Less than 1% of you that self publish kindle books makes sales from its

Post up the link!

I guess its possible if horrible cover, horrible title, bad category, bad keywords, no marketing outside Amazon, No Free Promo days to kick it off.

But still

You have a book on Kindle based on your signature. Are these your findings? What were the parameters of your study? Are you hoping to justify your own failure?

So many questions.

So 99% of the people cannot even sell one book? Not even to their mom or their uncle or their next door neighbor? Rubbish. You found an inaccurate source.

100% of the kindle authors I know have sold at least some books.

Grunched the video, what is her definition of "making any money"?
Yea, probably only 1% are making serious money, at least enough to cover all their bills but probably 80%+ books on amazon have sold at least 1 copy or had at least 1 borrow.

According to this definition;

Most email marketing doesn't work so stop it.

Most SEO doesn't work so stop it.

Most WSOs fail so don't publish one.

Most videos on YT don't get traction so pull it down.

Most FB fan pages make squat so delete them.

Most affiliates don't make back what they put into it so give up.

What does work 100% of the time? A job. If you show up and even if you do a halfway job they have to pay you. You will get paid.

Mark

Uhm... no, I'm not. I'm not overly successful. I'm not a best seller. I'm not making loads of money. But I am paying the bills and have enough left over to pay for buying $8,000 worth of marbles to glue to my car and a really extreme drag queen wardrobe that is my every day wear.

Not super rich, but not dismal either.

Hmmmm... multiple thoughts here... #1, BEFORE watching her video, I first went to her Amazon page.

Okay... did you do that? Did you LOOK at what she calls "being the author of a lot of books"?

For one thing she does not have a single, solitary BOOK on her amazon page. She has 22 of what amazon refers to in recent emails as "scamlettes". A scamlette is a short book under 50 pages long, that FALSELY CLAIMS to be a "how to guide" to teach people how to make money, when all it really does is give the buyer a lot of hype and false hopes. An example of a scamlette would be a weight loss book, claiming to tell you how to lose 50lbs, but is written by someone who has never lost weight, never tried to lose weight and simple wrote a weight lose book, because they thought it would make them so fast cash.

So, before you judge what she says in her video, first look at her books, or rather her lack of books.

Of course she hasn't sold any books - she's yet to actually write a book.

Readers are not stupid, they can tell a scamlette from a book.

Let's look at her 22 "books". Amazon.com: Ann Eckhart: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

Everyone of them is a "How to make money doing ____ for fun and profit." or "___ made easy" (with a promise of making money doing it).

Including one written over a year ago, titled: How To Write, Publish & Promote Your First Kindle Book

Let me ask you something: would YOU buy a book from someone when their VERY FIRST book is "How to write a book"?!?!?! I certainly wouldn't!

There is a disturbing trend happening on Amazon and it bothers me a lot that it is happening. In the past 3 months (March, April, and May 2015), there have been more then 200 books published on how to be a successful author of this or that genre, and EVERY ONE of them, is the ONLY book, the author has EVER published. Not a single one of them is published by an actual author, who actually sells books, and yet they claim to be giving advice on how to make millions of dollars by self-publishing? They think we authors are stupid. They think we are too dumb to know they are pulling the wool over our eyes. I am so deeply pissed off and annoyed that there are so many scam artists out there trying to take advantage of new young writers, and so, I wrote a book on it a 400 page book on it to be exact.

Amazon is right now flooded with newly published "how to" books for authors. All of them are nothing but slim little pamplettes under 50 pages long, most of them only 12 pages long. There is one, that is an entire "series" on writing Erotica, each volume under 30 pages long and is not a book, but rather a chapter of a book. They are publishing a "how-to" book, as a serial, one chapter at a time! You only have to pay $2.99 per chapter!

How-to books require 2 things: they are supposed to teach you how to do something, and they are supposed to be books. This "how-to book" scam is getting ridiculos. And it's not just for writers. Try searching for diet and weight loss books: ten of thousands of these 12 page $2.99 one chapter at a time books have flooded Amazon in those departments as well.

What happened to the days when a how to book was the size of a college text book, with at least 200 pages and actually told you how to do something?

Don't believe every book that claims to teach you how to make money with Kindle. Most of them are out right scams. know the author behnd the book: look at what other books they have written. If the how-to write/ publish/ make millions with Kindle book is the only book they've ever written: RUN! Do not believe any book on how-to make lots of money doing ANYTHING unless the author of that book, can prove they actually are making millions doing the thing in question.

If an author writes a book on how to write or how to self publish or how to make money on Kindle, BEFORE, you buy the book, go to their Amazon Author Profile Page. The page on Amazon that looks like this: Amazon.com: Wendy C. Allen: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle Every author has one. Just click on their author name under the title of the how-to book and you'll be taken directly to it. The one linked there, is mine, of course. It is the same author name I use for my forum account you are reading now. I have 15 pennames though.For each author, only their primary penname has a page which looks like that. Their alternat pennames will have pages that look like this instead: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr...=relevancerank that penname is also me. You'll notice how the first one has a nice clean short link, while the second one has a long jumbled up looking link. You'll also notice that the first one lists ONLY books by the author, on that author's official page, and has a scrolling banner displaying all the currently published books, by that author; while the second one lists any author with a similar name, and there is no bio or information about the other.

Okay, so you find a book on how to write/ self-publish/ or get rich with Kindle. And you want to buy it, but, before you do, click on the author's name and first check out what other books they have written. If that is their first and only book: RUN - that's sure fire proof that the book is a scam.

What did you find when you clicked on my author page link and my penname link? On the first one you will find The Quaraun series (Unicorn Porn/ Yaoi) and several other assorted books of various genres. On the second one you'll find the My Alien Lover series ("soft" Alien Abduction Porn -not Erotica- only has mild sex scenes - a continuing serial that follows the relationship of a single couple). I have 13 additional pennames and, if you were to look at each other those pages, you'd see similar books, with similar covers, similar themes, and similar very low sales ranks. About 170 titles across all pennames, 4 or 5 or 10 or 20 or so, on each one. None of them is a best seller, but all of them are bringing in a steady income.

