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Kindle Questions

by Seatbelt99
13 replies
I'm a freelance writer and I've written on just about everything over the past couple years. After recently completing a children's book for a client who is publishing it on the Kindle market I thought about doing that myself. Then in another thread I had people suggest Kindle market to me there too, so here I am trying to figure out how this will work.

I am going to buy membership into the private kindle area here in the next couple days but until then I have a few questions...

1) What sells better, Fiction or Non-Fiction?
2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point)
4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point?
5)Any other advice?

*I may edit this post with more questions if I think of any*

Thanks for any tips or advice.

Michael
#kindle #questions
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Just to set the ball rolling with one serious answer and one facetious one ...

    Originally Posted by Seatbelt99 View Post

    2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
    I can't answer that one, then, because without doing that, it's unlikely that they'll sell well for you.

    Originally Posted by Seatbelt99 View Post

    4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point?
    It varies hugely from genre to genre. Don't assume, even with the commissions varying between 35% and 70%, that you'll necessarily make more from higher prices. Some authors (including some very successful ones) have discovered that they earn far more from 35% of $0.99 than they do from 70% of $2.99, because the former price may sell 12-15 times as many copies. But this varies according to the genre.

    Originally Posted by Seatbelt99 View Post

    I may edit this post with more questions if I think of any
    Damn, "there's always a catch". :p
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    • Profile picture of the author Seatbelt99
      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      Just to set the ball rolling with one serious answer and one facetious one ...



      I can't answer that one, then, because without doing that, it's unlikely that they'll sell well for you.
      I know I know. Everyone things you have to write about your passion, and I think that is true for some things. I have, however, written for other people about things I have no passion about whatsoever and they are thrilled with the results. Including people who want to use that content to publish on Kindle.

      If I think of anything that I have passion about, I'll write on that for sure. But until then I'd like to choose something that has as good a chance as possible to make me money. I think I could find my passion much easier if I had an extra few grand in my pocket, lol. ;-)


      It varies hugely from genre to genre. Don't assume, even with the commissions varying between 35% and 70%, that you'll necessarily make more from higher prices. Some authors (including some very successful ones) have discovered that they earn far more from 35% of $0.99 than they do from 70% of $2.99, because the former price may sell 12-15 times as many copies. But this varies according to the genre.

      Damn, "there's always a catch". :p
      Yeah. I actually like the idea of more sales at lower price because I think it is easier to have people willing to give it a chance at only $.99 or whatever. That being said, however, I know exactly NOTHING about the kindle market...which is why I'm asking!

      Thanks for the response!

      Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author GobBluthJD
    Originally Posted by Seatbelt99 View Post


    1) What sells better, Fiction or Non-Fiction?
    2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
    3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point)
    4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point?
    5)Any other advice?
    1) Whichever you're better at writing - it all sells, if you know how to write and market it

    2) Sorry - write what you have a passion for. Or, if you really don't give a single care, write erotica, or teen vampire/werewolf romances,=

    3) There is no average. Depends on your genre, niche, topic, theme, abilities, yada yada. I have a 3,000 word book and a 30,000 word book and they sell equally well. Don't worry yourself with length; just write quality.

    4) Less than 5,000 words - $0.99
    5,000 to 10,000 words - $0.99 to $2.99
    10,000 and above - Go crazy. Try pricing at different levels until you find one that sticks.
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    Originally Posted by Seatbelt99 View Post

    I'm a freelance writer and I've written on just about everything over the past couple years. After recently completing a children's book for a client who is publishing it on the Kindle market I thought about doing that myself. Then in another thread I had people suggest Kindle market to me there too, so here I am trying to figure out how this will work.

    I am going to buy membership into the private kindle area here in the next couple days but until then I have a few questions...

    1) What sells better, Fiction or Non-Fiction?
    2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
    3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point)
    4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point?
    5)Any other advice?

    *I may edit this post with more questions if I think of any*

    Thanks for any tips or advice.

    Michael
    I'm wondering what you're trying to accomplish because you've really limited yourself with the questions you're asking. It seems by the way you've worded your post you're looking for hot, profitable topics to exploit. That's fine. The truth is, what you have a passion for will most often be your best work. If you have a true passion for something timely you could do very well.

