Giving everything I've got into ebook publishing

[Ziva]

Hey Everyone, I've been self-publishing on Kindle for the past year or so. I started out in non-fiction and had little success. After publishing 24 non-fiction books, in April I decided to try my hand at publishing fiction. I published a few more fiction ebooks over the next few months and saw they were way more lucrative than the non-fiction books I published. In mid-August I made the decision to go for it and publish as many fiction books as possible until Christmas. I outsource the writing and cover design, and I do all of the editing myself. Each ebook costs me $50 to create, including cover.

As of mid-August I had 5 fiction ebooks published. Between August 29th and today, Sept.26th, I have published 9 more fiction ebooks. Since July 1st, I have gone from around 20 downloads (sales and KU borrows) per day to as many as 92 downloads in a day. My average downloads per day for the past week was 81.

I've started this thread to keep myself more accountable to keep publishing a few books every week. I feel like I have a lot of momentum going, and I want to maintain it. I've uploaded a screen shot of my sales dashboard since July 1st.

I'm motivated to publish as much as I can over the next few months (3-5 books per week) so I can spend more time with my family and have more freedom. I am definitely sacrificing some present comforts and time to achieve this goal, but I look at my downloads increasing every week and it keeps me motivated.

My first goal is to get 100 downloads per day. I am planning on achieving this sometime in October. My next goal after that is 200 downloads per day, which I could see happening by Christmas.

I'll keep you all posted on my progress!

 

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[Ziva]

It has certainly been a while! I have been really focused on growing my publishing business and related activities the past few months I kind of abandoned this progress thread. I thought I'd return for an update that might encourage and inspire people here who are on their own journey to freedom.

I now consider myself to be financially free. What does that mean to me? That means no longer having to answer to anyone else in anyway with regards to how I spend my time and that the passive income I've created sufficiently covers my financial needs.

As far as income from my publishing goes, I earned around $19,600 in March, $19,200 in April, and around $22,500 in May. It's looking like June will shape up similar to May, hopefully a little more.

However, my income has expanded even more due to opportunities that came up for me to develop a consulting business related to self-publishing, which has increased my income substantially. In June alone I've made around $40,000 or so from this consulting business.

I'm now expanding into another online venture that will be a whole new progress thread. It's amazing how once abundance starts flowing, it continues to expand and new doors are continually opening.

I'm often asked what are the most important factors that contributed to my success. Here are some tips:

• Set specific goals. "I want to make more money" won't get you anywhere. Decide on a specific amount of money you want to be earning per month and by what date (i like 3 month goals) and revisit that goal daily. Write it out at least once a day in the present tense. Get clarity on the process you need to commit to to get to that goal.
• Take inspired action early. Don't wait until everything feels "right". Get busy taking imperfect but massive action and inevitable failing occasionally so you can learn and progress. Be grateful for failures and challenges. They are symptoms of impending success.
• Connect with other like-minded people who are on a similar journey to you. Create a mastermind where you connect with a small group weekly for a video call. Focus on acknowledging successes, brainstorming on how to overcome challenges, and accountability. Even better, find an accountability partner that you can talk to daily for 10 minutes or so and share with each other your gratitudes, successes from the day before, critical outcomes for the current day, and state your goal. Do this everyday and watch what happens. Super powerful stuff!

Thanks to @GlobalWealth for encouraging me to get back to this progress thread. I'll get in the habit of posting here more regularly. Also, please ask me questions you may have about Kindle Publishing, as I want to contribute something of value to this community

 

[Ziva]

Happy belated New Year everyone! I've been keeping productive with my process and haven't checked in here for a while. Thought I'd post an update.

I reached my goal for Dec.31, 2014! For the month of December I made approximately $10,620 CAD. My goal was to be making $10,000 per month by Dec. 31st. I've attached my sales dashboard.

The best lessons I've learned are to stay commited to process. Also, think big and aim high. Take massive action, more than you think is possible even if you don't feel ready. Also, write down your goals and visit them a couple of times per day along with what specific actions you are taking to reach them.

I'm going to keep continuing on executing my plan and process. 2015 will be a good one!

 

[Ziva]

Hey All,

I thought I'd post an update since it's been a while. February was my best month yet. Using the KU borrow rate from the month prior, I estimate that my income from Kindle publishing for February was $12,500 CAD. My process is getting stronger and more stream-lined and effective. I'm learning more and more what's working and what's not working. Whatever is working I repeat over and over again.