You'll also notice very low sales ranks and very low star rates on reviews if they have reviews at all. People who review my books generally don't like my books. But hey, I didn't write my books for people any more then I wrote them for money. Fact is, I happpen to like writing the things I write. I write them for me and seeing how I write genres people generally don't like, I don't expect to find a lot of people who like them. Such is life. Does that stop me from writing even more crappy low ranked books that will likely get even more poor reviews? Nope. Not one bit. Hey, i'm going for a Golden Turkey Award (yes, that is an actual award - it's awards the WORST of pretty much everything - no, I'm not joking, I actually do want a Golden Turkey Award; while other authors areracing to the top for the Nobel Prize, I'm racing to the bottom for a Golden Turkey... why? I have no clue, I just want to have a Golden Turkey.)

I'm not a best seller, as you can see from the low sales rank of each of my books, however, I'm not writing a book promoting how to write best sellers either.

I do write books on how to write, and in those I'm promoting, writing for the fun of writing, and making a profit on writing things that are fun to write. I'm not a millionaire from it, nor am I telling people that they'll become a millionaire if they do this. However, I do make several thousand dollars a year with this, and it allows me to only require a part-time job in retail. With both my writing income and my retail income, I'm paying the bills and have enough left over to pay for my art cars, my comic books, and my $500 a month catfood bills.

I'm not rich and I'm not telling people that they'll get rich if they do what I do. What I'm tell them is that I have fun writing the types of books I enjoy writing, and it's paying the bills, with enough extra for me to spurge on my hobbies and passions.

YEAH - THAT you can do on Kindle IF you ENJOY the act of writing and are willing to put in 30 to 40 hours a week at doing nothing but writing all day long. Writing ain't easy. It's hard work - especially if you want to knuckle down and write something people actually want to read.

Now here's the thing - I'm writing a genre that doesn't sell worth a poo. I'm lucky if EACh of my books sells 1 to 3 copies PER TITLE per week. I mean that there is WHY I have to have 170+ titles out there to make an income I can live off of. If I was doing like the women in your video and writing a few books and then sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in, sure I wouldn't make money either.

Being a writer is a full time job that usually pays about minimum wage IF you put in 30+ hours a week and are publishing at least 2 new books per month.

If you slap up a few titles and expect to never do any work writing again you are delusional.

But the fact is, I'm writing a genre that gets almost no sales at all and even I'm able to make a living at it. Why? Because I work at it, every day, every week, year after year. I'm also not trying to make money at it either.

The fact is, I'm insanely addicted to both reading and writing Weird Tales and Bizarro. It's my favorite genre. I love it to pieces. I write for the love of writing. I love what I write. I'm not writing with the goal of making money from my writing. I'm writing stories that I just enjoy writing. Sometimes they make money. Sometimes they don't. Either way, I just keep on writing what I enjoy writing, whether it sells or not, because it is just so damned much fun to write it. For me, writing is more about self-therapy and getting myself into a relaxed, stress-free, meditative state. I have Autism and I can stress out big time over anything. Writing, helps relieve stress for me, so I do a lot of writing.

That's an important thing to consider as well. A lot of writers, write for the love of writing and don't care about making money from it. In fact, you'll find that the most prolific writers (and also the ones making the most cash) are always obsessive writers and were writing many years before they started making any money, because they never went out and tried to make any money.

But then there are the people who think they can make a million dollars from writing, so they start writing, but they hate it. They find the whole process stressful and nerve wracking.

You got to know what type of person you are before you can start writing. Anybody can write, sure. But not everybody is mentally suited for the grunt task of writing every day, for weeks on end (which you'll have to do if you want this to be a career, not a hobby.) If you are someone who avoided writing in school, you are going to hate being a writer. If you are someone who spends hours each day writing journals and diaries, you are going to love this career. No one can decide if you'll like it or not. You'll have to figure that out for yourself,just know ahead of time, if you don't like it, the hours are long, hard, and monotonous, and the pay is well below minimum wage. This is not millionair acres, so don't be deceived by all those books telling you how to make millions with Kindle. They are scamming you.

Like I said before: Don't believe every book that claims to teach you how to make money with Kindle. Most of them are out right scams. know the author behind the book: look at what other books they have written. If the how-to write/ publish/ make millions with Kindle book is the only book they've ever written: RUN! Do not believe any book on how-to make lots of money doing ANYTHING unless the author of that book, can prove they actually are making millions doing the thing in question.

LOOK at the person behind the claim. Go to their Amazon account and actually look at their books. Are they doing what they say they are doing.

Hey, if the woman writes a book on how to find the best toys for your cat and then you find out she ain't never owned a cat in her life, she's just lost all credibility and you ain't never gonna buy another book from her again. Right?

The woman in this video, wrote a book on how to write, publish and sell books, and then a year later she makes this video, to say "Well, I was wrong"... okay, well, why did she think she had any right to be telling others how to sell books if she had never done it before?

I mean, seriously: WHO writes a book on how to make money selling books, BEFORE they have ever made money selling books? a scam artist, that's who. And she wonders why her books aren't selling? Because readers are not stupid and can see right through her scam!

That's the difference between people who write for Kindle and people write books.

People who write for kindle, they are trying to be millionaires and they will write ANYTHING they think they can dupe people into buying.

People who write books, aren't thinking about the money. They just have a book inside them waiting to be shared. They have information or a story that they want to share with others. And because it has real value, readers buy it.

I'm not trying to be a millionair. I'm not claiming to be a millionaire. And I'm not trying to teach you how to be a millionair either. No, I'm just telling you the truth of what the writing career is REALLY like.

