$5k+/Month Self-Publishing. Happy to Share and Help

[ped89]

Wassup fastlaners,

Always been a lurker on this forum and thought I would give back and get active!

So, I've been self-publishing since mid December, had 13#1 bestsellers and thought I would do an AMA to see if I can help. Whether anyone cares or not will remain to be seen haha!

I started publishing on Kindle as I was living in Canada without a Visa and none of my other ventures were taking off. I was paying for life with my credit card (not my wisest moment) and dove into self-publishing as I thought I could make a go at it.

Fast forward to now I'm at $5000 a month (for past few months) and I've recently been interviewed by a few websites/podcasts which was pretty fun and a total first for me. I now coach people too which is awesome but comes with its own pains haha!

Anyway if I can help anyone here who is self-publishing I would love too.

I'm by NO means the most knowledgeable but I might be able to help.

So yeah... Ask Me Anything.

Cheers,

Pete

 

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[GuestUser116]

What kind of ebooks? What price?

How did your first month go?

What is the most efficient marketting with a low budget?

 

[Creatingnow]

Thank you for offering your advice Pete. Would love to check out your interviews. Can you post links of where the videos/podcasts are online?

 

[ped89]

What kind of ebooks? What price?

How did your first month go?

What is the most efficient marketting with a low budget?

Wassup dude.
ebooks - Kindle. If you mean market/niche. Then it varies as I use pen-names. I got mens health, cookbooks and starting to build out a business communication series
Price - Depends on market and how well the book does. Ranges from 0.99-4.99. Ideally I want all my books at 3.99, but you need to make adjustments as the market and ranking of your dictates
Marketing - I do 90% of my marketing on Amazon, I let them do it for me basically... I "launch" my books so that they rocket up the Amazon charts and then Amazon does the promotion like puttin them in the "hot new releases" and in email blasts n shit.
Other than that I blast my email list that I built via publishing
I've tested FB ads - but used to drive to my email list instead of to the amazon page

 

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[seamles]

How long did it take you to get traction from first book to real meaningful sales?

 

[ped89]

Thank you for offering your advice Pete. Would love to check out your interviews. Can you post links of where the videos/podcasts are online?

Yeah, feel free to ask Qs. happy to help!

Links are as follows:
http://antiwantrepreneur.com/aw-podcast-016-peter-arnott/
joshuaisaak.com/how-pete-arnott-started-a-5k-per-month-passive-cashflow-business-on-amazon/
http://www.carlmattiola.com/extra-1k-pm/ <<< Guest post not Interview.

 

[ped89]

How long did it take you to get traction from first book to real meaningful sales?

Whats meaningful?

I was in debt and living off my credit card in Canada when I first started and had no visa so could only pick up the odd shift here and there (washing f**king dishes). So when I made my first $ or so (which was on the first day) I got SUPER excited, jsut cause I could see the end goal and the path.

I usually find a $1K is "meaningful" to people and that was within 6 weeks - give or take.

 

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[seamles]

Meaningful, yes sorry was very subjective. I like your 1k mark.

How many books did you release at that point?

 

[seamles]

Did you do any marketing or just keep publishing?

 

[Jakeeck]

I'm also very interested in how you got people exposed to your books. Looking on Amazon I don't understand how brand new authors get exposed to any customers?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I got mens health, cookbooks and starting to build out a business communication series

Curious...

How do you position yourself in these books?

For example, to arbitrarily publish a book on cooking I'd hope you've been cooking for years.
To publish a book on mens' health, I'd hope you are at the pinnacle of mens health.
To publish a book on business communication, I'd hope you'd have a breadth of experience in business communication.

How are these matters addressed? If at all? Or are you positioning yourself as an expert?

 

[ped89]

Meaningful, yes sorry was very subjective. I like your 1k mark.

How many books did you release at that point?

6 I believe, would need to go back and check the records though.

To answer your next Q. Marketing I played around with all the free book sites and stuff but didn't see much traction on it. Too hard to control as lots of people were submitting so no guarantee of books being featured. I prefer to just keep it within Amazon and let them do most of the work - if you do your targeting correctly then it will promote your books for you. Yup, keep publishing too - got 25 books out just now.

 

[ped89]

Curious...

How do you position yourself in these books?

For example, to arbitrarily publish a book on cooking I'd hope you've been cooking for years.
To publish a book on mens' health, I'd hope you are at the pinnacle of mens health.
To publish a book on business communication, I'd hope you'd have a breadth of experience in business communication.

How are these matters addressed? If at all? Or are you positioning yourself as an expert?

My name isn't attached to any of the books.
I use pen-names and I build out a pen name and then make that pen-name the expert.

