How Easy Is It To Make Money On Kindle?

There isn't a better way to make a living than writing books for Kindle.

I chose Kindle after having owned an offline business, launched and marketed several courses here on the Forum and even wrote copy for several really big launches.

For me writing and selling Kindle books is less about the money and more about dedication to craft.

Sure, right now you can make really good money selling complete junk books, but readers are getting weary. The novelty is wearing off a bit (much like info products have their own cyclical process of popularity) and the time for sifting the wheat from the chafe is now.

Quality writers will continue to make an absolute killing on Kindle while the rest will fall back into white noise.

Here are some numbers for you:

Books published per country per year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-publishing boom sees 59% increase in DIY titles | Books | theguardian.com
Wait, there were HOW many self-published books in 2012?! | Inkless

While I certainly don't doubt that you can make a living selling books you outsourced for $0.01 a word, you must realize that you would be competing against people like me who have dedicated themselves to the craft of writing. If you are looking to make the big bucks like Hugh Howey or H.M. Ward or Chris Culver (all millionaire self publishers) you aren't getting there with books that were written for $0.01 a word.

Self-publishing operates in an open market, it is competitive and growing more competitive every day. What I would like to see is a marriage of talented writers and talented marketers - much like we see in the info product launch space. Partnerships between talent groups to better the space.

What I see a lot of now are talented marketers, people who could sell anything to anyone, realizing the cultural, economic and financial shift that has occurred since the opening of the self publishing world wanting desperately to take advantage of that opportunity (as any good businessperson would). But since they know almost nothing about the world of fiction and the craft of writing they turn to their business smarts (buy low and sell high, outsourcing etc.) in order to cash in.

The problem is that fiction isn't like that (non-fiction is a different story). If it was publishing houses wouldn't be struggling right now, bookstores wouldn't be closing, every movie would be a huge hit and nobody would ever lose money in Hollywood - but that just isn't the case.

On the other hand you have these people who have lived their entire lives surrounded by fiction. They have read 2 - 3 books a week, have been writing fan fiction for years, have developed their craft etc., etc., etc., but they know almost NOTHING about selling. I mean N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

These aren't the kind of writers you are going to find hawking their services for $0.01 a word either. These are the closet writers, these are the Wattpad superstars, these are the Nanowrimo champs that just look at writing as a "hobby" not knowing what they could be doing with their skills.

And what you end up with are two separate camps operating at 25% (a nice made up number) of their potential. You have marketers flooding the space with lower quality books and you have potential best sellers sitting on hard drives never making a dime.

Like I said before, the smart marketer is the person who will find a way to build relationships with the better writers and come up with mutually amicable solutions to each others problems.

The smart writer will accept those terms OR learn how to sell.

In short, yes. Kindle is an amazing way to make a living.

Having experienced working with "clients", "customers", "subscribers" and now "fans" - I can tell you that out of all of them, "fans" give me the most joy.

If you are considering publishing on Kindle, take a look at the course Kindling by Geoff Shaw. He teaches long term business methods and preaches quality over quantity.