Kindle - A Good Business To Be In?

Not in my eyes... kindle makes money for 3 people only.

Amazon.

Best selling authors, im talking top of the list type people.

People that produce crappy books such as 501 Xmas Ideas to jingle you through the new year: 2013. And continuously product books like that over and over and over again... kind of like a factory.

1. No business can be accurately described as "future proof" especially when
it depends on a third party such as Amazon.

2. Book publishing is sustainable and can be profitable depending upon your
ability to write books that are likely to have an evergreen demand. That's why
I have a preference for fiction rather than non-fiction. If you can build a "tribe"
of avid readers... you can create a lot of repeat business. And, while there can
be less competition in some non-fiction categories, there is a much bigger market
in fiction genres.

3. Income is a numbers game... Assuming you are selling each of your books at
the popular $2.99 price point, you'll get roughly $2 per book sold. Therefore you
need to sell 2,250 units to generate $4,500 a month. Or 75 books per day.

If you could average 3 sales of each book per day, you'd need to write 25 books.

John

I have been able to move 5,000 books in one week, but a new book is like a new game. There are few sales after six months and you need to release another one. Also, this Kindle is very hit or miss. A few books will sell a lot, but most will not sell any. Best strategy is to release a few books and see how well you do in our new arena. Hope that you are willing to spend time to promote your books as that is important to get the ball rolling as we say. If you read up on the WSO, please remember this one. Old tricks do not work any more. I am talking about giving away FREE copies. This use to work, but the algo was changed by amazon. It is important to have a superior cover. Make sure it looks good in tiny icon size.

Kindle Publishing definitely made a big splash in 2013, and I doubt it will slow down. Tablet sales are going up and up, Kindle is available on all smart devices now, and people LOVE buying cheap little kindle books.

It's definitely scalable, but it takes a lot of $2 royalties to make 6k a month, so if you want to do it in 6 months you will most likely need to outsource some books. I think you would need more than 20 books BUT if you create a few real hits, and get boosted up to the top of the category you can definitely make 6k a month.

I suggest looking into creating ebooks in pain niches, like quit smoking, increase self-confidence, etc.

It is definitely doable though!

Without some really top-selling books, you are unlikely to get $4,500 as a monthly income in even 6 months writing the ebooks yourself.

Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial (dot com) has a sister that has achieved lower, although still impressive, numbers in just a few months with fiction. Yuwanda herself earns slightly depressing numbers from her Kindle endeavors - she published 50 books in a year as part of a challenge on her site. But e-junkie, through her site sales have made all of the difference for her.

There are plenty of other examples of fiction sales made - think Dean Wesley Smith, the couple of compensations surveys out there.

I don't have a huge backlist myself, as I spend so much time ghostwriting for other clients, but I am re-releasing old titles (fixing them up, updated backmatter, etc) and releasing new titles, and I think there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

You probably need to hire other writers. If you're looking to replace your income, I don't know that you have the budget.

Amazon pays on a 6-week schedule, which cuts your timeline to earn significantly to start actually seeing your money.

You need to charge the highest price you can for the smallest books you can put out - if you can go with 3k at $2.99 releasing once a week in erotica, 5k at $2.99 in all other fiction genres, or 3k in many nonfiction genres at $4.99. Don't put yourself in the $0.99 bargain bin - make a loss leader $1.99 for the quality pre-judgments that Amazon's buyers make. If you are just putting out what you can release, you're going to get maximum earnings at this schedule.

Don't underestimate the value of good research. No point in just thinking up, writing and publishing books. You need to figure out what needs are out there and fill those needs. There are plenty of marketers who have done the research and then put crap out there - search out books with one-star reviews and look for trends. Not to replace your research, but to supplement it.

Try to stay at whatever is making the income you want to replace, take the time to learn formatting and cover design and copywriting (or the time to invest portions of that income in hiring these things out) and maybe you could get enough titles going to have the potential for those earnings ... this time next year? I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but that's a big challenge for earnings in that time period.

All this being said, with good research and the budget to hire quality writers, and a solid plan for getting reviews (NOT paid or fake mind you), you could make this money in that that time. But it would take enormous energy and investment.

Why not try to make a smaller amount of money in that time and scale up to hiring writers so you can increase your output?

Oh, and another marketing tip: look for niche/genre sites on Fiverr to get some good deals on promotion. Advertising on these sites can help.

But DO NOT: pay for reviews, create fake reviews, churn out crap, or publish ebooks without doing research on what you should be writing.

John nailed it; anytime you are using someone else's platform, they can change the rules anytime they want, so no one knows for sure. In my very humble opinion I think the Kindle platform will be around for a long time, but ultimately who knows?

I started a separate digital publishing company earlier this year and my focus was to self-publish using multiple platforms and networks with the Kindle platform leading the way. So think of Kindle, Audible.com, iTunes, Clickbank, getting your product listed on a CPA network, etc. Think of where people are spending their time on their PCs, tablets, and other mobile devices and find ways to reach them there.

Also buying your own traffic, sending it to a pre-sale page or authority blog (depending on your model), building a list, having a backend strategy, etc. should also be part of YOUR publishing endeavors. You have to have the ability to put on your "author" hat as well as your "marketer" hat to give this a real shot.

