Publishing on Kindle thru Amazon

[ChristopherDB]

Has anyone here self-published their work, erotica or otherwise, on Kindle by using Amazon? I just wanted to know the results you've gotten and any scams I should watch out for.

I have some mystery mini-novels that as an unknown author I can't catch the interest of any mainstream publisher. I was thinking of giving Kindle and Amazon a shot, though I realize without doing any marketing on my own, sales may be slow.

Any ideas of what price I should ask?

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by ChristopherDB

Has anyone here self-published their work, erotica or otherwise, on Kindle by using Amazon? I just wanted to know the results you've gotten and any scams I should watch out for.

I have some mystery mini-novels that as an unknown author I can't catch the interest of any mainstream publisher. I was thinking of giving Kindle and Amazon a shot, though I realize without doing any marketing on my own, sales may be slow.

Any ideas of what price I should ask?

Although Amazon has been losing some ground to B&N Smashwords and others I still sell far more books there than anywhere else.

There has been a slump of late, but even a bad day there beats good days on most sites.

The scam over there is "kindle select" DO NOT join that program and I will tell you why.

First and most importantly while in that program you are only allowed to publish there, therefore limiting your self sales wise. Also if you ever poste your work anywhere, even a site like this and pulled it, if it was stolen and put somewhere else and they find it they will block your account.

You never want to stay with just one platform. Put it on Amazon, but also go to Smashwords and All Romance and B&N and anywhere else, it doesn't hurt to spread yourself around.

As for pricing Amazon's game is this.

They believe the "ideal" for an e-book is $2.99-$9.99 so if you're within that range you get 70% royalties.

If you price more or less you only get 35%. Unless your work is extremely long I would go with the $2.99 for starters.

One more note on pricing, another Amazon trick is your book cannot be priced lower anywhere but amazon. if they find it for less they will cut your price and of course you may lose the 70% royalty so whatever you price at Amazon do not go cheaper anywhere else

If you have anymore questions you can feel free to PM me.

[NaokoSmith]

I've written a blogpost about my own e publishing experiences comparing here to Amazon and Smashwords here.

LC gives good advice above. Don't join Select, I know other authors who are regretting doing so.

I put a werewolf romance up on Kindle which is available free elsewhere, I had to put a price on because you can only publish free if you are in Select and it sells really well without any publicity or anything (because I have no idea how to do PR), but I think I got lucky, and that werewolf romance readers are desperate voracious animals always on the hunt! ROFL.

[Ironiclaconic]

Publishing for Kindle is really easy. My recommendation is to start with Smashwords, as they have an excellent formatting guide. Save your work in a Word format, and once it passes Smashwords validation for publishing it should easily be uploadable to Amazon.

The big challenge is separating yourself from the crowd for finding buyers. Good luck.

[KlaytonFrost]

Kindleboards is a good place to talk about publishing on Kindle and get lots of advice and information. Personally I find Amazon a bit evil, and so stick to Smashwords... I'm sure I'd get more sales if I was on the big A though.

[R. Richard]

I currently have 75 stories published in Amazon. I do get some sales there, although I'm not really able to promote the stories. I also have some 50 stories published in Smashwords, with the same promotion problem.

[lovecraft68]

In order to publish on amazon you need to download a software called Mobi pocket Creator and Mobi Pocket reader(so you can preview your work and make sure it looks good) both programs are free.

But even easier is this extremely useful site

http://ebook.online-convert.com

It's free and a lot easier than "calibri"

You'll need this for All Romance and some other sites who require you to download your book in multiple formats.

[Ironiclaconic]

You can just upload a Word doc to Amazon and it will convert for you. Just did it last week, correcting a few missed lay/laid errors in Might Have Been.

[bashfullyshameless]

I'm doing awfully well on Amazon right now. My first experience of putting out writing for public consumption (as opposed to stuff written mainly for an admittedly large circle of friends) was here on Literotica.

I had a series that did really well here in votes & such that one could put in the "urban fantasy" category. I took it down from Lit, posted it as a novel on Amazon & Smashwords, and did pretty well with it. I priced it at $2.99, which is low considering its length (200k words) and quality (in my humble opinion!), but I wanted it to move. I wanted it to build a readership.

