📚 More On Creating & Selling Ebooks On Amazon

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Hope you don’t mind an extra email from me this week 😬

A lot of you replied to let me know that you’re super interested in doing ebooks and print books on Amazon, so I’m talking more about that.

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So, I’ll start doing that monthly. Or whenever it pays out for the month.

Now let’s get to it…

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More on Amazon + selling ebooks and print books

Though I know a lot of you are wicked interested in this topic, what I don’t know is if you’re looking at this as a new revenue stream for your site or as a new side hustle/main hustle.

I feel like the overall process and plan of attack is the same, with just a few details that differ based on what your end goal is with it.

Let’s start based on the questions I got from you all -

I think I’ll have to outsource the writing - can I still earn if I have that additional cost?

Yes and no.

The people who outsource Kindle books with success are the ones who are focused on bulk publishing in niches where the readers are voracious. And, they tend to focus on going exclusive with Amazon so that they can get the books in KU for those hungry readers.

The most common niche where people do this is erotica. But, it’s a bit more nuanced that general erotica. You need to study the charts to determine what the hot subniche is right now and focus on cranking out those types of stories with your hired writers.

A good place to start for anyone interested in the erotica niche is the erotica authors subreddit.

But you don’t have to commit to erotica to have the outsourcing math work for you.

There’s plenty of under-served niches with hungry readers. Pretty much any sub-niche of romance is going to have those people who just devour tons of KU books each month.

Right now LitRPG and Mafia Romances are two of those subniches.

I know someone who got into Mafia Romances when the niche first started bubbling up and she has managed to retire on those monies.

I think she’s been writing them herself for around 3 years now and she’s doing at least one book a month, sometimes two. But the really interesting thing is that English is her second language!

I don’t even publish fiction books. Never have. So I don’t know why I know all this.

My wife writes fiction, but she does her own thing without even caring about hot niches and Amazon algorithms.

I’m all about non-fiction because (like erotica) super short books sell easily. Unlike erotica, they sell at higher than expected prices. Plus, it makes sense to create paperbacks here since non-fiction readers often prefer paperbacks.

If you’re going to hire someone for non-fiction - which I don’t advise - you’ll want to find a subniche where you can publish lots of titles without too much competition.

Recipes books are an easy option here. Find a hot new appliance and be one of the first to offer recipes books for it = printing money.

I’ve also seen people doing well with a series of books on things like homeopathic remedies and stuff like personal development topics.

Honestly, the best idea is to spend some time looking at the charts to see what’s selling paid and what’s selling free. Do that for a week or two and you’ll start to see trends and notice pockets where the audience is clearly hungry and there’s minimal competition.

And while you may want to outsource fiction books, I see zero reason to outsource non-fiction content thanks to AI content tools like Claude and chatGPT.

But there’s more to selling ebooks and paperback books on Amazon than just getting the book written.

Getting Traction on Amazon

What about Amazon ads? Do you need to use them to actually sell books on Amazon?

Let me start by reminding you that historically Amazon has always been a shit company to partner with.

And publishing books through them is no exception to this. I could rant on this for days….but I won’t.

What I will tell you is that there are lots of complaints about the Amazon ads system regarding things like running ads for irrelevant keywords/searches that eat up your budget and so on.

Okay, and just one more quick rant - there’s an ongoing lawsuit for some shady shit Amazon did regarding audiobook sales and honestly, they were literally stealing money from authors so I expect them to lose in court. I actually wrote about it back in 2020.

</end rant>

Back to Amazon ads…

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Personally, I refuse to give Amazon any money, so I never use Amazon ads.

That being said, there are plenty of niches now where it’s just an inevitable part of doing business.

It’s a real challenge for authors though because Amazon has trained people to devalue books to the point that they don’t want to pay more than a few bucks for an ebook.

And Amazon takes a commission cut AND charges a delivery fee for each ebook sold. That means it’s a balancing act to promote the books while actually making money.

In my experience, and that of the authors I know who have tried Amazon ads, if you can get a BookBub to promote the book then that is a better use of your time and money.

I think it would also be more profitable to get exposure on TikTok via the #BookTok influencers. My wife has done this with great success in one of her niches.

Other Things To Think About

Do I need to do print books? Do I need to pay a cover designer? How do I price my book? Should I also upload my ebook to other sites?

Y’all have a lot of questions!

Let’s see if we can finish this up before I’ve written a book here myself.

No, print books don’t always make sense. And that formatting takes extra work. Just start with ebooks.

I wouldn’t pay the high cost of a cover designer with things like Canva existing. Sure, it won’t be the most amazing cover design, but you’ll be surprised what you can teach yourself in an afternoon.

I do all of my cover designs in Photoshop and I’ve learned so much about design over the years I’ve been doing this. Just make sure the images you use on the cover have the proper licensing for you to use them.

And be careful paying someone on Fiverr or Upwork for this because they may give you images that you don’t have the right to use.

Price your book based on what is the norm for the niche. The same goes for the length of the book and what the cover design looks like.

Whether or not you upload your book to other sites really depends on your end goal. Publishing on other sites is called “going wide” and selling only on Amazon is being exclusive to them.

Staying exclusive gives you some perks like being able to put your book in KU as well as getting a few days every 90-day period where you can “promote” your book by selling it for free just to get downloads and get on the charts.

You should know that every time a KU book is downloaded it gets counted as a sale (which is bullshit) and sales is what moves a book further up those category best seller charts. Books that are listed at a price of free end up on the free books best sellers charts.

There is a trick you can do where you run the free days and do some promotions on sites that send out freebies and deals - and then you time it just right where you raise the price back up and ride out the end of it all on the paid charts all thanks to the sales you got as a freebie book.

But you can’t do that if you go wide.

On the flip side, going wide means being available in places like the Apple ebooks store and Barnes & Nobles. Pretty much everywhere that’s not Amazon offers better royalty splits and a better payout schedule.

Going wide also means that you can sell the ebooks direct on your site, where you get to keep all the revenue.

But it can be hard to get traction when you go wide since the Amazon algorithm favors books in KU. It also favors books from the big publishers.

Just typical Amazon bullshit.

What I tend to do is stay exclusive with a new pen name until I build up a following and then start going wide with everything. Another option is to stay exclusive for the first 90 days of a new book (to be able to be in KU and do those freebie sales days)- and THEN take the book wide.

There’s More…

I think I’ve answered all the questions that I got from you all. But this is one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know.

You’ve got to format these books, and if you’re doing paperback, too, it’s additional formatting.

You’ve got to pick the right categories to get exposure. But that is really based on your niche and not the same option for everyone.

You need to know how KU reads get paid so you can decide if it’s really even worth it for you.

You need to know what’s involved in going wide, cause that’s a whole thing getting setup with the other online stores.

You need to know about doing promotions outside of Amazon.

And that’s just what I’m coming up with on the spot here.

If you’re thinking of doing this as your main hustle, then you should know that being on this one book every 30 days treadmill can be a chore. The Amazon algo pretty much requires this if you want to stay on top, otherwise you just end up falling off a cliff after 30 days.

But you can make a lot of money….with a lot of work….or with the right niche selection.

Thoughts? More questions? Other comments?

Stay awesome,

Shawna

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