I have been able to completely let go of my "slowlane" business. I still teach a couple of yoga classes per week that I really enjoy, but in no way do I have to teach for financial reasons anymore.

I'm so grateful to @MJ DeMarco for writing Millionaire Fastlane . When I read it for the second time last summer, it was what really ignited a fire in me to seize the opportunity sitting right in front of me and take massive action. I am now grateful everyday for the freedom and space I have in my life now, and the options it has created for myself and my family.

Any tips for new publishers? something you would have done differently from the get go or some tips? Would be greatly appreciated

To answer this question, clear goal setting and writing out exactly what you need to do step by step to achieve that goal has been critical for me. I am now working with goals in 3 month blocks, so the next goal I'm working toward is for March 31st (I set the goal beginning of January). Everyday I decide on critical outcomes for that day that need to be done to bring me closer to my goal. I also write out my goal a few times per day in the present tense, feeling in my body, mind and heart WHY this goal is important to me. I also sacrifice something in the present to reap rewards in the future. For example, this next month I am comitting to 3 hours of uninterrupted work every day in order to reach my goal at the end of the month. This will mean giving up sleeping in or some leisure time to get to where I want to be. My goal for March 31st is to be selling 575 ebooks per day (paid units and KU borrows combined).

I'm thrilled that I'm having a record sales day today! So far I am at 344 downloads today (Paid units and KU borrows combined). Every week I'm inching closer to my goal

 

[Ziva]

hi, any updates? curious to see what happened after the keyword ranking changed. great thread btw.

Hey All! I've been MIA for a while from here so I thought I'd post about my progress.

I've been super busy and focused, dedicating all of my open time to this business. I've substantially cutback on the time I put into my other business (slowlane) so I can maximize the potential of my Kindle publishing biz.

I had a setback in October, when my sales drastically dropped overnight. After a few weeks of trying to figure out why, I realized my categories were off and working against me, so I changed them and my sales rebounded. Yay!

Fastforward to now - I'm definitely on track to my goal of selling 200 ebooks per day (approximately $10,000 per month) by the end of December. My average daily downloads for the past week were 154 ebooks.

I'm on my way!

 

[Ziva]

Just wondering, what are you pricing these at? At 10,000 words obviously they aren't that long.
I am guessing you may make more on each at one price but guessing can surpass that with volume at lower.

I price all the books at $2.99. I played with pricing at $.99, and I may have made a little bit more in paid units at the lower price point, but that was before the introduction of Kindle Unlimited. Now most of my earnings come from KU borrows, and the royalty per borrow is the same regardless of the price of the book. I've changed all my book prices to $2.99 now, with the idea that higher perceived value will make KU subscribers more likely to want to borrow the book.

 

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[Ziva]

What i'm always curious about is what kind of quality are the books when you're outsourcing them for only $50

Hey, The books I get for $50 are what I would consider a "skeleton". I certainly don't publish what I receive from the writers. I spend a significant amount of time extensively editing each book. But you would be surprised! I have received some really decent stories for $50.

I spent 10+ years as a freelance writer, so editing comes second nature to me. I plan on doing all of the editing until Christmas and then potentially outsourcing the editing and formatting of the books starting in the New Year.

 

[Ziva]

Are you marketing, or advertising? Or just going by people finding the book on Kindle?

Hi Mattie. No, I don't do any marketing or advertising at all. I just run a free promo on every book shortly after it's published and I have all of my books listed in a section in the back of every book.

 

[Ziva]

One thing I've always wondered when it comes to self publishing fiction books on Amazon is the security behind your work. Let's say I spend the next few weeks writing my first fiction book, with unique characters and a compelling story that I created myself... What protects me from those malicious few who would buy the book (since anyone can come up with $2.99) and start ripping from my ideas?

Any insight on this would be great, along with some mention of your progress since your last post!

There is really no protection or way to prevent that. If you catch someone ripping off your work, you could report them to Amazon. I wonder how common that is though. hmm.. something to think about! Don't let that fear prevent you from publishing. In all honesty and reality, interesting characters and compelling stories aren't the most important ingredients for books that sell on Amazon. Of course it is a good thing to have a good story, but there are thousands and thousands of "good stories" published on Amazon that don't sell. Awesome covers, good titles, good keywords, good descriptions, and reviews are what sells books.