As for the other Qs - it goes without saying you can't put out shit quality work. A) you get slaughtered in reviews B) book doesn't make any money C) whats the point in producing poor quality work.
Lots of people do that and you can easily identify these books. They tend to have awful formatting too and a bunch fo other issues.

Cooking -I've love cook and been doing it for years. Also worked in restaurants since I was 16. I've even learned under the previous winner of Scotlands top chef before.
For the other niches - I hire people who are qualified/experts in each of them and get them to write the content. I also have a chef/writer who does the cookbooks now, but I tend not to publish them anymore.

 

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[Ronnie]

Not business related.

But how did you manage to live in Canada without a Visa? I've been researching ways to live in Montreal (I'm from New York.)

Are you able to rent an apartment without a Visa?

Are you able to drive and own a vehicle there without a Visa?

Thanks!

 

[ped89]

No worries. Booked a flight and went over, I'm from UK so not sure what I can offer about US.

Rent an apartment, I got a room on Craigslist and explained the situation to the renters/landlord - seemed happy. Was only there for a few months though until I ended up on my mates couch.
Drive... no idea Ronnie, sorry! I was in Toronto so didn't need a car

 

[Selfy]

1.) How many books do you have out there?

2.) Are you in non-fiction or fiction? What are the percentages of your 5k are from each?

3.) Are you writing yourself or outsourcing?

4.) I'm thinking this is not just for cooking books, but if it is -- are you doing any marketing for your books?

5.) What are your plans to scale your 5k?

Thanks!

 

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[Jamesdoesmith]

could someone right a book say to harbor info? like an idea would be to talk to a bunch of old folks all over and just to tell it like it is and how things used to be and what this generation could learn from it then time capsule it in the form of a book...and just sell it as "info book". it would need formatting and research of course.

also can young people right books? I have alot of experience with the general public and I would like to publish it.

 

[GuestUser116]

also can young people right books?

Not with that vocab.

 

[Jamesdoesmith]

Not with that vocab.

God that's embarrassing. I have frequented a very "loose" forum for the past few years, often misspelling words on purpose to get past a censor. I am learning. lol

write*

 

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[ped89]

1.) How many books do you have out there?

2.) Are you in non-fiction or fiction? What are the percentages of your 5k are from each?

3.) Are you writing yourself or outsourcing?

4.) I'm thinking this is not just for cooking books, but if it is -- are you doing any marketing for your books?

5.) What are your plans to scale your 5k?

Thanks!

Wassup

1. Both - I started in non-fiction. I was moving into fiction and having decent success, my writer was putting togetheer an awesome erotica series and two books so far were done but her daughter has been in hospital for past few months (with MS I believe) so her mind is basically wrecked just now. We've kept in touch but I obviously told her to take as much time as she needs.
I'm going to be moving into short-stories very soon. Got a whole planned mapped out - just gotta execute haha!

Eh, tough to break down per book in a simple post like this, would need to go check my dashboard. But if we are just splitting into fiction/non-fiction then like 95% non-fiction - obviously it wasn't always like this (see above for reason)

2. Wrote myself initially as I couldn't afford writers. Now I outsource.

3. Off of Amazon? No. I let Amazon do it for me. I have experimented with FB ads though. Amazon are also testing a beta version of their ad platform for books. So if that goes ahead and goes out for everyone (you had to sign up to be a beta users and I missed the opt in) it will be awesome to see how the amazon ad platform helps.

4. Currently I'm not scaling. I use this to cash flow the other ventures I'm working on. That said I am hiring an assistant to start running nearly all of the publishing so I can focus elsewhere. I have all the manuals and processes written out so just got to find someone who is a good fit.

Hope that helps

 

[ped89]

could someone right a book say to harbor info? like an idea would be to talk to a bunch of old folks all over and just to tell it like it is and how things used to be and what this generation could learn from it then time capsule it in the form of a book...and just sell it as "info book". it would need formatting and research of course.

also can young people right books? I have alot of experience with the general public and I would like to publish it.

Yeah, I call this the "interview model" - so you can interview experts and pull together a book on the topic. Or to run with your example - you could hit up a retirement home and get old war stories or something like that (just spit balling here). You could sit and talk to them, record it and then have a transcriber transcribe it and then a writer weave it into a colelction of short stories.

Obviously you need to tell these people you're going to use their content for abook and make sure they're good with it.

 

[Jamesdoesmith]

Yeah, I call this the "interview model" - so you can interview experts and pull together a book on the topic. Or to run with your example - you could hit up a retirement home and get old war stories or something like that (just spit balling here). You could sit and talk to them, record it and then have a transcriber transcribe it and then a writer weave it into a colelction of short stories.