About two weeks ago, I posted a non-erotic sci-fi adventure novel. That novel is (as of 7:30 PST on SuperBowl Sunday) is currently #246 in the Kindle store, #2 in kindle military sci-fi and #4 in sci-fi adventure BOOKS (meaning when stacked up against both kindle & hard copy books ordered on Amazon). I would DIRECTLY attribute crossover readership to that; it was the readers of my first book that wanted to give my new book a shot, and that movement raised the profile of it enough that more of the sci-fi book buyers saw it and checked it out. Again, I'm also at $2.99 a copy, so it's priced to move when by length & quality I think it'd be totally reasonable to charge four or five dollars.

I make no pretense that my book will stay there long, but it has steadily climbed over the last couple weeks. This can totally be done.

"Scams" to watch out for: Long story short, you do NOT need to pay someone to market your book or to put one together for you. Those services usually want a much heftier cut of your royalties than you will get if you just go through Amazon directly. However, it's clearly worth it to find a graphic artist of some sort for your cover. You want your cover to look professional; it makes a huge difference. If you're good enough with photoshop & all that to do it yourself, then go for it, but if you want to invest a couple hundred bucks on a quality cover, it may very well be worth it.

[sr71plt]

It's fun to see Lovecraft68 regurgitating what I've posted to the forum for years.

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by sr71plt

It's fun to see Lovecraft68 regurgitating what I've posted to the forum for years.

Really?

What I seem to recall you posting is that you have publishers to handle all of "that stuff" so please point out to me where you have talked about formatting software and discusses the do's and don't of particular amazon platforms.

You have spoken of getting yourself out there on as many platforms as possible, but so have many others and that falls under common sense.

[lovecraft68]

Originally Posted by bashfullyshameless

I'm doing awfully well on Amazon right now. My first experience of putting out writing for public consumption (as opposed to stuff written mainly for an admittedly large circle of friends) was here on Literotica.

I had a series that did really well here in votes & such that one could put in the "urban fantasy" category. I took it down from Lit, posted it as a novel on Amazon & Smashwords, and did pretty well with it. I priced it at $2.99, which is low considering its length (200k words) and quality (in my humble opinion!), but I wanted it to move. I wanted it to build a readership.

About two weeks ago, I posted a non-erotic sci-fi adventure novel. That novel is (as of 7:30 PST on SuperBowl Sunday) is currently #246 in the Kindle store, #2 in kindle military sci-fi and #4 in sci-fi adventure BOOKS (meaning when stacked up against both kindle & hard copy books ordered on Amazon). I would DIRECTLY attribute crossover readership to that; it was the readers of my first book that wanted to give my new book a shot, and that movement raised the profile of it enough that more of the sci-fi book buyers saw it and checked it out. Again, I'm also at $2.99 a copy, so it's priced to move when by length & quality I think it'd be totally reasonable to charge four or five dollars.

I make no pretense that my book will stay there long, but it has steadily climbed over the last couple weeks. This can totally be done.

"Scams" to watch out for: Long story short, you do NOT need to pay someone to market your book or to put one together for you. Those services usually want a much heftier cut of your royalties than you will get if you just go through Amazon directly. However, it's clearly worth it to find a graphic artist of some sort for your cover. You want your cover to look professional; it makes a huge difference. If you're good enough with photoshop & all that to do it yourself, then go for it, but if you want to invest a couple hundred bucks on a quality cover, it may very well be worth it.

Glad you're doing well, but the part I highlighted I have to say I am not to sure about. People have become appallingly "thrifty" over there on amazon mostly due to the idiots who put up free book after free book.

Then scratch their heads and wonder why when they then take the book and put it up to whatever price they want it doesn't sell.

Also I have a 245k book up there for $3.99 and someone contacted me through my blog and said that they felt that was too high of a price, but they would gladly buy it is I lowered the price or sent them a coupon.

People drive me nuts. I can probably find $3.99 in loose change in my car.