As far as my progress goes, I have another book edited, formatted, and ready to publish, but I'm waiting for the cover to be done. I sent it back to the designer today with a few modification requests, so I should get it back tomorrow and publish that next book then. I have three more books ready and waiting to be edited and formatted, so I'll be busy with those for the rest of the week.

AND, I reached a goal of mine sooner than I thought I would. Yesterday, with paid units and KU borrows combined, I had over 100 downloads (104 to be exact). I stated in my first post in this thread that I thought it would happen in October. So, by the end of October I plan on averaging over 100 downloads per day. I've attached a screenshot of my sales dashboard from yesterday

 

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[Ziva]

It's been a great week so far! I published another book today, making a total of 20 fiction books published. I'm ready to do some last edits on another one tomorrow morning and I have a cover for it, so I'll be publishing that one tomorrow. I'll be getting another couple of books from writers in the next couple of days, so I'll get another one published by the end of the weekend, making a total of 3 new ones for the week. Publishing 3 books per week has been totally manageable and the pace that my sales are growing at has been great.

Today my daily sales reached another new high! With paid units and KU borrows combined, I had 125 downloads today. Over the past week my average daily sales were 102. I had a goal of reaching a daily average of 100 sales by the end of October, so I'm happy with my progress at this point. I'm thinking I can reach average daily sales of 150 by the end of October.

I've attached a screenshot of my sales dashboard from the past week for you all to check out. If anyone has any questions at all about Kindle publishing or I can be of help in any way, please let me know

 

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[Ziva]

I had a productive week with 3 new publications ( 2 new books and one "bundle"). My sales have really escalated in the past week, which has been awesome and really motivating. My results are confirmation for me that my process is working and that I am providing something with these books that people are finding valuable, useful, or entertaining. I do the exact same set of actions for each new ebook, and I will continue to do so to keep getting these great results.

My daily sales (paid units and KU downloads combined) since last Sunday have ranged between 92 and 168 (that was my total for today... woot! new record!). I keep reassessing my goals that I have set because I keep reaching them earlier than anticipated. Not a bad problem to have!.. haha.

In my last post I stated that I wanted to change my daily average goal from 100 per day to 150 sales per day. I am at an average off 109 daily sales so far for the month of October, so I think I will reach my new goal by the end of this month.

I've attached my month to date sales dashboard for you all to check out.

This week I will publish 3 more books and I will get everything set up to start collecting emails for a mailing list, which I have been putting off for too long.

Ready to take on another week!

 

[Sean P]

Great thread, keep up the good work!

Your decision to change over from non-fiction to fiction was the turning point for you. I guess writing fiction is much more lucrative than creating non-fiction books. However, those new to publishing may like to create non-fiction books first to get a hang of it and put some books out there before they try their hand at fiction.

 

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[Ziva]

So this is really from your consulting business more, than your e-book sales on KU borrows?

That $40,000 in June was just from consulting. My income from Kindle (an extra $20,000 or so per month) is separate.

Basically You outsourced all your books, had other people write them, paid for reviews, and paid for advertisement? And you're making This every month now compared to what you said in January?

Yes, all my books are outsourced. I have an assistant that helps me to get review swaps for my books. My Kindle income has grown a lot and continues to grow. I earned around $12,500 in February from Kindle. In May I earned over $22,000 from Kindle. Income from my consulting business varies every month due to how many clients I have. I had many clients for June, so my income was substantial for this month. If I chose to have no clients in July, my income from consulting would be $0. I recognize that my income from consulting is in no way passive. I love it though because it gives me the opportunity to really help people create transformational change in their lives. Even if I choose to not take on any clients, I still am earning the substantial passive income I've created from Kindle.

Oh, and I don't do any paid advertisement. I have done a couple of Facebook ads in the past, but don't currently have any running.

 

[Ziva]

Would you be open to sharing your non-fiction niche and avg sales?

The non-fiction books I published were in the health and wellness niche. The sales I've made from these books this month range from 0 to 34 downloads.

For the above - what sort of promotion (if any) and length of book?

I do no promotion at all for the fiction books I've published. They are all in the steamy romance niche and most are around 10,000 words.

I published another book and it is live in the Kindle store! That brings my total number of fiction books published to 15. I finished editing and formatting another book today and it will be ready to publish tomorrow. After publishing that one tomorrow, that will bring me to 3 ebooks published in the past week. I'm aiming to publish between 3 and 5 books per week, so I'm right on track.

