If you want to write the book yourself, as Tim would have it, there are a few things you can do to sharpen your skills:. Storytelling is a craft, and like any other craft, it too can be mastered with practice. Barry Eisler, who has tackled both legacy and self-publishing and succeeded wildly , suggests a reading of three books — Stein on Writing: Substance, Structure, Style and Principles of Screenwriting to improve the craft of storytelling.
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Learn from fellow self-published authors. Eisler recommends the blog of novelist J. Konrath , who has been self-publishing since and recording his experiences on the blog. Learn from the masters: Comb through their novels diligently. See how they create tension, withhold information to create suspense, and write dialogues. The more you read, the better you will become at grasping the essence of a good novel. Create a writing schedule and stick to it. Set aside at least an hour or two for writing each day.
This is the hardest part about writing a successful novel, simply because it requires discipline and commitment. Most of my friends who are consistently good writers write between 10pm-8am. This means they either go to be really late — I do my best work between 11pm-5am — or they wake up really early.
Ask them difficult questions: What is their prior experience with writing eBooks? What mistakes have they made, professionally and creatively? Speak with references and include: Of course, all people have strengths and weaknesses. If you had to choose theirs, what would they be? If they pass the above, give them your detailed brief and outline in full. The more information your writer has, the better the finished product will be. Consider payment on a chapter-by-chapter basis until a strong working relationship is established.
Last but not least, have them sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Amazon itself has a comprehensive guide on formatting a book for Kindle. Amazon has a comprehensive guide to building a book for Kindle that covers every aspect of formatting — creating front matter, table of contents, etc. This is a free eBook that can be downloaded here.
Never judge a book by its cover, they say. On Amazon, however, your cover will go a long way towards setting you apart from the self-published pap that usually litters the Kindle store. Also think in terms of thumbnail size — will it grab attention as a tiny image on a handheld device? Think like an app designer choosing an icon for the iPhone. If you must cut corners and design the cover yourself, I recommend keeping things simple: Fonts, like images in a cover, echo the established values of a genre.
Fonts in romance novels are usually florid, while those in thrillers and weight loss books are more contemporary. Make sure that you use fonts that adhere to genre conventions. Set up a competition on 99designs to crowdsource your eBook cover. OR, hire an established, experienced book cover designer. You can easily find a ton of these on sites like AuthorSupport or Damonza. Marketing is what separates the successful Kindle publishers from the also-rans who hug the bottom of the sales charts. Self-publishing essentially inverts the traditional publishing model, where publishers publish the book, then get the media to drum up enthusiasm before the public can pass it along through word-of-mouth.
Self-published authors must do this entire process in reverse: It requires building relationships with your readers and establishing a sense of community by leveraging social media. In the mids, at the height of his literary prowess, Stephen King started writing books under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman.
The message is obvious enough: For amateur authors, this translates into maintaining a consistent author profile across multiple media properties. Select a good picture and make sure you use it on all author-related websites, including your blog, social media, and Amazon Author Central more on this below.
It is ; you have no excuses for not running a blog. It is free and downright easy with software like WordPress. The 4-Hour Workweek blog built using WordPress was started as a platform to promote a book and foster a community. Today, the blog and its readership are arguably more valuable than the book itself. Share advice and tips related to your niche. Be as educative, informative, and creative as you can be.
This 4-Hour Workweek blog is a good model to imitate. Check out this hideous mess , the earliest version of this blog. What you do on your Facebook page and Twitter page should be intended to benefit your friends and followers. A foundation in conventional and Internet marketing can go a long way in helping you make Kindle sales. Eisler recommends four books on marketing to the aspiring author:. Recruiting and training evangelists with the power of social media is something any writer intent on commercial success should do.
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I love this book. Price is a major advantage self-published authors have over published authors. Amazon offers two royalty structures for its Kindle Direct Publishing program: It is also a good idea to give away your book for free initially to jump start sales. If the product is good enough, it will spread through word of mouth and you can alter the list price accordingly. The book description is important for telling the readers what to expect in the book. This is where you put your blurb and review snippets from bloggers.