Yes, you can make a good income in writing. How much you make is totally dependant on how many hours you write each week.

How much do I make? I'm not making thousands of dollars a week. Right now, as of right now, I'm making about $75 a week, most weeks, from my Kindle sales, with a few DAYs that jump as high as $600 (yes, single days) and I've had weeks of no sales at all. It's not reliable. It jumps all over the place, up and down all the time. Like I said, it's a supplemental income. Over time as I add more books to my backlog, the income increases. It's a long, slow steady climb. Can you live on that income? Depends on your lifestyle and cost of living where you live.

There are people who can live on 5k a year and there are people who need that much in a single month. It all depends on your lifestyle and where you live.

Me? I own my own land. Beach front property, no house, no electricity, no running water, no sewer/septic, about a half acre, taxes are $2,000 a year. I live in a motorhome. My land is nearly every inch of it garden, so I'm growing my own food. My cost of living is very low. I can live quite comfortably on an income of $150 a week. My writing income is one I can usually live on, though I do work a part-time retail job as well, "just in case" because weeks of no income at all, are not uncommon in the writing career.

I could easily stop writing today and continue to live off the minimal sales of my books, because my cost of living is so low

Get rich quick books are big sellers, because everyone is looking for easy money. Unfortunately, Kindle self-publishing is a hot trend right now, and the get rich quick scam artists are trying to jump on the band wagon, by writing quick, shitty "how to write/ publish/ make millions" on Kindle. You'll find in every case, the books are short, high priced, have no substance, never list the pennames or book titles this author supposedly made their millions with, and only offer quick, generalized info that can easily be found on the internet for free simply by oogling "make money with Kindle".

If the author of the how-to book, can not prove they are practicing what they preach, then don't buy the book.

If they are puffing up your ego, with lots of fluff and hype, telling you how you can earn "thousands in just one week" or "6 weeks" or whatever. Don't believe them, because they are lying to you. Go to their Amazon profile. Look at the books they wrote. If those best sellers they claim they wrote aren't there: then they didn't write them and they are bold faced lying to you. They are simply trying to make millions, on an empty book of fluff, that teaches you nothing, and stuffs their pockets with money. Beware of this scam. For it is flooding Amazon like crazy the past couple of months. There is no such thing as a 10 page book that is going to teach you how to be the next Kindle millionair. Don't fall for that scam.

They claim they are going to teach you how to be a millionair and yet, they can't because they are not millionaires.

Quantity is my battle cry.

Quantity is king.

Be releasing a new story every week and you won't need to do one damned thing else.

How do you become a Kindle millionaire?

Write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, repeat...

That's it. That's all there is too it.

There are no secret formulars, no tips to make you sell faster.

The ONLY way to become a Kindle millionair is to stop procrastinating. Stop talking about writing. Stop planning on writing. Stop dreaming about writing. Stop reading about writing. Just sit you damn ass down and START writing. That's it. That's ALL there is to it.

Write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, repeat...

If you don't write, you can't publish. If you don't publish you can't get sales. If you don't have sales you won't make money. If you don't make money, you won't be able to save money in the bank and let it collect interest. if you don't save money in the bank, you'll never make a million dollars.

You can market all you want, but, when push comes to shove, the only way to REALLY make money is to just write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, repeat...

llion dollars self-publishing for Kindle. And not a one of those books, is even spell checked! Their grammar is so bad, that it doesn't even look like they went to school, and they are trying to tell you that they are bestsellers, going teach you to be millionairs like them?

Okay, if they are making millions on all those books they write: then WHERE are they? How is it, that the ONLY book on their Author Profile, is the one, single, solitary, shoddy, unedited, 10 page, $2.99 book on how to make money writing/ self-publishing/ with Kindle/ Romance/ Erotica/ etc?

well? Where are they? If they are making millions, where are the books?

The types of books I'm talking about are the ones like these:

How To Write A Kindle Book & Get Paid While Sitting on Your Couch: Cliff Notes on How This is Done [Kindle Edition]
by J. Paul, Kindle Price: $2.99; Length: 4 pages; Publication Date: May 19, 2015

NOTE: Amazon counts the cover and the copyright page as "pages". 4 pages minus the cover, minus the copyright page = this book is 2 pages long. This author has one additional book: a second 4 page, $2.99 "how to book".

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Cliff Notes is a trade name that is copyrights and registered. This is not Cliff Notes. This "author" is in violation of trademark infringment as well.

How to REALLY Make Money [Kindle Edition] by Ana Jay , Kindle Price: $2.99; Length: 6 pages; Publication Date: May 18, 2015

17 TIPS TO SUCCESSFUL FICTION STORY WRITING! [Kindle Edition] by Leni Mogs, Kindle Price: $0.99; Length: 22 pages; Publication Date: May 19, 2015

Write Your First Book in Less Than 24 Hours! [Kindle Edition] by Evans Adams, Kindle Price: $0.99; Length: 15 pages; Publication Date: May 28, 2015

What do these books have in common? They are all published within a few days of each other. They are all under the INDUSTRY STANDARD that a how to guide should have at minimum 50 pages. They are all either the "authors" ONLY book, or the "authors" other books are ONLY additional money grabbing how-to "books". And those are just the first 5 titles on Amazon's search results. Thousand. Think about it: THOUSANDS - of these books have been published in the past 3 months.

Okay, so maybe you are asking, what's the big deal? The big deal is, most of these books are out right plagerism of various author blogs and forum posts and wikipedia and places like eHow. They are scraped content. They are not real how-to books. It is simply a scam artist, copying content they found online and pasting it into a 10 page pamplet and trying to mae a profit on something somebody else wrote. They are telling you they wrote books, but they are deleting the author names and book titles and not telling you what they are, because they are not the author in question and they did not write the books in question. The ones I've found that were stealing content off my website, my blog posts, my forum posts, and even my books, I've already gotten those removed off Amazon, and all my author friends whose work I recgonized, I contacted and they've gotten the books stealing their content removed.