    Overall, fiction is probably a better seller than nonfiction though it depends. I don't know if there's room for even one more zombie or vampire book. As for price... for any book it will depend. I priced my first three novels at $.99 for a few months only to find they sell much better at $2.99. And I have a popular nonfiction book that sells at $4.99. Generally, I'd say that until you get a bit of a following you need to be on the lower end with your pricing.

    If you're just looking for a quick hit turn to current events. Immigration, gun control, democracy, politics, true crime, etc. are all hot topics people are searching for right now and you can safely be on either side of an issue and still sell lots of books.
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    • Profile picture of the author Seatbelt99
      Originally Posted by travlinguy View Post

      I'm wondering what you're trying to accomplish because you've really limited yourself with the questions you're asking. It seems by the way you've worded your post you're looking for hot, profitable topics to exploit. That's fine. The truth is, what you have a passion for will most often be your best work. If you have a true passion for something timely you could do very well.

      Overall, fiction is probably a better seller than nonfiction though it depends. I don't know if there's room for even one more zombie or vampire book. As for price... for any book it will depend. I priced my first three novels at $.99 for a few months only to find they sell much better at $2.99. And I have a popular nonfiction book that sells at $4.99. Generally, I'd say that until you get a bit of a following you need to be on the lower end with your pricing.

      If you're just looking for a quick hit turn to current events. Immigration, gun control, democracy, politics, true crime, etc. are all hot topics people are searching for right now and you can safely be on either side of an issue and still sell lots of books.
      Maybe my problem is that I don't know enough to know what questions to ask.

      My goal is to make money selling Kindle books. Beyond that I don't want to limit myself at all.

      Writing for other people I have found that some subjects that I thought I would hate writing about turned out to be fascinating and I really enjoyed it. While others which I thought I would like ended up being kind of boring.

      If it helps at all, I would prefer steady long term income over a 'quick win' type of deal.
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  • Profile picture of the author vtotheyouknow
    I'm with Alexa. Write what you're passionate about. What you care about. There's enough dry, uninspiring pablum out there. Why not add some beauty to the world? Some juiciness? Otherwise, go build an ecommerce store? It's amazingly boring and pays well. ;-)
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    Fiction beats the pants off of non-fiction. Sure, there are some people doing very well with nonfiction, but here's the thing -- fiction readers are ravenous.

    If you can write a good fiction book that people love reading, then they will go and buy all your other books.

    Yes, I know, someone is going to come in here and say that nonfiction buyers buy lots of books on the same topic. They do, but it's nothing like fiction buyers.

    Well, heck, go prove it to yourself by heading over to Amazon and looking at the top 100 best selling books and adding up how many are fiction and how many are non-fiction.

    Now having said that, if you don't know how to write fiction, don't read fiction and don't even like fiction, then you probably won't make any money at it so you would want to focus on nonfiction.

    If you do want to write fiction, but have never done it or taken classes, you must educate yourself as to how it's done, and, in particular educate yourself as to what the readers of the particular genre you plan to write in expect.

    Which genre sells best? Romance.

    What size should your book be? Most of us writing fiction today are seeing that books of 30,000 words or more sell the best. I actually just read an analysis yesterday that showed that longer books sell better. But, the length also depends on the genre (another reason why you must pay attention to what your audience expects).

    There's one thing about fiction writing though…it's a long term strategy. There's lots of people making a lot of money doing it, but you have to be prepared to write a lot of books and take the risk of not much money coming in until you build your fan base. It's pretty much like building any other business, really, the likelihood of striking it rich overnight is slim. But if you want to put in the work, the rewards can be immense.

    EDIT: Here is the link to the article that shows a breakdown of how well books sell according to length … there are also several other things in the article that may be of interest:

    http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/05/n...8Smashwords%29
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    • Profile picture of the author Dean Shainin
      Hi Michael,

      Similar questions have been asked here on the Warrior Forum so I'll post a bit more detail from what I've posted before...

      1) What sells better, Fiction or Non-Fiction? For me it's been Fiction. I've had issues with a couple "how to" types of books because of Amazon's strict filters for some reason. You can get notice that there is similar content on the web. Umm? Yes, the web is loaded with similar content. My non-fiction books were 100% original and I still got a couple of those types of notices and I had to write back to Amazon.

      2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for') Take a look at the top 20 books on the Amazon Best Sellers in each category and you will see in black and white what topics sell best. It's very broad to say the least...