Look at books in the Amazon Top to see how they capture reader attention and write their blurbs. Gathering positive reviews will go a long way in pushing your eBook towards the bestseller charts. Your best bet is to leverage your existing relationships with your Twitter followers, blog readers, friends, and relatives to get positive reviews. It also helps to create narrative arcs that span several books something that can be done with non-fiction as well to keep readers coming back for more. Haha… I personally prefer to take years between books and focus on ensuring that each one sells for decades.
Once you are an established presence in the market, your name alone will attract the curious and the faithful. Or 1 or 2 books that sell forever. Eisler compares publishing to the lottery, where few can get in and even fewer can succeed. Did you like this post? Would you like more of this type of post? If so, please let me know in the comments. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book.
The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Here's a very partial list: Check it all out by clicking here. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Remember what Fonzie was like? Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation! Thanks to Brian Oberkirch for the inspiration. Like Liked by 2 people. Thanks for the comments, guys!
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Yes, my old blog is unbelievable. How did I think those colors would work out? Like Liked by 1 person. I look forward to sharing this blog—and your first—with my students. Thanks again for being a great guinea pig and guide! Tim, as always thanks for an insightful analysis — with plenty of real world examples and resource links. Your presentation is straight-forward and makes it much more clear. I especially like the Marketing and Promoting section. I definitely would be interested in more posts like this. Ah, this is awesome. So many book ideas, so little time. Wake up every morning and put in 4 hours.
Another awesome article, I will definably have to read all those marketing books you recommended. Great post, Ryan and Tim. Just wanted to chime in with a few other tips based on my experience as a self-publisher:. Some niches sell more in paper. I publish in LSAT prep. No one mentions e-books on forums, either. Paper royalties can actually be quite high, too. Look for niches that have moats.
I only entered the LSAT explanation business for two reasons:. I already had some explanations that I sold through an affiliate blog. I just had to format them to make a book. I had gotten fast at writing explanations, so I can write new books fairly quickly. This took months of effort. It also means competitors are not likely to enter my niche, as it is not very lucrative. This leads to point 4. There are countless niches capable of supporting this level of book sales.
Tim, is there any way to allow us to follow replies to only our own comments via email? Like Liked by 3 people. Thanks for the great comment, Graeme!
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I clicked it once… also known as how I learned how to create gmail inbox filters. That would be great. Great comment Graeme — I agree with a lot of what you wrote and was about to write a similar comment, especially about the smaller niches. In the first month I did five figures, although that may have a lot to do with the next few months being the most popular time men propose.
Writing an ebook is really the easiest part. Promoting and marketing your ebook is what will make the difference between a success or not. You get instant credibility this way and reach far more people than trying to build up a fan base through your blog. However, in order to do this you have to learn how to think like a journalist, pitch stories that are newsworthy and tied into current events.
Again, great post and resources and best of luck to all of you! You can only 3 reviews for the book and claim to make 5 figures in the first month. Thanks for your insightful reply. Any ideas for where to start looking for niches too small for traditional publishers? Thank you for this in-depth analysis. I have been thinking about releasing non-fiction e-books for kindle, but there has always been consideration in the back of my mind if I should go through traditional route first.
I have not made up my mind yet either way, but information like this certainly helps. There are so many different opinions, so much to know and learn about the industry — but each case is different, and I guess we will all have our individual failures and successes. This article is PERF. It dovetails nicely with the recent Hugh Howey article on Salon.
One for inspiration, the other for execution. Please do post more like this! Tim, this is perfect. Goal is to have first book, Tales of Iceland, on Amazon in 2 weeks. Also, most of the world is still way behind the US in ebook adoption. Even in Iceland where they read more books per capita than any other citizenry in the world , ebooks are still rare…but growing.
So the good news is that as other countries catch up, the potential market will continue to grow. More like this, please! I think the most impressive stats is that digital sales just surpassed printed — This is extremely valuable info. Absolutely would consider doing digital-only. Thanks so much for this! You have been my mentor and friend in my head! I just finished my kindle ebook and I am working on creating an app talk about synchronicity! This is very helpful! This is where I plan to go financially. Thanks for an amazing post. I was getting doubtful for a little bit, if I had taken a mistake for taking the summer term off.