I had to password access my blog, the people stealing content off it got so bad.

What about the 200+ How to write pamplets that showed up over the past weeks Most of them only 10 pages long and selling for $2.99 or more. Where is the proof for them? Those are the ones I'm talking about when I say they are scamming you. For them, the books are not there on their Amazon account, because they never wrote them. They are not making millions. They got an idea in their heads: and that idea was: "Hey! I bet, if I wrote a book on how to write books, lots of writers will buy it and I'll be a millionair from just my first book, yay!" And then they Google search for author websites and author blogs, and scrap content they stole off the internet, and stuff it into a 10 page pahmlet, slap a $2.99 (or more) price tag on it, and then, sit back and laugh at the wold-be authors who buy it, thinking it's going to tell them something new.

They think we authors are stupid. They think you readers are stupid. They think, you will pay them your hard earned money, for something they copied off Wikkipedia or elsewhere. They are trying to take advantage of authors who are just getting started in this career and that makes me mad. Why, does it make me mad? Because they think ALL us authors are stupid. That means they think I'm stupid too. I don't like that. They think we authors don't have enough brains to know they are scamming us. I don't like that one bit.

They are trying to tell you that, EVERY author makes millions, and that's just not true, as we have already established by heading to Amazon's public release of tax records. There is exactly 1 Kindle Millionair. Just 1: Amanda Hawkings. The next ten top paid Kindle authors, barely male even a quarter of a million in Kindle sales. and more then 5/8 of Kindle authors are making less then $5,000 a year. These scam artists, think we are too stupid to know how to look up Amazon's public release of tax records, to verify the facts for ourselves. They think you will just believe them when they tell you they are a Kindle millionaire, and their name isn't Amanada Hawkings. They are lying to you. They are setting you up for a lot of heartach, because when reality hits you, it's going to hit you hard. They are hyping you up, filling you with false hopes and dreams, and for what? To scam you out of your money. And it's wrong. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong: WRONG!

Another hard hitting fact is that it will take the average "successful" self-published author 3 years to make their first $5,000, while the average self-published author will never make more then $2,000 a year in their lifetime.

In other words: It's really hard to make a livable income from writing and it's even harder to make a good income from writing, so the very idea that you can become a millionair from writing is laughable at best, while the idea of writing being a get rich quick scheme that has you making millions in days, is absolute bull crap.

And yet, try searching for books on how to make millions as a writer or by self publishing. Yep. There they are. Well, let's look at those for a bit. What do we see? I see 26 pages of books mostly priced at $2.99 and mostly under 20 pages long, several being as few as only 10 pages. Okay, I'm opening the sales pages now and going to the author page, to see what else the author of each of these books wrote.

Here's one that hypes how she has written more then a dozen romance novels and is going to tell you how to write romance, however, it's the ONLY book she has published. Interesting. So where are those dozen novels she mentions?

Ah, here's one on writing Erotica, says she has written more then 50 successful bestsellers in Erotica. Now I'm looking at her author page. The how-to book is her only book. Where are the more then 50 successful bestsellers in Erotica? Not on her author page, that's for sure.

Oh, look at the next one. Only 12 pages, for $2.99 and yaps about having written "many successful novels", and yet I go to his author page and, I find 36 additional books: How To Grow Roses, also 12 pages for $2.99; How To Get Into College, 12 pages for $2.99; How To Lose 20 Pounds This Week, 12 pages for $2.99; How To Live With TypeII Diabettes, 12 pages for $2.99; uhm... yeah... so, where are those "many successful novels"? Looking inside some of the other books, I find they are word for word copy paste of the novel writing one, "I have successful grown many champion roses", "I have successful gotten into many colleges", "I have successful lose 20lbs in a single week"... .yeah... can anyone say scam artist? Where are the many successful novels? How come the ONLY books listed are all 12 page copy and paste pamplettes of scrapped wikkipedia content?

When I go out to buy a how-to book, I expect it to be the size of a college textbook, with a few hundred detailed pages on how to actually do something. I don't expect it to be a 10 page pamplet full of fluff that tells me absolutly not one damned thing. These are supposed to be books being sold on Amazon, not 1,000 word articles you slapped up on E-How!

Know the author behnd the book: look at what other books they have written. If the how-to write/ publish/ make millions with Kindle book is the only book they've ever written: RUN! Do not believe any book on how-to make lots of money doing ANYTHING unless the author of that book, can prove they actuallu are making millions doing the thing in question.

Get rich quick books are big sellers, because everyone is looking for easy money. Unfortunatly, Kindle self-publishing is a hot trend right now, and the get rich quick scam artists are trying to jump on the band wagon, by writing quick, shitty "how to write/ publish/ make millions" on Kindle. You'll find in every case, the books are short, high priced, have no substance, never list the pennames or book titles this author supposedly made their millions with, and only offer quick, generalized info that can easily be found on the internet for free simply by oogling "make money with Kindle".

If the author of the how-to book, can not pprove they are practicing what they preach, then don't buy the book.

Okay, some of these books are actually written by succesful authors, the one by Orson Scot Card for example. It tells you how to write science fiction novels and he has more then a dozen ACTUAL best selling Sci-Fi novels to back up that claim. I see a couple of Harlequin romance authors with how to write books as well. Heck, even Stephen King wrote a book on how to write.

Okay, so what was the point of looking at those? Well, the point is: IF they ACTUALLY wrote the successful novels they claim they wrote, WHY did they write the how-to write book under a different penname then th one they used to write said successful novels? Why hide who they are? If the author, can not back up their claims, with actual proof of having written a successful book, why should I buy their how to book? It's good question and I want answers, but these authors are too busy hiding who they are and what they wrote, to give the rest of us answers.

