Is anybody actually making money with Kindle books?

Okay, he's put his money where his mouth is. Now it's your turn.

Of course, simple possession of the course won't make you dime one.

Use the course, make the money and send him the check. Then see who is flabbergasted...

Thank you, everyone who has replied to my questions.

I took some time to look through the 1 and 2 star Kindle ebooks and find there are repetitions of names of negative reviewers. While I did not have time to go and read the look inside feature, I assume the people who gave negative reviews for plagiarism and named exactly where they were copied and pasted from can stand behind those reviews.

It was not an exhaustive review on the low stars, but I will probably do some more searches again with a bit different slant on looking for self-publishing hatemongers and note some of the screen names as well as view the look inside feature.

There were low stars given for interactive table of contents that supposedly did not work with the Kindle feature of getting to the exact recipe, plagiarism, poorly written and obvious copy paste due to changing fonts. I also noted the super mean language from various reviewers whose obvious intent was total contempt - possibly justified, but overly mean nonetheless.

Amazon would do well to weed out and prevent junk books. Since I have not yet published, and won't for quite awhile yet, I have no idea whether Amazon actually checks anything in a worthwhile manner before it is published on their system. Their after-the-fact method has left a lot to be desired. It's certain their refund policy was set up to utilize requested refund numbers to indicate problems.

It might be possible for good authors to sue negative reviewers. While no author would want to gain this type of notariety, in some cases (basically the ability of their lawyers), it could work to their benefit and the benefit of all honest and capable authors.

Now I have another question to solve, if the TOC is interactive, why is there conflict with the internal workings of the Kindle? If I hadn't put so much work into this in the first place, I think I would just work on the other types in process instead.

The worst goofy one-star review I saw was left by someone who complained the ebook (and others purchased in the past) would not download. Now that's just plain down and dirty to leave a review in that manner and one star someone for something that is obviously totally out of their control. That definitely sounded like a troll leaving the review. Why would you keep buying if you can't download?

My marketing plan, among other things, is to include a blog which will go up first before the recipe books are published. I think a lot will depend on the author the troll reviewers are targeting just what direction their tactics will take. The list of the marketing tactics is also being formed now as I work and write.

I do not have the business idea that throwing up some Kindle ebooks is supposed to be easy and fast money, but then it all depends on whether you want to be involved for the long term or not. My preferred goal is long term viability and to expand from there.

I meant she was the exception to the rule that the vast majority of authors will only see a few sales per month on Kindle, not that she was just fortunate.

She submitted her books to every single book review blogger out there at one point, which she says was the beginning of seeing big sales, as each review had a direct link to the kindle sales page.

I see that this is a mighty popular post. It has more than 19,000 views.

I don't know if making money with Kindle is possible or not, but I intend to try it with anthologies I think anthologies are the way to go. Value for money spent.

Now all I need is short story authors who can write good stories within the guidelines. Pooling resources on an increasingly popular site may just be our ticket to beating the odds!

Norm

What sort of sales rank are you getting to sell an ebook with the numbers your suggesting. Is it under 10,000 for instance

That's how you take it from junk to palatable.

Congratulations with your sales Ed. Without trying to toot my own horn, I sell thousands of ebooks a month on Kindle.

I know that I said that PLR on the Kindle is crap. It really is. But if you are changing the content and putting some work into it like you are doing, that is different. I meant no offense to you. I have come across quite a bit of PLR recently and it is really quite bad.