But as a student, I have very little to lose. But, alas, how in the heck am I supposed to take notes on such a great post, when the whole damn thing is worth noting?! I wrote a book some years ago about my time in the music business, and how to get a gig in that world — I hired a design student to lay it out for me using Adobe PageMaker, and he also did the cover. I also sell it on Kindle, which is insanely simple. Great article but I am certain that the Stephen King, JK Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer did not make it big because they were mercenary about following pop culture trends and finding market niches.
You will find it easier to write. It will sustain you through the writing process…and the blogging…and promotions. I do not try and hijack trends. Lifetime fan value done properly could be x that. Its like mixtapes in the music game. Give it away for free and make 10x on your live shows instead. Can even be done with physical books, just book a distribution deal. Tucker realized the power of mass market self-publishing and evidently this is actually news to the publishing world, but rappers have been doing this both mixtapes and sub-labels to be distributed for decades.
Time to catch up guys. You earn a repeat paying customer 2. They tell others that it was good so the exponential impact is amplified. I love this post! This article have me lots to think about. Got me thinking for sure. Thank you for delivering great stuff again and again. Imformative blog, dropped by to check you out. It will enlighten everyone as to what goes on behind closed doors. All real names will be used in this novel to expose the truth. A book that is so compelling and graphic that has already caused an attempt on my life. The original copy of that book was destroyed during that attempt.
After many years, I have decided to re-write the book. Thanks for giving confirmation to my thoughts with your very informative blog. For those of you who are trying to format your book for the Kindle yourself, I recommend that you use Microsoft Word to do so. Great piece Ryan and Tim. You literally could have written a short ebook on how to write ebooks just using this article. Been a fan of this blog for several years but this just might be the best post. Thanks Ryan and Tim — really inspiring. And the million dollar question s: Ever checked the torrent sites?
Software with DRM-cracking facilities? A substantial part of the music-industry went broke by the peer-to-peer networks. You can use torrents to your advantage. Thanks a lot, very helpful info. I just watched the interview with BitTorrent, quite interesting too. Imho, the most valid argument you gave to go for ebooks is that they are here to stay. Even so, as you worked with BitTorrent, do you have any idea how many copies of the 4HC were illegally downloaded? Is this roughly measurable? I wrote years on it and am now gradually focusing on ways to put it into the market and promote it.
What are your thoughts on publishing outside the Kindle store as well? I run Digital Delivery App, which is basically a modern e-junkie, and we have a load of e-book publishers who sell via their own websites. I plan to start writing soon. Also, I would be very interested in learning how you built your supplement business back in the day. I have a few ideas about supplements but not sure how to start- legalities, manufacturing, etc. Amazon just recently started a more sophisticated cover creator. You can easily create a really nice cover in minutes.
That sounds about right to me. But getting those checks from Amazon every month makes it all worth it. I work with many authors and they would love this post. Jamie McGuire, Jessica Park and Lauren Clark are all excellent examples of authors that have been incredibly successful going the self-publishing route. Long pots but loved reading it till the end. I would like more of this type of post with steps we can straight use as a practical guidance. Reading on the Go!! I would like to see more posts with this format commenting on different industries.
Tim, you need a word by which your followers can self-reference. You have reached and I am in awe of this a cult-like fervor. I am left to wander the wilderness, with no quick-way to identify myself as an evangelist for the tribe. Tons of really useful information with links to much more.
Thanks for all the info. All of them made it so complicated that my book is still unpublished. Until now one of the all-time favourite articles on your site was the one by Noah mentioned in this article. The detail is incredible and amazingly helpful in so many ways.