Orson Scott Card and stephen King didn't write their how-to write books under a secret penname to "protect their novels", so why are so many HUNDREDS of other authors doing that? Well, there is an easy answer, and reading the first few pages of the look inside of those books tells you right off: look at all those error, just in the look inside!

Writers should check THEIR dictionaries for correct spelling, or else THEY'RE going to look bad when they put THEIR stories out THERE for others to read. YOU'RE going to need to learn how to correct YOUR spelling. IT'S important that a word have ITS spelling checked, especially the words that show up on the Look Inside, and especially, if you are trying to convince new would be authors that you are a successful bestselling author who is going to teach them bestselling tips of the trade.

Okay, can you see why I don't trust books that tell you how to be a best selling author and are written by an author, whose ONLY book is the one teaching you how to write books? If they are a best selling, then why do they not know the differance between they're, there, and their?

Do I claim to be a best seller? Nope. I don't. Not even close.

Heck, I'll be the first to stand in line and tell you that I write freaking crappity, crap, crap. Why? Because it's fun to write crap. Sure crappy books don't get a lot of sales, but they are fun to write and so, I just keep right on writing them. Got that golden turkey i'm rooting for, remember?

And by now you are asking me if I'm ever going to tell you how to become a millionair? Yes and no.

How to become a millionair is simple really: You write a book, and you list it for $2.99. You will earn $2.09 for eachy sale, so, all you have to do is sell 500,000 copies of it and BOOM: instant millionaire! Yay!

There, now I told you how to become a millionaire. Let's move on, to the reality issues.

The reality is that the average book, will never sell more then 5,000 copies in it's lifetime, meaning, if you sell it for $2.99 it will earn you $10,000. However, selling a book for $2.99 is not easy. The best way to sell those 5,000 copies is to sell your book for .99c.

However, if you sell the book for .99c, it'll only earn you .35c per sale and after 5,000 books sold you will have made a great big whooping: $1,750

$2,000 in the lifetime of the book, is a far cry from an instant millionaire.

So, now what do you do?

Well, you could go the other extreme and write a million books and sell one copy each, but writing a million books is just as unreasonable as earning a million dollars from 1 book.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that making money from writing is hard work with long hours, and requires you to constaintly be putting out new titles. Not 1 book a year. No. At minimum you must be putting out 4 books a year, 6 books is even better, but your best bet is to be publishing at least 1 book a month. And if you can do it, try publishing 1 book a week. Yep. You heard me: 1 book a week. You can do it. A lot of writers do. It's not as hard as it sounds. I type 91 words a minute, that's 5,000 words an hour, and I'm a slow type, who types with one hand. Secrtaries can top 200 words a minute. The average none writer types 35 words a minute, but with daily practice the average author reaches 75 words a minute by their 3rd book, providing it was a book and not a few pages.

Yes, you can succeeed in self-publishing. Yes, you can make lots of money with Kindle. But no, it's not easy, it's not quick, it will not happen over night, and it's a lot of hard work and long hours. For most of you, you'll be putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks for 2 or 3 years before you are going to see a substaintial income. And by substantial income, I mean minimum wage, not becoming a millionair. A few will have success faster, because they hit a trend at the right time, but that happens so rarely that it is not something you should be striving for.

A lot has to do with genre.

I write Monster Porn. In spite of the urban myth, Monster Porn is not a big seller, that myth and the news article that started the craze, was created by innaccuratly reporting the income of the biggest name in Monster Porn. Yes, the urban myth was caused by a typo. A misplaced extra zero. A big newspaper, interviewed a Monster Porn author in 2013, and inaccuratly typed in the article that she made $30,000 a month, and the rest was history. Now everyone wants to jump on the Monster Porn bandwagon and then are stunned, shocked, and flabergasted as to why they can't get any sales: well duh! It's sex with something that's trying to eat you! Not many people read that! Yeah, people read it, but you ain't gonna become a millionare from writing Monster Pirn, so if that's reason you want to write this genre, be prepared for some major disapointment down the road, when if finally hits you that the Monster Porn cash cow is a great big, fat urban myth.

I've been writing Monster Porn since 2006. I have seen this genre evolve and change, the trends come and go, the big names reach the top then come crashing down, meanwhile, I'm just steadily moving onward, using 170+ Monster Porn titles to pay the bills and feed the family, and laughing at the hordes of people who write 1 or 2 Monster Porn titles and think it's going to make them a millionaire next week. This is a wicked hard genre to break into, and you really got to love it oodles and oodles in order to keep writing it for years to come. Me? I love it. I'm gonna write it wither it pays me money or not. And it pays me money, because I write so much of it. this is not a genre where you can write 1 title and watch the money roll in. You have to write a lot of it. You have to be publishing new titles every week. You have to have 100 or more titles published before you'll be able to live off of it. It'll take you about 3 years to build a big enough back log and fan following before you can start calling it a steady income. Know those things up front, before you get started - plan for them, expect them, and you'll do all right.

But that's the thing, most of these people are NOT telling you. The people making money on Kindle, they are also pushing out new titles weekly or bi-weekly. They don't have 1 or 2 or 10 or 20 titles. They have HUNDREDS of titles and it took them 3 or 4 years MINIMUM to write and publish those titles before they started seeing a substantial (= minimum wage = $7.50hr x 30hrs a week) income from it.

Plan on writing only a few books or gettting rich quick with little or no effort and you are going to fail miserably in ANY genre. Keep that in mind too. I mean, I mention Monster Porn, because that's what I write, but this applies to any genre, both fiction and non-fiction.

And you want to know something else they don't tell you in those get rich quick writing Erotica, books? That the fans are CRAZY and want to kill you. Oh yeah. Erotica attracts some really psycho fans, and you'll be getting them on your doorstep a lot quicker then you'll be getting that million dollars. But do those get-rich-quick with Erotica 'authors" care about that? No! They don't write Erotica, so they don't even know about that.