      3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point) Most of my books are about 3,000 to 6,000 word short stories for fiction. About 40 to 60 pages for non-fiction, which is about 400 words per page...

      4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point? I've posted details below from my personal experience. It's wise to test within each category you're involved in. I've always tried to keep the 7's in there and the 9's such as $3.97 and $3.99. However, I've noticed many times Amazon shows a different price like $4.01 when I use $3.97. The worst results I've got was at the $0.99 price point.

      I've ALWAYS DONE better with the $2.99 price point. In fact 2 of my books at $3.97 do better than most of the $2.99 price points. So now I'm staying away from the $0.99 model. Not telling anyone to do that. It just works out better for my books. I've tried $4.97 and it was selling just as well as a $2.99 price point.

      To this day I still keep wondering and asking what would have happen to that "Fade Into" series of books that were within the top #4 and #8 for several weeks at $0.99 if the price point was changed to $2.99 while they had the chance. Would they lose the ranking once they had that many sales rolling? They ended up losing their rankings anyways at the $0.99 price point.

      There is only one way to find out what's best for any given category and it's to test. I know first hand it's so tough to increase a price form $0.99 to $2.99 or any other price for that matter when you have a great sales rank. However, I'm sure glad I did test several price points instead of staying with the $0.99 price model that so many publishers stick with.

      To YOUR Success,
      Dean Shainin
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      • Profile picture of the author cashcow
        Originally Posted by Dean Shainin View Post

        3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point) Most of my books are about 3,000 to 6,000 word short stories for fiction. About 40 to 60 pages for non-fiction, which is about 400 words per page...
        Please don't feel like you have to reveal your genre, I know it's rude to ask, but I'm wondering if these short stories are erotica? Do you sell them individually or in a compilation?

        I know quite a few authors and no one has had luck selling short stories as standalone, but perhaps you are on to something?
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        • Profile picture of the author Dean Shainin
          Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

          Please don't feel like you have to reveal your genre, I know it's rude to ask, but I'm wondering if these short stories are erotica? Do you sell them individually or in a compilation?

          I know quite a few authors and no one has had luck selling short stories as standalone, but perhaps you are on to something?
          Hi Lee,

          Since I've worked with you before I'm sending you a PM to your inbox with a few details...

          Cheers,
          Dean
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  • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
    1) What sells better, Fiction or Non-Fiction?
    Fiction if you are genuinely good, otherwise non-fiction.
    2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
    Anything where you combine two topics... I have 6 books for sale but only one that makes 4 times as much as the others for LESS THAN 1/4 THE AMOUNT OF WORDS... yep! A combo topic... XXXX XXXXXX for XXXXXXX (hint - I took one topic and made it appealing to a different group who may find it interesting)
    3) How many pages should kindle book be on average? (I don't want to write a 5000 page novel at this point)
    My last book which I alluded to above is 28 pages!!
    4)How do I set my price? What is a good selling point?
    Set it, watch how it sells, change it. Really - it's that simple!!!
    5)Any other advice?
    Yep - Read all the WSOs.. take in what you can, then do what seems like a good idea to you... I am making *part of* a full time living from my last book.. which I came up with almost by accident. Moral: Keep trying different things.. don't always follow everyone else!

    And Michael,
    Best Of Luck!
    Dave



    *I may edit this post with more questions if I think of any*

    Thanks for any tips or advice.

    Michael[/QUOTE]
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    • Profile picture of the author TinkBD
      Originally Posted by DoubleOhDave View Post

      1)
      2) What topics sell best (please don't say 'write what you have a passion for')
      Anything where you combine two topics... I have 6 books for sale but only one that makes 4 times as much as the others for LESS THAN 1/4 THE AMOUNT OF WORDS... yep! A combo topic... XXXX XXXXXX for XXXXXXX (hint - I took one topic and made it appealing to a different group who may find it interesting)
      This combo strategy is unlikely to work for Fiction. Combining sub-genres will more likely reduce your reader pool than add to it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    In many tests, I've seen Fiction outsell Non Fiction 10 to 1 easily, probably closer to 25 to 1. However, there are still lots of successful books that are Non Fiction as well so don't let the odds scare you away from it.

    I agree with many of the others above in regards to writing about what you are knowledgeable about and passionate about because you'll have to do much more than just writing, formatting, and publishing your books...you'll need to market yourself properly and build an author brand if you want serious sales.
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