My personal interest is in the development of online training courses, but is is so easy to see how everything here translates across. I fully plan to exploit the cr p out of every suggestion and resource in here. I just wanted to add that Scrivener is awesome for outputting a Kindle mobi or an ePub formatted book which you can load straight to Amazon KDP. You can test it on a device which makes it much easier to know what your customers are getting before you publish. This seems to remain unknown in germany. The only bad point is, now I have 10 more tabs open I have to read.
Interesting to note also: By the time it sold k copies she got her publishing deal so she was already doing very well. I think the key in everything you wrote above is…quantity. All the people Konrath, Hocking, EL James, Hugh Howey who dominated the best seller lists in their categories did so by publshing multiple books one after the other.
At one point, Howey was on the sci-fi list. I was at one Amazon event for self-published authors and there was one woman who was making a living from writing there who had published over novels. Take all the covers and then just line them up next to each other. And hang it on my wall so I can see so much love every morning when I wake up. I would add that kindle books can be powerful marketing for your other products on Amazon. We have 8 video guides and 9 kindle books, all offering practical sex advice and proven pleasure techniques — and the kindle books are one of our best forms of publicity for the videos.
Also would recommend adding a catalog of your products to the end of every book, with easily clickable links directing folks right back to the kindle store. That way, when they finish a book they have loved, you can make it easy for them to get more right away. I was curious if anyone has any experience with E-Junkie to publish their ebooks? Tim this is legit. WordPress is pretty damn easy to use but it can become more complicated, I guess I just need to spend more time on it. I emailed Matt Mullenweg last year and he actually got back to me.
Following you has help me learn about some pretty awesome people. AJ Jacobs is pretty legit also. Any ideas on how to split the two and sell thru amazon? One strategy I borrowed from you was launching the landing page before the book was complete.
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One question for you: Have you already build your audience before launching it? Amazon is great because it really help you market your books. Doing it in-house can remarkably increase profits but the toughest part is generating targeted traffic cheaply! This post is freaking fantastic start to finish.
I always hear people saying that self-publishing will guarantee you make lots of mula. I need one but it totally scares me letting someone have my book. How do I find one? In fact I read about books at the same time a week. I read one for an hour,Put it to the side and grab the next been doing It since 3rd grade. So others make sense of it cause I can go off on a tangent.
Tim, a great blog post with lots of helpful advice for my own e-book challenge. Maybe see you in Amsterdam in a few weeks. You have a best-selling cookbook and no one is going to call you chef. You have best selling fitness book and no one is going to call you a personal trainer.
You have a best selling book in lifestyle and no one is going to call you life coach. I wrote an e-book and have not had the ovaries necessary to market it effectively. I was looking for direction and so checked to see if you had a new post. Thank you for inspiring me once again. Somehow you have an intuitive mind that knows what your readers truly need to hear. That totally strokes their ego pardon the pun. Yes, if you have a blog that already has a solid following, this is a great place to cross sell a kindle book related to your blog topic.
But putting in the time to start a blog and gain followers just to hopefully get people interested in you enough to buy the book is a huge opportunity cost I think. Lets say after 2 years of a lot of hard work, you have a blog that attracts a solid 25, visitors a month in whatever niche you are in. So even after all the hard work of creating a blog with a solid following, you would only be cross selling 50 books a month. Unless you are already well established in a certain niche, your time is better spent focusing on perfect your amazon sales page, cover design, etc.
Same thing goes for other social media like twitter and facebook. It might make you feel good or productive that you are creating a facebook page, setting up a twitter, blogging, but the reality is it is not doing anything to convert any real sales volume. I would say only once you are well established, then start utilizing blogs, facebook and twitter to sell more books.
Tim the other Tim, lol I completely disagree. Look at Amanda Hocking…before anyone knew who she was and before she sold any books, she communicated with her potential readers via social media and her blog. But, there are many ways to approach the kindle store.
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Meaning taking an internet marketing approach to the kindle store. Hiring ghostwriters to write high quality content for certain niches and marketing well. There are many ways to approach the kindle store. Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. The Master Key BrainCharger: Available to ship in days. Haanel , Helmar Rudolph. Out of Print--Limited Availability. Available for download now. Only 3 left in stock - order soon. Das Master Key System: We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.
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