I received a book from one of my writers today, I'm expecting two more to be submitted to me tomorrow, and then two more again early in the week. I'll have lots of editing and formatting to keep me busy this next week!

I'll continue to post my progress and results

 

[Jam Wheel]

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

I've also considered outsourcing the writing because while I would consider myself a good storyteller and can generate lots of ideas, I absolutely love editing and would find it more fun to come up with story parameters to be filled in by a ghostwriter and then do the editing and marketing myself. Something to think about.

What % of sales/KU do you typically see? Although I suppose purchase provides the opportunity to get a new reader on the mailing list.

 

[Ziva]

More progress to report! I published another book tonight, bringing my total number of fiction ebooks to 17. I also finished editing another book so it's ready to go. I'm just waiting for a cover because my cover designer is on vacation.

Since reaching a new milestone on Sunday with 100 sales, this week saw sales on Monday and Tuesday dip down a little. But, sales rebounded yesterday and I had 101 downloads. Today has been great too, as it's almost 10pm here at so far today I've had 87 sales. Not too shabby! I'll attach my screen shot since the weekend for you guys to check out.

I think I will realistically be able to publish 2 more books by the end of the weekend. I'm really enjoying this whole process and it's very motivating when the sales start rolling in. However, I also have another business (slow lane) and I'm a mom, so I have no free time at all, but I'm totally ok with it. I know that I need to be making big sacrifices now with my time so that I can have a lot of free time after Christmas. I am also a yoga teacher, and I have a goal to take from mid December until the end of January off from teaching so I can spend lots of time with my family

 

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[Bananas]

Yeah, I run the stories through copyscape. I also have a ghostwriter agreement I use with all of my writers.

Are you into ebook publishing Bananas?

Yes, but in the totally opposite manner of you. I write them myself and only publish nonfiction, and I do have success there. My 20th book was just published last week. I also put most books which are the right length (neither too long nor too short) through Createspace and have paperback sales as well.

That's probably why I am so curious, since we are totally opposite. I read the KDP forums but hardly anyone there sells enough to bother talking to, probably because the ones selling don't bother to post there. So I never speak to other writers, let alone anyone with any measure of success, and especially anyone doing any better than me.

Here in a few days, we will know what the KU payout is going to be for September.

 

[Bananas]

Yes! I'm looking forward to it. As you can see from my sales dashboard, my KU borrows by far outnumber my paid units. I saw on the KDP site that the KDP Select Fund for October is 3 million, which is the same as September. Maybe the royalty per KU borrow will be around $1.54 again? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

How are KU borrow in comparison to paid units for your non-fiction books?

My borrows are less than my sales. I do 70 or 80 a day and its 20-30 borrows versus 40-50 sales. November through January are always phenomenal compared to the rest of the year so I'm really looking forward to seeing how that plays out this year with KU.

As for the rate for September, I'm really hoping it stays around $1.50 mark. People should be about out of their free month of KU now so things should stabilize as we move from people who were just utilizing their free month to people who are actually paying the $9.99 per month to borrow. I'm one of the people who chose to stay in and be billed $9.99.

 

[SeanyHang]

Hey Ziva! Congrats on your success with ebooks! I've had a little success with cookbook ebooks myself and I was wondering where your writers are typically from that they'd be willing to work for such small wages? Most of the quotes I get (even from people in India/ Malaysia) are around 150+. Any hacks?

Thanks!

 

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[Ziva]

Holy crap that's awesome! Congratz man.

I have the same goal to reach by december 2015!

Holy crap that's awesome! Congratz man.

Ahem.... Woman

Thanks!

 

[Durete]

This is a very inspirational thread.

Concratz to the success ziva,
Few questions:

- How do you choose your writers? Any tips for starters?
- How do you handle legal things such as copyright, ISBN etc.
- How do you handle taxes? Is it income tax, or did you set up a business and is it corporate tax+income tax etc?
- Did you start outsourcing editing?
- I see that you're mainly focussing on KU, have you tried different channels instead of just focussing on Kindle?

Hope to hear from you.

 

[Mattie]

This is amazing stuff. I have a stupid question though: what are review swaps?

I'm aware of this because I'm on Facebook trying to get honest reviews for my book, and you swap a book with another person read it, and review it. I just ran into a guy from the Phillipines who showed me what people do, probably like here on Fastlane.

