About two years ago I published my first eBook on Amazon Kindle. I didn’t do it for the money.
I did it simply because I wanted to publish a book. So I wrote about the basic science of bodybuilding, something I was obsessed with at the time.
To my amazement I made several hundred dollars a month from this book, without even marketing it or promoting it. Fast forward two years and I’ve published six books to date. For the most part each books sells better than the last. At this point I make over a thousand dollars each week via Amazon profits. And now that I’m finally starting to treat this process as a business, I fully expect this number to increase quickly.
I say this not to impress you, but to impress upon you the incredible monetary potential of writing and publishing kindle eBooks. Below are the top five reasons that almost anyone can take advantage of this opportunity.
1. We’ve all figured something out
When it comes to informational products, specifically non-fiction books, people buy them because they’re searching for a solution. They’re searching for an answer to some question, problem, or challenge that they’re currently facing.
And the fact is that someone else has probably already figured this out. Someone else has already overcome this particular problem. It might be how to pick up girls. It might be how to use a particular application, like Evernote, more effectively. It might be how to travel the world with only a backpack. It might be how to gain weight with a particular dietary limitation.
The amazing thing is that almost all of us have figured something out. And if you can identify a specific problem that you’ve faced and overcome, then you can probably make money off of it by turning it into an easy-follow-system and then packaging it as a Kindle eBook.
2. Writing non-fiction is an easy-to-learn skill
If you can explain things coherently, and if you can take the time to organize your solution into a logical outline, then you can write non-fiction. The truth is that improving your writing, like any other skill, takes time and repetition. However, the following two tips made all the difference in my writing:
1. Write as if you’re talking to a good friend. This is usually an appropriate tone that’s not too formal, and also pleasant to read.
2. Proofread your shit. Not having spelling and grammar mistakes goes a long way in making your writing digestible and professional.
People will be buying your book because they want a solution to their problem, so being Mark Twain or George Orwell isn’t a requirement, but writing an easy-to-follow and coherent book definitely is.
3. A baby could literally publish a book on Amazon
The Kindle publishing process is extremely straightforward. If you can format a Microsoft Word document and follow basic directions, it will only take a couple of hours to upload and publish your eBook to Amazon.com.
Because the barrier to entry is so low, the other side of this fact is that Amazon is littered with heaps of bullshit. You must make your book stand out by writing a good book, giving it a catchy title, creating an aesthetically pleasing cover image, and then receiving positive reviews.
4. Amazon will literally market and sell the book for you
This is probably the number one reason that there’s money to be made with Kindle. Amazon is an enormous online marketplace. Countless people go to Amazon to buy a nearly unlimited scope of goods. And eBooks happen to be one of their bread-and-butter products.
On top of this Amazon does a first-class job of selling everything it offers. It knows what you’re likely to buy based on your search and purchase history, and it bombards your screen with relevant, quality products as you go. The trick to selling a lot of copies of your eBook is getting Amazon to recognize it as a quality product. This is accomplished by doing just two things:
1. Selling lots of copies up front
2. Getting good reviews
This may seem daunting if you don’t have a big network or email list to sell your book to. But the truth is that with the existence of so many niche online communities that it’s not very hard… especially if you use this simple, but devastatingly effective strategy: release your book for 99 cents AND then get people to buy and review it. This will accomplish the two things discussed above, and then you can up the price, stop promoting the book on your own, and let Amazon keep the sales rolling in.
5. 70% royalty
The last reason you should publish on Amazon is this: you get 70% royalties. The fact that I only give 30% to Amazon is a giant gift considering that they provide probably 90% of my total sales.
If you’re interested in actually writing a book on Kindle, you should check out my new book Write Book, Make Money.
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