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]

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*******-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]

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]

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.

 

[MLPatricks]

I recommend writing a few stories and posting them on free sites to build up your name and fanbase. Literotica is a good place to start. I'm launching another short story repository called Erotic Library- taking submissions now. Do a search for free stories, and submit your first few stories to every site that takes erotica submissions.

 

[slyc_willie]

I recommend writing a few stories and posting them on free sites to build up your name and fanbase. Literotica is a good place to start. I'm launching another short story repository called Erotic Library- taking submissions now. Do a search for free stories, and submit your first few stories to every site that takes erotica submissions.

Uh, I wouldn't follow this advice at all. Don't just submit stories willy-nilly wherever you can. Take the time to research the site and decide if it's one you want your name and work associated with.

After that, if you want to publish for profit, also do your research. I publish only through eXcessica. It works for me. It's turned down others, but eXcessica has come be a bit choosy, which I respect.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

One not on Kindle Books...if you work falls outside the prime price, you cannot turn off lending, which I find annoying.

So far I have done well at Amazon. I have one short story that the Brits are just eating up. A strange crowd for sure.

As others have said...DO NOT JOIN KDP SELECT.

Also, if your book makes it through the meatgrinder at Smashwords and passes review, they will distribute it to:

Sony Store
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Apple Store
Diesel
Page Foundry
Baker & Taylor Blio
Library Direct
Baker-Taylor Axis360

for you. So you really don't have to do anything about them. All in the proper format for the devices they use.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

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.

Hell, I have my latest at both Smashwords and Kindle for $5.00. Sales are doing well. I also have some for as little as $0.99 and they sell like gangbusters.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Can anyone offer any advice on e-publishing across genres? I don't especially want my erotic material associated with my non-erotic material and vice versa. Does that require multiple accounts, different pen names, or... ?

 

[R. Richard]

Can anyone offer any advice on e-publishing across genres? I don't especially want my erotic material associated with my non-erotic material and vice versa. Does that require multiple accounts, different pen names, or... ?

If you don't want your non-erotic material associated with your erotic material, you definitely need a different pen name. However, you give away any publicity that you get from the one pen name, for the other pen name. It's a tradeoff.

 

[sr71plt]

It's a tradeoff.

Not much of one, if at all. Because you unlikely are going to get as big a fan base for the combined, disparate genres as you are with the combination of two separate ones.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Can anyone offer any advice on e-publishing across genres? I don't especially want my erotic material associated with my non-erotic material and vice versa. Does that require multiple accounts, different pen names, or... ?

I use separate pen names as you can see in my sig. It works out, neither have the same followers, even though a couple of my works are published under both pen names.

 

[jezzaz]

There's some misconception about what goes on over at Amazon and their offerings that I think I need to clear up.

OK, so first, this.

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.

Yeah, this is not accurate.

What is really going on is that there is a dual type of return you can get on books on Amazon Kindle.

It's to do with how the money is split. You can select 70/30 - where YOU get 70% of the sales and Amazon keeps 30%. Now in that case, the statement about limiting your publishing is almost right, but not quite.

You can publish anywhere under this monetary arrangement, however you cannot publish elsewhere without the price being exactly the same. So you can't publish your book on Kindle at $2.99 and have it for $1.99 on IBooks or Nook. If Amazon finds that (and they have automatic scripts looking for that) then your book is pulled and if you do it often enough, your account is blocked.

Now this doesn't sound like a problem, but it is if other portals offer publicity deals that drops the price of your book, like Amazon does, without asking you. So if you sign up for a publicity trial on Nook, that offers your book for $1 - even if you didn't expressly tell them you wanted it, and Amazon picks up on that, you are screwed. And you've really done nothing.

Now there's also a 30/70 split, where you get 30% of the money and Amazon gets 70%. Why on earth would anyone take that? Well, mainly because of two things. Firstly, the above caveat goes away. What your book is priced at on other portals is not something Amazon cares about.

The other has to do with publicity offerings that Amazon does. Amazon will, if you let them, sometimes discount your book for you, without telling you. It goes on their publicity list and people get shown the book on logging into Amazon on the website, and if you are really lucky, your book maybe randomly selected to be pre-loaded onto a newly bought kindle, before Amazon ships it out.

However, when they do this, Amazon reprices your book for you, without your control.
If you select the 70/30 split, you get 70% of exactly the price that is paid for the book. So if Amazon preloads the book for free, you get nothing. If Amazon does a publicity thing and your book is repriced at $1, you get 70% of $1 which is 70cents, not 70% of the price you set the book at.

If you do the 30/70 split, where you get 30% then you will always get 30% of whatever you priced the book at, regardless of what price the end reader paid for it. So if Amazon preloads the book onto a kindle, and your price for the book was $2.99, you get $1 regardless that Amazon gave it away for free for you.

Then there's Kindle Select, and people very much get the wrong idea about this.

Kindle Select is a way of getting your book known to people. What it is is that you sign up for 5 days of free Amazon publicity. You get to schedule when this happens, down to the day, so you can do your own social media publicity at the same time.
They will feature your book on their homepage and so on. BUT - they do it at zero price. Your book is effectively free for those 5 days.

And that sucks a bit. I didn't realise this the first time I did it. I had about 2000 downloads of my first book, from a first time author over the 5 days I did this (and be aware, fridays and saturdays are the day to do this) and I was so excited and then found I earned nothing from it.

So that sucks a bit. I was really pissed, and was mad at Amazon, because the only person here who really wins is Amazon. They get to offer free content and I get fuck all.

But I've thought about it now, and now I understand what Kindle Select is for.

If you are a first time author, it's about getting word out there and getting your book into people's hands. I have had 2000 people read my words on Kindle that I would not have otherwise had. Sure, I earned bugger all out of it, but that's ok because it was never about the money anyway (at least not at this point).

Now, if you have 8 books on Kindle, then it's even better. People get one for free, and if they like it, well, the rest are out there for them to buy. It's a loss leader - a way to bring up sales on everything.

Knowing that going in lets you understand what Kindle Select is, what it's for and when you should use it or not.

The thing is, for me at least, there's no way I would have sold 2000 books. No one knows me, there's no buzz etc, so it's not 2000 lost sales. But now 2000 people have read it, and hopefully at least not hated it, and now I have more of a platform to push the next one on.

There, hope that info helps.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

^^^^^

Thanks!!!!

 

[jezzaz]

Note also.

Covers matter. They do. I have several friends who also write purely for the digital format, and they see the same thing I do. A compelling and colorful cover makes a lot of difference.

You have to be a 'name' before you can get away with covers with just a candle on it and all that. Your cover need to be visually arresting in some way and believe me, that influences sales big time.

Just like most video gamers are graphics whores, casual readers on Kindle are cover whores.

It's just the way it is, so spend some time on the cover.

 

[lovecraft68]

Can anyone offer any advice on e-publishing across genres? I don't especially want my erotic material associated with my non-erotic material and vice versa. Does that require multiple accounts, different pen names, or... ?

On smashwords all my work is under one pen name. I do this because a lot of what sells there is incest so the readers there a less "squicky" with it.

On amazon I have 2 names, One for all my "pseudo incest" stuff and another for my bdsm and "general erotica"

Of course you can guess which one sells more over there

So maybe it doesn't matter.