My Kindle Journey

I put up 2 kindle books this year and it has been a new experience for me. I picked areas that I'm familiar with and didn't do recipes or some of the popular ones. I'm not too big on cooking so didn't want to harm anyone!

The kindle books are in the self-help and self-improvement niche. I gave away some review copies to friends and relatives and received some nice reviews. I also am using article marketing, social media and some of the marketing tips I picked up in Jimmy's report on Kindle Marketing Tips. The main description is about how to market other authors' books for them, but he actually includes for free his first wso that has all the marketing tips in it, so it makes sense to get this one rather than his first one since you'll get additional information.

The main negative in the above product is that the videos are silent. You have to watch them and pay attention! I am not used to that as I am used to multi-tasking. But, it actually turned out to be useful as I absorbed more about marketing than I would've having it as background.

One section involved how to optimize the kindle page itself of your book at amazon and I saw I left out some features there that I didn't think were important. There are also tips on ways to get reviews, how to use social media, the best way to use discussion boards, offline backlinks and using video reviews. Not many people are actually doing video reviews for their kindle books.

I do know a local therapist who has a book and I am going to speak to her about marketing it as a kindle book for her and see how that goes.

The other kindle resources I've found helpful are by Rosa. She has I think 4 different products on kindle and I liked the first one a lot on 2012 Kindle Success because it goes a lot into selecting a niche, studying best sellers and how to research the content properly. I personally am glad that amazon is cracking down on plr and public domain works and want original writing that shines.

I've worked with a number of elderly clients in assisted living facilities so may try to put some of their stories into a book I publish on kindle as they are all very moving and poignant. There is a lot of aloneness for people in nursing homes and alfs so visit there and make someone smile.

Right now I pay someone on fiverr 5.00 to format my books into mobi form for kindle, but you can do this yourself with Rosa's other guide- How to Format Books for Kindle . I tend to have a lot of things outsourced, but really there is no reason to not do this myself plus it is a great service to offer local authors and people online that have books in other formats.

One thing I've noticed is that when I do have one or two sales or give away a book, that then really helps the move up the category and then I get a few more buyers. I find that one or two sales will make my sales rank between 50,000 and 90,000 usually and get me in 2 categories in top 100. But it could be the niche I'm in.

It really is a lot of social proof because if people see you are number 8 in a category they are interested as it is on page 1. I think sales are the most important part , but definitely reviews, likes and tags help a great deal as well. I will post more as I get more results as well as more books out and can analyze my findings.

I did just notice that in one subcategory where there are 7 people that tagged it, I am now number 3 even though I haven't gotten any new reviews for the book. Also, though people warn about fiverr reviews, I think one or two would be fine but you would need to find someone who will write a few paragraphs and check their other reviews to see quality.

2013 Update- Moving Into Fiction

I had more sales for one of my books during christmas week on kindle. I also will be getting 27.00 from smashwords at end of month which covers 3 months, so that part isn't great, but it is something. I did notice that the smaswords sales are from apple as well as barnes and nobles.

I've been using tips from Geoff Shaw's excellent Learn Kindle Tips Membership to start working on my fiction books. But, there are lots of tips there on non-fiction and I have to admit I haven't used the fb and twitter marketing ideas he suggests. I used to be glued to fiction books from Nancy Drew days through my mid-twenties. I have 2 plots in mind and will write more to report on how these progress.

The important point though is that the book should be good quality. Also, Amazon is cracking down on people who just use info that is freely available on the net, so it's important to do good research. Remember, there is a library near your home and that is where I get some useful information for non-fiction. You won't have the risk of getting accused of info that is free on the net if you use books from the library as the basis of your research. Plus, the research generally there is better than using article directories!

With fiction, I realize that I prefer happy endings. Perhaps this is due to being a psychotherapist and hearing a lot of tragedy often. I wanted to add that romance themes are very popular during the year, but seem to be read even more in the summer.