Some fans are great. Most fans are wonderful. as a general rule I like my fans. But, sometimes, you are going to have fans who you really don't want anything to do with and you need to be ready to go to the police. In most genres you aren't gonna run into this sort of problem fan, but in Erotica, especially Monster Erotica and Monster Porn, you are goig to run into this sort of fan quite a lot and you need to be prepared for how to deal with them, otherwise they are going to rape you and going to do it in EXACTLY whatever way you wrote the scene they are playing out in one of you books.

These kind of fans, have no respect for your privacy at all, so keep that in mind if you ever do reach my level of success. I’m not very famous at all, and yet, I’m famous enough to have fans following my around in walMart. I’m famous enough to have fans show up in my driveway. I’m famous enough to have fans spend 7 hours following me from one place to the next, while I do my chores. And I’m not famous. If it's this bad, for someone who's as unheard of as I am, how bad do you think it'll be for an author who is famous?

Think of what it would be like if you was really, really famous. You have to ask yourself: Is the money worth it? Because your stalker fans will make your life hell. Believe me, fans crazy enough to follow you from WalMart to McDonalds, to your doctors appointment, to the library and not stop following you all day long, even after you ask over and over again for them to leave you alone, and then when you ask them to leave because it’s time for you to go home and he says “Great I wanted to see where you live!” instead of getting off your ass...and that one just happened a week ago - and this is the 5th time in the last 3 years that this guy has done this, and he's one of 7 guys I regularly have to deal with doing this to me. This guy followed me all over the town for 7 freaking hours, and he’s one of 3 men who I've had to take a restraining order out on in the past year alone.

Why? Because when you write about sex, start following you around, requesting to try out all the sex things you write about. Men just assume you are a slut ready to spread you legs to every male reader who ever read one of your books. Be prepared for THAT too. Because it comes with the territory. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in the police station filing protection from harassment complaints and in the court house getting restraining orders.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time in the courthouse. You are probably going to have to have them arrested and that means going to court to testify.

I never used to write under my real name. I never told any one my home address either. But did that stop them from finding out who I was and where I lived? No! In 2007 a "professional hacker" (a man whose job it was to hack company computers to test security) became so obsessed with me (and my book The Pearl Necklace) that he hacked my computer and all of my online accounts to try to find out who I was. He then sold his house in Massachusetts, and bought a house in Saco, Maine, because his information said I lived in Saco. In 2008, I meet this man when he showed up at my church to give me hell, for lying to him and telling him I lived in Saco. I had no idea who this guy was. I'd never heard of him before. He'd been stalking me for 2 years before I found out he even existed. Turns out in his hacking, what he traced was the home address of my internet provider. Once he found that out, he sold his house in Saco to buy a house 4 houses down the road from me. And he was married with a wife and 3 children. You remember the grease fryer bomb that took out my house and left my family crippled and homeless? Yeah, that was this guy. When he was finally arrested in 2011, the police found out he ran a website trying to legalize polygamy, and on it, he had a list of all the women who were going to be his next 6 wives (his goal was 7 because of some Bible verse) and my name was #2 on the list, and when they checked to find out who the other "future wives" were: they were all Erotica authors.

Do you know how my name and home address got out there? This guy. He went a built a website listing the real names and home addresses of his favorite Eriotica authors. In it he encouraged other men, to go to these women's homes, break in dressed as CosPlay Monsters and rape them, because he said they wanted to be raped by monsters, because of the books they wrote.

That's the kind of fans you are going to get in this genre.

It doesn't matter how disconnected you are from your penames, any person crazy enough to want to rape you because of a book you wrote, is crazy enough to do whatever it takes to find your real name and your home address.

You are going to need a lot of restraining orders and protection from harassment orders, if you write Monster Porn and one of your fans finds out your real name and home address, because there are a LOT of psychotic men in the world, who when they read Monster Porn, they imagine that they are the Monster and you the author are the victim, and they get it in their heads, that you wrote that book, JUST FOR THEM, and you wrote it because you were sending them hidden messages to find you and rape you.

I've had to take out 3 restraining orders on three separate men, just this year alone - and we are only 6 months into the years. Once that first guy put my real name and home address out on the web, it's been no turning back. These men, know ALL of my pennames. They not only know my home address, they know the home addresses of my friends and my family, and they go after them to.

This is the harsh reality of what your readers are like and what they will do, if they ever find out who you are and where you live. I've been trying for years to get my name and home address off of these sites, blogs, and forums. Did you know that since 2009, if I Google my name and home address, I can find it listed on various sex sites, posted in sex fetish forums, where men are posting it and telling other men, to go to my house in CosPlay costumes and rape me, because according to thm, I want that, otherwise I wouldn't be writing Monster Porn.

Do you have any idea how scary it is, knowing there are men out there posting messages like that about me on forums like that?

And I'm not the only one. Last year I was talking to an author, who said it got so bad, that she unpublished all her books, changed her name and moved her family, multiple times. he was considering leaving the country because her stalker was so out of control. And did you know that laws PROTECT stalkers and the police can't do anything UNTIL somebody gets hurt? Yeah.

Erotica authors get stalked more then any other genre. And when you write Monster erotica, be prepared to come home some night and find a man wearing nothing but an Otherkin/Furry mask sitting in your house with an erection, waiting to **** the hell out of you the minute you walk through the door.

There are only a few hundred Monster Porn authors out there and more then a dozen of them have had men in CosPlay costumes, nude from the waist down, break into their homes and try to rape them. More then 10% of the Monster Porn authors have been attacked in their homes, by men in monster costumes. More then half of them have received letters in the mail, requesting to meet with them so he and the author can "re-enact" this or that scene for this or that book. Most of them get fan mail asking for dinner dates, and "let's play monster afterwards". Think about THAT before you start writing Monster Porn. Don't think you can avoid it. It doesn't matter how distant you are from you penname - if they want to find you, they WILL. And once they find you, they will start contacting you every month, every week, some will be writing to you every day, a few are going to be knocking on your door, while the most persistent, and going to be doing monster masks and sitting nude on your bed waiting for you to get home so they can "surprise" you with you "getting your wish" to be raped by a monster.

