Thanks for your insight and advice. Yes, I mean setting up a website for the book specifically outside of Amazon. For example, if I would write a "How To" course as an eBook and create a catchy website for it which is showing why the visitor has to buy this book.
My idea behind it is that by doing it in-house without Amazon I would be able to generate more revenue (avoiding the Amazon fees). There are many of such websites (called "landing page" or sales page) that are selling eBooks for $39 - $79 each. But such websites are not common for fiction books though. Hope this makes sense now.
Right, I am familiar with the concept. I wasn't sure if that's what you mean but gotcha now.
Hmmm... Well, I suppose that if you could generate an equivalent (or better) amount of sales from your own site, then go for it. I mean, it's always better to keep as much of that profit as you can. That said, Amazon fees are pretty minimal when you compare it against the huge volume of traffic they could potentially provide.
The bigger question to ask is there a need for your book? If it were me, I'd spend some time researching Amazon for titles that are similar to what you are considering. That is, if you haven't already done that.
It sounds to me like your objective is to make money from your books exclusively so this step is super important. Amazon is littered with books that no one buys. It's worth the extra time to dig deep first and see if there is a market for what you are doing. I think it would matter less if you had some other way to monetize the reader but if it's book sales alone, it's going to take lots and lots of book sales to make you money.
If you want, you can PM me, and I'll shoot you a link to my research tool. It's not completed by any stretch but it will help your research process move along much more quickly than sitting on Amazon for hours on end.
By the way, I was wondering how do you get the inspiration and creativity to produce different stories for your books over and over again. Do you have to fight with the "writer's block" condition some times?
Pretty much I read popular books and come up with different angles, stories, characters, etc. I wish I could say there was more to it for me but there just isn't.
It sounds to me, that if you were to write for 5 years straight you could live in the fast lane for the rest of your life off of the residuals. not to mention you could later take the most popular of your writings and adapt them to screen plays.
Man, that scenario sounds friggin' incredible. I suppose anything is possible. If someone ever did have stuff that gets into that realm, screenplays/movies, etc. then yeah, they are basically Fastlane at that point.
However, even though those types of events are pretty rare, there are plenty of people making $250,000, $500,000 and even $1,000,000 per year writing fiction and do so in relative anonymity. Writing fiction is in some ways like any other career. You have to keep churning it out or your sales will go down. That's just the way it is. But, you can do very well if you just keep at it.
So, unless you are in the league of superstars, your time will never be completely free as a writer. In that sense, it comes up short in failing the commandment of time. But, I've had nearly a month off (unexpectedly) and I'm still looking at my best earning month to-date. So while it isn't perfect timewise, a month off isn't bad - especially when I had no choice in the matter.
I feel myself moving towards a similar journey as you. Is there any books that you could recommend I read?
It gives all the major storylines that you will find in novels and movies and breaks down how they are developed through the characters... very good tool.
I'll have to check that out. I have to admit that I'm not terribly traditional when it comes to all of this stuff.
So, I do feel bad that I can't offer much advice to folks on building storylines and things. I pretty much just sit down and brainstorm it out. I suppose I could always benefit from learning a more traditional approach to building a story. I think from the very beginning I was so focused on just putting stuff out that I never really delved beyond what I needed to accomplish that.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that there's always room for improvement so long as it winds up making me faster at the end of the day, not slower.
