 99c (at 35% royalty) and make your money on the back end. KDP enrollment is advantageous also for fiction since it'll boost your visibility with each borrow and feels frictionless for the reader. You'll give up control in return for quicker growth.

If it's non-fiction, my expertise should be discontinued and MTF's advice much more applicable.

What I'm saying is I can't help with specifics because: I have no idea what your circumstances are, what your genre is, whether you're looking for this book to make money by next week, whether you have more books coming in the pipeline, whether you're looking for maximum readers irrespective of payback, etc.

Hi, I just wanted to thank you for your advice yesterday. I had not realized that your advice was primarily for fiction. My book is photo instruction, so it's a bit different, but I still learned a lot from what you shared.

1. I added a link on the inside front & back covers so people could get a free photo book (it's for sale on Amazon right now for $9.99 and they just enter their email to receive it.

2. Instead of charging $.99 for the book, I'm putting it at $4.99. I know it's still pretty inexpensive, but I remember MTF saying that people often leave money on the table by not charging enough.

3. I haven't yet enrolled in Kindle Select because I think it might be useful to try selling my book on my website or through other means.

Again, just thanking you for your input. I hadn't realized the importance of getting an email address, and I like building up goodwill in the process by giving people a free ebook.

Jeff

 

[Jeffrey Luke]

I posted this in the wrong spot. Please delete. Thanks.

 

[Jeffrey Luke]

Assuming your book doesn't have any visibility because it's in a tough category: Your 1st book should stay at 99c, be enrolled in KDP select and boosted with ads occasionally when there's slippage. Then ensure you have a proper lead capture in place to build your email list. You'll be making more money off the sequels than anything else, so right now, your goal is more reads, more email captures, more reviews and repeat.

If your book already has visibility, then you can play around with the pricing at 2.99 / 3.99.

Also you can distribute your books for free in exchange for a review. Amazon banned that practice for physical products, not ebooks.

Lastly, you should not be creating your own covers when you have no photoshop skills. Paying someone on fiverr is a better bet. The covers are a huge factor in the % conversion to a sale, with the others being your title, reviews and blurb copy.

Hey @Omni I just want to thank you! Somebody bought one of my eBooks in the Kindle store today! First sale.

I accomplished this with a simple process. I enrolled my 1st book in KDP select. Inside the front matter I had a sign-up link for a 2nd free eBook, and the buyer provided their email address to download the free eBook. So I have officially begun my email list with a real customer.

It was you who told me about making the first book easy to buy and have the proper lead capture in place to build my list.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. I promise to put them to good use!

Many thanks,

Jeff