Oh, yeah, this is the harsh reality of what life is like for a Monster Porn author. That's the kind of stuff I have to live with because of the books I write. You are not going to be able to step out in public without every man you meet who knows what you write, wanting to **** you sideways. And they ALL believe that because you write monsters raping victims, that those books are an open invitation for them to rape you.

If you want to write this genre, you need to know what you are getting into before you start, because you write it, you can't go back. These fans will stalk you for the rest of your life, even if you stop writing it and move out of state, they will follow you.

Did you know, that men stalking female Erotica authors is so bad, that there are entire forums and groups devoted to JUST that topic. Groups for Erotica authors who've been stalked, raped, battered, and beaten by their fans.

That's the thing I hate most about all the scame books, out there telling you how great it is to write Erotica, how you are going to be a millionaire in 6 weeks, blah, blah, blah...because not only are they lying to you about the money you'll make, they are also not telling you what the REAL behind the scenes life of an Erotica author is like. They are not telling you the danger you put yourself in the moment your write sex for a living. They are not telling you that 30% of all erotica authors get raped AT LEAST ONCE by one of their fans. 30% is a big number. There are millions of erotica authors, that there are tens of thousands of Erotica authors who have been raped by their fans. Did you know that? NO!

That's not a small number. And that's only a small fraction of the amount of unsuccessful attempted rapes on Erotica authors. And REAL book on the erotica writing industry, one ACTUALLY WRITTEN BY AN EROTICA AUTHOR is going to tell you that. They are not going to be glorifying how much money you can make in 6 weeks writing Erotica, because they are too busy writing warnings to make sure you safe guard your family BEFORE you start writing erotica.

Those scammers writing those get-rich-quick in Erotica books, don't know the real world of erotica writiung. Not only are they not doing what they claim, but they are endangering your life by not warning you of the harsh realities of what your life will be like, WHEn (not if, because they WILL find you) your fans uncover your real name and home address.

In the past 3 years, there has been a stark increase of Erotica authors, and with it, the number of Erotica authors raped each year has more then doubled.

You want to write Erotica for money? Fine. But arm yourself with mace and use your money to get damned good security systems on your house and car, because, Honey, in this business, you're gonna need it.

My point here is, it is VERY DANGEROUS to write a how-to book on something you have never done, because chances are high, you are going to telll them how to do it wrong or miss an important fact that should not have been left out and in the end, somebody is going to get hurt, because you didn't stop to think, before you wrote that how to book, on how to do something, that you have never even done.

And there ain't a one of the those get rich quick writing Erotica books telling you about that side of the Erotica industry are they? WHY? Because those books were not written by Erotica writers, they were written by people trying to make money by telling people how to do something that have NEVER DONE THEMSELVES and THAT why they DIDN"T KNOW to warn anyone about this side of the erotica business in their how to books!!!!!

And THAT is why people like the woman in that video you linked to get me mad. No, she's not writing Erotica how-to books, but she's writing the same type of books on other topics. She's trying to teach you how to do something she doesn't do herself. For crying out load the woman wrote a book on how to make money on Kindle before she even published a book on Kindle! Come on! Did she really think readers weren't gonna see through that?

She's going all sour grapes because she tried to use Kindle to scam readers out of money, by telling them how to make money doing things, she herself never did, and she expects readers to fall for that scheme, but readers were too smart for her and aren't buying her get-rich quick books, because no one who is writing writing 20 different topics of how to make money doing BLAH is is making money at all. How do readers know that? Easy: An expect in their field, is a person who does ONE THING and one thing ONLY and they will have 20 books on that one thing.

A jack of all trades is an expert in none and if you have tons of books on tons of topics, readers know in an instant you are a jack of all trade wanna be who isn't and expect in anything and therefore is not making money doing ANY of the things they wrote about. Thus the end result is no readers are stupid enough to buy her books, thus WHY she is making no money!

And the point of everything I just said in this post was: know the author behind the video. She's telling you you can't make money writing books, but I looked at what she's writing and, yeah...readers don't like feeling scammed so, that's why no one is buying her books.

WOW!

Boy, did you get me off on a rant with this one. YIKES! I should go to bed before I scream some more. LOL!

You just wrote a book right there. Go publish it!

And lay off the red bull!

Jesus H. Christ (H is for Henry).

On a quick count (I quickly ran out of fingers and toes and so had to use Word but before it could digest it all I had to add another memory stick) this little rant is 9,285 words. That's two (or more) of your typical Kindles right there.

Mark

I think a lot of people buy into the field of dreams scenario with kdp (write it and they will come). You've got to treat it as a business and most people only do that after they've finished their book and usually by then its to late.

I draw comparisons to crowd funding, before you start you need to be out engaging the audience, establishing your authority, positioning yourself and imparting knowledge.

A big issue I see (as has already been touch on) is the outsourced crap people believe is 'quality' because some guru told them to do it all on fiverr or iwriter. He'll you only need look at the op to see the type of crap I'm talking about.

Can money be made on kindle hell yeah I make six figures in one niche but it took a lot of work and not one word is spun.

I am also currently writing my own book and I'm out their engaging with people on twitter and come close to launch I'll have a full scale campaign built around the book with ads, guest interviews, retargeting, sample, articles, YouTube videos and more.

Treat your book like a business work hard at it and if it is of ok quality and above with some luck you might sell.

Most people are just blindly trying to publish next best book, you need to have a strategic approach if you want to make something significant with kindle, that's what people need to actually know!