Obviously you need to tell these people you're going to use their content for abook and make sure they're good with it.

yes I would like that as most older folk cant jump on a computer and send all their dialect to one drop box. The actual act of sitting with them over a cup of coffee and seeing their pictures and their facial expression and body language. I would separate it by race, But make sure to tie us all back as american's at the end. The book would have an in your face feel. A respect to the racism and sexism and all the things that made the USA. Things that my generation cannot comprehend. I love talking to older men of times passed. This world needs to harness that and store it. for example, a man was a pilot and upset with computers landing the planes for people.

I have more to say will post after I get out of work.

 

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[Selfy]

Wassup

1. Both - I started in non-fiction. I was moving into fiction and having decent success, my writer was putting togetheer an awesome erotica series and two books so far were done but her daughter has been in hospital for past few months (with MS I believe) so her mind is basically wrecked just now. We've kept in touch but I obviously told her to take as much time as she needs.
I'm going to be moving into short-stories very soon. Got a whole planned mapped out - just gotta execute haha!

Eh, tough to break down per book in a simple post like this, would need to go check my dashboard. But if we are just splitting into fiction/non-fiction then like 95% non-fiction - obviously it wasn't always like this (see above for reason)

2. Wrote myself initially as I couldn't afford writers. Now I outsource.

3. Off of Amazon? No. I let Amazon do it for me. I have experimented with FB ads though. Amazon are also testing a beta version of their ad platform for books. So if that goes ahead and goes out for everyone (you had to sign up to be a beta users and I missed the opt in) it will be awesome to see how the amazon ad platform helps.

4. Currently I'm not scaling. I use this to cash flow the other ventures I'm working on. That said I am hiring an assistant to start running nearly all of the publishing so I can focus elsewhere. I have all the manuals and processes written out so just got to find someone who is a good fit.

Hope that helps

Hey, I appreciate it, but HOW MANY books do you have?

Non-Fiction:

Fiction:

That would be extremely valuable info.

 

[chrischapman]

also can young people right books?

yes, young people can right books.

 

[Ca$per]

Hey thanks for doing this man. Very informative so far!

1) In general, how long are your nonfiction books? (words and/or pages)

2) I am slightly surprised the ghostwriters would not self-publish their own material. Do they understand how you are using their services?

Thanks!

 

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[SirTristram]

Same question as Casper, how does it work with the ghost writers so that you end up publishing?

 

[M Collins]

Hi, thanks for posting this AMA. How long will your short stories be? Are they going to be erotica as well?
Reaching 1K within six weeks sounds terrific.

Do you think paranormal romance novellas can be profitable? The three novellas that I've commissioned and published are around 80 pages. Abysmal sales so far even though it's still really early and I have seven more novellas in the pipeline.

 

[ped89]

Hey, I appreciate it, but HOW MANY books do you have?

Non-Fiction:

Fiction:

That would be extremely valuable info.

Aight, sorry wasn't clear on your Q.
Non-fiction : 23
Fiction: 2 - again this has been halted for months unfortunately. Going to be hiring more.

Also got a few unpublished books that weren't good enough quality to put out. My own fault for not testing the writers enough.

 

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[ped89]

Hey thanks for doing this man. Very informative so far!

1) In general, how long are your nonfiction books? (words and/or pages)

2) I am slightly surprised the ghostwriters would not self-publish their own material. Do they understand how you are using their services?

Thanks!

No worries. HHope it helps.

1) I keep them less than 10,000 words. As long as you are very targeted with the topic of the book you can keep them short and to the point. As its non-fcition people are looking for value, and as long as you give the value they want (shown in title and description) they will be happy. I also break down larger topics into smaller topics - its better to do this thna 1 large "bible" book.

2) Why doesn't every office worker start their own business? Most people don't want to do it. Most people want to receive a pay check, and if they can do something they love whilst getting paid (wrting) then that keeps them happy. They 100% understand what I do and that I'm publishing their work, they are happy. They also need to sign an NDA for each book.

 

[ped89]

Hi, thanks for posting this AMA. How long will your short stories be? Are they going to be erotica as well?
Reaching 1K within six weeks sounds terrific.

Do you think paranormal romance novellas can be profitable? The three novellas that I've commissioned and published are around 80 pages. Abysmal sales so far even though it's still really early and I have seven more novellas in the pipeline.

Would need to research the market before I could answer that, I don't publish randomly - I research the marketplace and make sure it seem that there is a high liklihood of it being successful.

They are going to be very short, I'm going to target Amazons new "short reads" categories and build out short stories that are 15 minute reads. Means I can lower the cost per book, build out an email list with each book (which helps the next releases be more popular) and also dominate a certain niche by having my pen-name everywhere in that niche .

Hope that helps