[jamaicabound]

With eBooks unless you already have an audience or a tribe sales are probably going to be low. You need to first start a youtube channel, start a blog, develope a strong social media following around a niche, figure out what they want and then make an ebook and it will sell. Just sitting down to write ebooks without first having an audience isn't typically going to go too far.

If I write an ebook about a topic I don't have a following with I can make maybe $50 a month

[Angry Beaver]

My initial thought was to get a small amount of passive income from selling the book, building a community surely doesn't sound like it. But I do understand that I need to put some additional work into it, thus I think I need to create home page and run updates e.g. a blog, then have presence on FB and perhaps add a Twitter account. I'm leaning towards doing some kind a fictional character or creating a "corporate ID" to advance my ideas, really would like to avoid using my own name.

[brokinetic]

I am planning to write a short story fiction in an ebook format. I learned that the selling plan of the book must be started while I write the book itself. I checked out the 'Writing a Novel Thread' but couldn't get the info I wanted.

My Questions:

1) Have anyone sold their book by kindle? Is it profitable and did it help your sale
2) How do you market a fiction e book? I am getting on touch slowly with fellow fiction writer using my blog where I have started to review books? Is a leadgen service or free advertising efficient for a fiction?
3) Is there any special platform where people sell only fiction books, especially a site where beginners can be noticed easily?

Any advice bad or good will be appreciated.

[WeekendCasanova]

Just unearthed an old book of mine that I read a while back by Dan Kennedy, called 'NO B.S Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing'. Kennedy is a legend in the direct-response world, and this is his brief rundown of how to write an ebook.

1. Come up with a book theme (i.e "How to increase profit without increasing your sales")
2. Write ten questions to answer as part of that theme
3. Write down three bullet points answering each question
4. Record yourself answering these questions
5. Send your recording to a transcriber (internettranscriber.com)
6. Edit the final transcripts.
7. Hire a freelancer to design the book.
8. Lift up your hand and pat yourself on the back.
9. Sell through Amazon KDP, or your site.

[GreyFFM]

(09-19-2016 02:30 PM)brokinetic Wrote:  

1) Have anyone sold their book by kindle? Is it profitable

Kindle royalties are generally 70%. So for a $4.99 book, you make $3.49.

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30F3VI2TH1FR8

Whether that is "profitable" for you depends on how much it costs you to "produce" the book. The beauty of ebooks is that there are few out of pocket costs, so your costs are really just your time plus art for a cover.

So profitability really depends on how many copies you sell.

How many copies you sell depends on a lot of things but unless you get lucky its going to turn on the size of your existing audience. That is why you see a lot of authors with free or $0.99 offers for their kindle books - they want to build an audience for the next book or get word of mouth for this book.

As for the print vesion, you can self publish on Amazon inexpensively via Create Space. Generally, the kindle, print, and audio formats complement rather than canabalize each other. As for hard cover, its an anachronism and most prefer paperback. Its a little counterintuitive but if you look at prices for used books, the paperback is usually more expensive than the hardcover. Probably because its easier to put in your purse or backpack.

[ElFlaco]

Sometimes it seems like everyone who has published an eBook also has a book about how to publish an eBook.

I've gotten a lot of value from 30daystox.com (Robert). Many of his posts are about writing, copywriting and branding, emphasizing keeping it simple. No idea if he has an account here but he'd fit right in. Here's his post about how to write a how-to book:
http://30daystox.com/write-full-length-book/

Mike Cernovich often writes about writing and publishing on his blog. Here's his post explaining his 'write 2, give 1 away' tip:
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2015/11/17/...irst-book/

[weambulance]

Delete - accidentally posted before I was done

[Angry Beaver]

January 2017 Update:

The document was sitting in one of the folders for almost 2 months and the cover which my friend designed was ready more than a month ago, but I just couldn't pull the trigger. I was overthinking it 175% and it was eating my soul away.

The hard part is not the writing, but coming up with a marketing plan of sorts: fixing the homepage, FB-page and all the rest. Finally said "fu*k it today" and published it on Amazon. Should be available within 72 hours and now I need to start building that FB community to get some interested people to lurk around. Fingers crossed.

[Angry Beaver]

I could use some input on eBook marketing as of today I have made only a single sale. Probably a friend anyway.

I've cut my commuter time by 2,5 hours a day and now have some time to focus on the marketing aspect. First thing I have learned is that marketing comes before the product nowadays: since I don't have any whether there is even a demand for this kind of e-product and I don't have a community to sell it to I'm really shooting in the dark.

Firstly, I'm willing to give a freebie pdf of the booklet in exchange of review on Amazon and some feedback. If you have some time and are willing to help, PM me to get the document. Moreover, I'd like to have your thoughts on the book: should I even bother continue with the marketing or use it as lesson learned and put it in my portfolio and start on something else.

[RagnarLothbrok]

I just published my first ebook on Amazon 2 weeks ago. The first weeks are tough because your book won't rank very high. You need a couple of reviews first until you will see any organic traffic from Amazon searches. If anyone is interested, I could throw up a quick datasheet on how I wrote the ebook and how to market it. Amazon itself is not very profitable due to their limitations. If you want 70% profit margin, you can't price the book higher than 9,99$. The real money lies in selling the book on your own website.

[Angry Beaver]

I'd be very interested in seeing that datasheet.

What is the book about (what niche)? How long is it?

[testos111]

I just sold the 1000th copy of my e-book on Photography just a few days back. I had released it almost one year back to the day.

Here are some lessons I learned:

1. Most of sales came from people who already knew me (my students). This is extremely important. Never ever release an e-book without an existing customer base. I had a Facebook group comprising of almost 500 members that time and around 30% of them bought it straight away.

2. Most of your sales are going to come at the discounted price and not what you are originally selling.

3. The last point makes it imperative that you have an e-mail list. Twice a month I send en e-mail to my list giving away the e-book at 50% off and get decent amount of sales.

4. You really cannot rely on e-books to make all your income, at least not for a long time. If you're selling it on your own, the problem is with the volume and if you're selling it via Amazon, the problem is the cut.

5. I use my e-book for just one purpose. To cover my marketing/advertising costs to build my list. What I do is that once someone signs up for my list, I immediately give them a OTO for the ebook with a massive discount. If they buy it, I acquire them and many others for no cost. It's referred to as a self liquidating offer in IM.

I'm soon making my e-book free and putting all the content on my site. I have a gut feeling that what I'll lose on the sales end will be massively put off by the SEO advantage and traffic I expect from it since it's almost 500 pages of content.

[Tytalus]

Speaking of ebook to other sources of income, It can be worth looking up Athol Kay.

He wrote a blog for a while and then self published a book in print and in ebook format.(Married Mans Sex Life) He released another ebook shortly (Do these pants make my ass look fat?) thereafter. Made enough money to quit his day job.

He blogged some more and started up a forum. Wrote a 3rd book. Then transitioned into being a life coach.

The coaching is big bucks, way more than a book. Now, if you can't afford coaching, you can by access to various video series he releases through vimeo.com .