It's only a stat pulled out of thin air to shock people. I'm sick of reading "why 99.764% of people never make money online" and similar too. At the end of the day, does it matter how many people failed before you? If you have a quality book that will interest a selection of people then why not try self publishing? Someone has to succeed so why not be part of the 1%?

It all depends on your definition of success too. I make full time money online but I'm no millionaire, and *shocker* I don't want to be. I just want to make a comfortable, sustained living without working stupid hours every week. Sure, probably less than 1% of people ever make it to the millionaire level but there are loads of shades of success in between.

There's nothing "shocking" about that...
The owners of the platforms make money with thousands of people trying to sell their products.

That's how Amazon, Google etc operate.

If you can't read you can't write. Writing an ebook required a lot of informations, skills knowing what you are doing. if you are able to drive value and help others solve their problems, educate them and help them grow their businesses and much more.

I am against the idea of writing and writing. always focus on driving value to others. Money is made when you drive value to others.

Amanda Hock Used to write books But she never expected to make millions and even best seller . She was writing and enjoying that kind of work. when she got best seller she was shocked with that.

The More books we read the more knowledge we get and we feel we are able to write Good books.

You would figure someone calling themselves an "internet trillionaire" and who previously walked around this place claiming to be a make money online expert would surely know how to sell at least one copy of their ebook on amazon...

Definitely just read one of the longest posts ever on the internet, lol.

The more Amazon changes, the more authors will adapt.

It's all about adaptation.

Instead of focusing on how others are doing, focus on what YOU are doing.

Are you writing engaging stuff?

Are you serializing your books to build a fan base?

Are you promoting your books outside of Amazon to build 'organic' demand?

Are you trying to replicate (in a very low cost way) how publishing houses publicize their authors to niche influence leaders?

INSTEAD OF RELYING ON "AVERAGES" TO SUCCEED (you won't!) FOCUS ON YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL EFFORT.

I am interested to learn the source of the dramatic statistics you mention.

Do you know which 1% of Kindle self publishers make sales.

What you are saying is completely against popular opinion.

Please help me here . . .

Intresting. Clearly most people posting generated instant kindle wealth...hmn.

The original poster asked if people had similar abismal results. Some of the responses on here are...harsh.
I don't think the posters signature "internet trillionaire" has anything to do with anything. I dont know this person, but they could be making money in another sector and now thinking about branching into kindle. Whatever- anyone can call themselves whatever they want or are aspiaring to be.
I do not believe the original post was intended as advertising or a solicitation for an analysis of someone else's Youtube video. Some responses seemed very off topic. Seems warrior forum is no longer the place for both experience warriors and newbies to have a conversation. Better not ask a "stupid" question if you don't want to be shot down.

Let me get back on topic: My very first book, sold 1 copy every 3 months (No, my book wasnt rubbish, it had a great cover, blurb etc, I just didn't know what I know now) - so based on my experience, the statement in the original post isn't actually that ridiculous. Whether the 1% is accurate or not, we are unlikely to ever know. But lets remember everday people/authors who want to publish on kindle, are not necessarily exposed to the barage of information/wso available on warrior forum, and aren't necessarily on some marketeers email list.

As others have mentioned, if you treat book publishing as a business, produce a high quality product ( btw, short 50page book in the right niche can also be high quality+ high value) AND do the marketing, success will come. Based on my experience,it is best to start on Kindle short term, but have a longterm strategy to be on other platforms as well. You can make money. How much money and how fast depends on multiple factors, such as if you are :starting dead broke/know how to write/ have money to outsource/have done any kindle training etc, etc. Kindle and particularly book publishing in general, is definetivley something a warrior does.

The reason being, not all great authors are good marketers! It all boils down to getting traffic/exposure..

How important do you beleive the length of and ebook is?

Do you have in mind what you consider the ideal length and page content of an ebook.

Why should you be concerned about the length of your ebook.

There are more important things to be concerned with than something as trivial as length.

Believe me, there are marketers out there selling 5-15 page ebooks and reports like hotcakes

What do you think ???

I wrote my first book like 4 years ago. Spent around 10 hours alltogether on it and published it. Got it ranked on the bestseller lists for it's categories and started selling right in the beginning. I made $150 the first month, $300+ next couple of months and then it stayed on $100-$200 for a year.

Still makes some monthly money every now and then.

But thinking back I wish i would have created 10 of these in the same niche

MeelisM

I make some decent cash from Amazon monthly from my book. I'm not quitting my job but I make enough to pay a couple bills.

There's a lot of factors that go into selling you Amazon books. There's keyword research, niche research, writing a quality book that is valuable to the people who read it.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-part-1-a.html

Notice how the featured author focused on copywriting instead of doing grunt work?

Can you please share the source of this "information". Please don't discourage new publishers.

I have published some books on Kindle. Even my dumbest books generate few sales per month. Well written books generate few sales every day.

Kindle publishing can be a good way to make passive income online, if you are doing it correctly. Never publish a low quality book. Focus on quality and good cover design. Always enroll your book in KDP Select. Do free promotion of your book on Amazon.

Key point: Publish lots of high quality books. I prefer selling books at $2.99 ($2 profit/sale). Suppose you have 25 books each selling one copy per day, then your revenue will be $50/day.

This sucks, so far I was believing majority of them would have been getting some sales consistently because amazon is REALLY big..

I don't have much to add, I just wanted to be apart of this EPIC thread.

I published a single Kindle book several years ago. It wasn't very good (It's a niche recipe book) and sits on the third page for it's specific keyword and still brings in monthly sales to this day. Not many sales, but sales nonetheless.

I did absolutely zero marketing. I posted it up and let it be. So, unless the guy that wrote the OP can provide some tangible evidence to support his claim, I'm going to say that it is complete BS.

It's just the truth.

People overhype money-making methods and before you know it the word Kindle brings up $$$s in your eyes.

If that percentage is 1%, imagine the percentage of IMers websites that make money. .000001%?