A quick example: you can have several 99cent or 2.99 ebooks on Kindle and you can use them as lead generators. They don't have to necessarily make a profit on their own. You can put in resource boxes and links inside your ebook; do it tactfully and tastefully and you can begin building your own list, creating your own "tribe" as John put it.

What's to stop you from putting a 30-50 page ebook on Kindle and then fleshing out that ebook to 100 - 200 pages (or more) and then selling it on Clickbank, eJunkie, DigiBilly, PayGear, etc. for $27 to $47 bucks and then marketing additional affiliate products that you can promote to your list?

Nothing and that's one way you can leverage the Kindle platform.

In my opinion it's NOT sustainable if you're only going to rely on ONE platform. Some Kindle folks disagree with me on that point, but anytime you rely on your profits solely on ONE platform, then to me by it's very definition, cannot be sustainable.

Will Kindle be around ten years from now? I would like to say yes, but ten years in Internet time is a long time, anything can happen. Platforms get replaced all the time.

(c) what realistic profits can be made - is $4,500 p/m high end, is it easy with quality stuff, is it likely with a few books, do I need to make 20 books for that etc etc.

Let's just get this out of the way: no business is "easy" to start. Not if you're going to do it the right way, which means doing a lot of research, taking concise, but plenty of action, paying attention to what's working and what isn't, and being able to make adjustments.

I know one lady who this year earned about 4k within 5 months, yet I know of another author who took 17 months to get to 4k per month. It depends: therere way too many variables to give you any kind of concrete numbers.

In my first month I earned under $100 in my second month it went up to $182. Did I quit? No, I was staying focused on researching niches for non-fiction and genres for fiction. Then I began promoting my ebooks and in my 3rd month I earned over 800 dollars after expenses.

The kindle platform is NOT a business, it is merely a distribution channel for YOUR publishing business. If you can keep that paradigm in mind then you'll have a much better chance at succeeding at this than people who don't.

RoD

Yes, publishing books on the Kindle is a GREAT business to be in.

I'll tell you what most people won't however...

The chances of you putting up a book, or even 10 books and replacing your full time job income are very slim. It's definitely not "push button easy" like many people claim. You can't just write good books and hope people find them.

However...and this is a big point: replacing your full time income is definitely VERY POSSIBLE when you do things right. That means building what I like to call an "author brand", marketing yourself and your books properly, having something to sell on the back-end, and very working hard...it's what very few people actually do, so it's not very crowded at the top.

When you do it "right" as described above, it's very possible and do-able and you'll be doing what 99.8% of the author authors don't do which is a good thing.

I notice that a few posters feel Kindle profits are only generated by very few. These statements appear to be based more on emotion than fact. Are you a good researcher/writer? If you are then Kindle Direct Publishing can be a great income generator.

Not only Kindle; there are many, many more platforms that are hungry for the talents of prolific writers. One often overlooked platform is print magazines. Everyone is so keenly focused on the digital information markets that they ignore the vast number of physical writing opportunities.

Here is the catch. Are you willing to devote "at least" 3 hours each day to research and writing? Do you "love" to write or do you consider a drudge task that happens to be the means to an end. That end being income generation. It your motivation is the latter - don't even bother pursuing Kindle books.

Even for those like myself who love to write; there are some days when one want would like nothing better than to take a hammer to the keyboard. Imagine what it's like for someone who really doesn't like to write or worse - can't write.

My advice: "If you LOVE it - GO FOR IT!
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I am extremely interested in Kindle publishing. It IS a numbers game to some extent. However, from what I've read, you can tilt the game to your favor by building alliances that can help push your books. The key is to promote by getting noticed by influential people in your niche. This means knocking the ball out of the park when it comes to quality. Did I miss anything?

If you want to do kindle full time you must focus on young adult fiction genre. Non fiction seems not doing really well.

I agree that your goal would be tough in your time frame UNLESS you use the money you make to re-invest and start outsourcing some of the work/make more books.

As others have said, it's a numbers game at the end of the day - both in the amount of books you have and the amount of relatively new books you have at one time.

At some point, books will drop off in sales, so you have to keep replenishing. But if you were going to make this your full time job and looked at it like a business in which you would invest/re-invest, big numbers are possible.

I have two books on the Kindle platform. The first one is now selling a few hundred dollars a month with minimal promotion. The second one is selling more than the first one within the first two weeks due to the demand in the industry for information.

With both books, I set up a Facebook Page and post about the books periodically.

Building a full-time income around Kindle is not impossible but it depends on many factors, many already discussed here. My concern for you would be "putting all of your eggs" in the Kindle basket. As stated here already, anything can change and if it happens to be Amazon, you are out of luck.

Also, consider selling on the other popular platforms, Nook Press and iBooks.

I love this thread. I'm also looking into publishing my ebook in Kindle. I'll keep an eye on this thread to get more info on how to monetize.

Joe

One thing I see many authors make is selling a book (or books) on the Kindle and having nothing to sell on the back-end. It's pure craziness! If you do it right, you should have books at different price points that leads to other things at other price points...this works with Fiction or Non Fiction.

Between the strategy above and building an author brand, it's out there and yours for the taking. The time is ripe and there is no reason more people can't be making full time incomes on the Kindle.