They go to elance, fivver, etc. and pay someone to go swap books with people like me, and have a list of books and they target like twenty or fifty books and get reviews for them.

So basically, the first hundred reviews on their book are all fake to make it go up in author rank and sell their books.

Not a path I want to go down, when Amazon just put a law suit up in April against paid review sites, and also track your i.p.

Amazon waits for these elancers etc. to get enough swaps, connect the dots, and suspend accounts. The guy I just talked to didn't even realize this, and fortunately, they're all doing reviews and Amazon knows every review they do is fake. He thought I did the same thing because I have 600 reviews on my account.

No, I read all the time on Amazon and do honest reviews. And don't give everyone five stars. And frankly, I'm not sure swapping books is a good thing, for this reason. You want honest reviews, and I keep running into these peeps working off elance. They don't read the book, and just give fake reviews which don't even match content inside the book.

I suppose some people don't care, but I don't see the point of doing all the work, and having it all collapse, because you want to try to beat the system.

 

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[Ziva]

Friends who are in the self-pub game tell me I should "write a book about your business knowledge!" but frankly I wonder about the ROI when I see stories on this forum of people who have had the opposite experience of fiction being more lucrative.

It really depends. There are some really successful non-fiction authors out there, and I find they usually have used links in their books to generate mailing lists and develop a following. This is something a lot of fiction authors do too, and this is something I'm going to implement in the next couple of weeks. I already have an Aweber account, so I need to build a squeeze page or even just get an opt-in on my website and then put a link in all of my books for people to sign-up to my list. I'm planning on sending weekly emails to my list with links to new releases.

 

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[Rinzler]

One thing I've always wondered when it comes to self publishing fiction books on Amazon is the security behind your work. Let's say I spend the next few weeks writing my first fiction book, with unique characters and a compelling story that I created myself... What protects me from those malicious few who would buy the book (since anyone can come up with $2.99) and start ripping from my ideas?

Any insight on this would be great, along with some mention of your progress since your last post!

 

[Ziva]

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

I've also considered outsourcing the writing because while I would consider myself a good storyteller and can generate lots of ideas, I absolutely love editing and would find it more fun to come up with story parameters to be filled in by a ghostwriter and then do the editing and marketing myself. Something to think about.

Yeah, I really enjoy doing the editing. Some of the stories I edit quite extensively and add content too, so I put a lot into all of the stories.

What % of sales/KU do you typically see? Although I suppose purchase provides the opportunity to get a new reader on the mailing list.

I see way more KU borrow from my books. I think it is because I'm in the romance niche and people who read in that niche really consume a lot. A reader doesn't need to purchase to get on a mailing list. I will put a link to an opt-in page in the front and back of all my books, so if someone buys or borrows the book the can follow the link to the opt-in page to sign up for the mailing list if they want.

 

[early riser]

Congrats on achieving your goal and sounds like a great idea for residual income. Now on to the next milestone!

Noted that fiction sells better (at least for you) as well.

What are you pricing these at/what did you find to be the magic price? At 10,000 words obviously they aren't that long.I am guessing you may make more on each at one price but guessing can surpass that with volume at lower. Just wondering what you found that magic number to be.

Thanks

 

[early riser]

... but that was before the introduction of Kindle Unlimited. Now most of my earnings come from KU borrows, and the royalty per borrow is the same regardless of the price of the book. I've changed all my book prices to $2.99 now, with the idea that higher perceived value will make KU subscribers more likely to want to borrow the book.

Awesome. That just rolled out, so good info to know. Repped.

 

[Jam Wheel]

Thanks for the continued thoughts and congrats on achieving your new milestone! Maybe 200 by Thanksgiving instead and 300 by xmas?

 

[Y.B.]

What i'm always curious about is what kind of quality are the books when you're outsourcing them for only $50

 

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[Ziva]

I made some more progress today! I published another book, bringing my total number of fiction books to 16. I will publish at least two more books this week. After reaching over 100 downloads on my sales dashboard on Sunday, the last couple of days were a little slower, but if I recall my university stats knowledge, regression to the mean should be expected

I really worked hard for the whole month of September and it has paid off. I published 11 books this past month. I'm looking forward to to receiving my royalty report in the middle of October to find out exactly what my earnings were for the month. Excited to keep rocking it through October!