There is plenty of money to be made on the Kindle. It just takes work. However, if you put the work into it you can have a book that makes tons of sales each month.

hello Edlewis,)

I bought your kindle info product and find that really great,
thanks a lot for such a nice product = simple, efficient, rich in information

I have a question for you =
I am newbie on emarketing and I noticed that a lot of Kindle ebooks for the"" how to ""(specially in France, cause it is from where I come..) need kind of Autority level to let readers buy the kindle ebooks with blind trust. I am not at all an autority in any field,...how can we avoid this obstacles , this kind of Autority syndrom that sine qua non pretend your content is worth buying?
Cause for now i get this bloody feeling from all theses litterate overgraduate experts that write topics I like, that if you re not enough Autority identified, you can not really make it seriously (at least in France)
Thanks a lot for your time to reply, but I think this question is very usefull for a lot of people concerned to make a great deal with Kindle

I partly agree - I have put up books that I had already written in niches of personal interest. So it was not a made for kindle market research job

Yet these seem to be selling the best at present. But I completely disagree with your cynicism. There definitely are many people making many thousands of dollars on Kindle.

But it will all end in 2-3 years time. Just like adsense mania did.

Ooh, I didn't mean to sound as if I was anti self-publishing! I publish my own books, hehe. And yes, it is wonderful that people can now write niche books etc.

My only concern is that as well as all the quality stuff being self-published there is also a huge amount of poorer stuff, which is giving self-publishing, POD and eBooks in general a bad name.

A quick flick through the Lulu site, looking at previews of books on there, will show how many are really badly written, not edited at all, not proofread at all etc. It is a shame - I am sure some of these are great books, fantastic stories that I would want to read, or fascinating non-fiction books, but who wants to read a book that is full of typos and sentences that don't make sense?

If your book is worth writing then it is surely worth getting someone to look through it for you? A professional is the ideal, but even just getting a friend or two to do a double check can make a huge difference.

Do you stick with the same niche or branch out a little bit?

Are they books that you have written?

Do you do much marketing?

How many books do you have?

I always stick with non-fiction. Instructional type Kindle books sell best for me (eg. recipe books, how to guides, etc).

Overall the fiction writers I have met write more for the love of writing than thinking about the $ side of it

Have you read the John Locke book and applied his techniques? The books which he sold 1 million copies of were fiction and he is, by his own admission, not that great of a writer - lol.

Lee

I've done fairly well on Kindle, although I think starting the way I did helped me.

I started off publishing print books on Amazon thru CreateSpace - almost exclusively public domain content, although I did publish a few projects of my own to kinda "try it out".

The thing I learned in that process was how to create quality books.

Because the content was PD, I only really had to focus on the other things of the book - layout, adding extra content like introductions or forewords, designing covers, and writing descriptions for the product.

I think having those abilities helped me immensely when I moved over to Kindle.

That and learning how to research on Amazon. I became obsessed with publishing and would just browse Amazon for hours on end - sounds crazy, I know. But over time I started to see what books sold better than others...and start to understand why.

Nothing I did in publishing was new or ground-breaking....I just really engulfed myself in learning how and why things worked...and what worked...and then I started doing those same things....or something similar.


I still remember what drove me to publish my first original Kindle ebook.

I was browsing Kindle trying to learn some things and saw an ebook I thought was interesting. It was cheap, so I bought it and read it...

And I wasn't very impressed...

All I could think in my head was, "Man, I could write a better ebook on this topic than this."

From my work on CreateSpace, I also knew I could create a better cover.

So I did...

I don't know if you are aware of it, but if you get yourself over to Fiverr you can have as many good reviews for your Kindle Book publications, just as long as you are prepared to pay for them.

There are folk over at Fiverr who will buy you "book" and submit a 5 STAR review for you.

It's one way to go . . . .

I only have experience with novels with a previous POD publisher, but plan to put some of my fiction on the CreateSpace platform. In my opinion, a paper book works better for longer novels and non-fiction topics. Hopefully, others will chime in on this.

As for the 99 cent pricing. I have permanently ditched this. For me, I'd rather sell 1 book and make a 70% commission than get stuck with 30%. At 2.99, you'll at least make $2 in commissions. You have to sell several at 0.99 to reach the same amount. Just not worth it to me.

I use 1 FREE promotion day when launching a new title (for rankings). Then, it's at regular pricing at $2.99 and above. My titles are selling just fine. Don't limit yourself or your work to the cheap commissions. People will pay for perceived VALUE.