Trolls and Bullies, in the Kindle Author Graveyard

Would you believe me if I said I had proof of Amazon KDP being a bully? How about that they are trolls as well?

Well, it happened to me like this: I had a book up which got a DMCA complaint that wouldn't resolve. You see, you can use DMCA to complain about someone else's content and never have to give that person a copy of your complaint - so they have to take their content down, or in Amazon's case, they block it and you can't do anything about it.

The long and short is that someone at Kindle got a hair up and went to suspend my account over it. I answered right away and pointed out that it was because they left the book in question on their site and it could still be found by the DMCA trolls.

But I got the dirty end of that stick.

The next day, someone else at Kindle reversed it, but I was still guilty as accused. So, as usual, they put their boilerplate threats at the bottom of the email.

Why does Kindle put threats at the bottom of every email?

The answer - they are bullies. KDP has around 60% of the market and they don't have to take your book if they don't want to. And if you try to publish public domain works, they can be downright hateful about it.

Sidebar: What made Kindle into troll-bullies? Their own "success." Yes, there's the corporate cult in place, which comes down from the top. It's that take-no-prisoners, scorched-earth policy they have. Besides that, it makes them a great target. I've published that one complained-about book everywhere else. But who got the one and only DMCA complaint? Amazon-Kindle. Because it's an easy target and Google searches will pull up that title there first rather than anywhere else. So the DMCA internet trolls simply have to fire off an automated request to Kindle, and the book is shut down. If it doesn't disappear entirely, they complain again until that title is removed. (That is the actual strategy: to eliminate the "competition" for a specific book title, which isn't trademarked.) It's the mutual troll society. Amazon-Kindle doesn't have to care. They've got 1.6 million books out there, and yours is just one tiny drop in their ocean.

The bottom line is that I've finally had enough with these guys. It set me to thinking about what I was actually getting out of my dealings with them. Frankly, I have one book that sells decently, and a lot of other books (about 70, maybe) that don't. Some have never sold. Which brings up the fact that...

Amazon Kindle is correctly the "Graveyard of Indie Authors"

Out of over 1.6 million titles on their Kindle site, less than 100,000 sell more than one per day. That's 16 percent. (See http://www.theresaragan.com/salesrankingchart.html)

And the more people publish to Kindle, the bigger that graveyard grows.

Now if you had a book that sold one a day, and you were getting a royalty of maybe $2 per book, what kind of income will that give you?

Yup - $720 a year, more or less.

So you can figure what I'm getting with my book whose sales rank says it's turning over maybe 5-10 per day. Nice pin money, but won't support any family by itself. And that is my Kindle star player.

Then when I have to put up with Kindle's nastygrams in order to do these submissions, it doesn't really seem worth it.

Here's the surprise: I make more money on paperbacks and hardbacks.

Meanwhile, neither CreateSpace nor Lulu give me any grief at all about my books, as long as they are technically able to be printed. They trust me from the start. (They don't accuse me right off the bat of doing something illegal, like the Kindle trolls.)

iTunes, Nook, and Kobo similarly don't care what I publish there. And they also just accept the stuff I give them. On each publisher, my books sell differently. But only Kindle has that weird review hang-up. (OK, it does affect CS sales, I imagine.)

The point here is that I can help you best with all these books I'm finding if I'm not hassled and stressed every single time I submit a book or revise it.

The Kindle Trolls just made up my mind for me with their last round of bullying. I'm really through with having to fight for the "privilege" of getting books up there.

So if I do find a great PD book, it's going everywhere except Kindle. It will wind up on Amazon as a paperback and maybe a hardback as well. I'm just not going to fight over measly profits from their Kindle version. (I'm sure there's no love lost on either side.) What I will do is to offer that ebook to you directly with it's Kindle-ready version, and pocket something like 97% of the royalties. Members only, of course.

Where I come out with an original work, Lulu is going to distribute it to Kindle for me. So I lose some royalties out of it, at least I'm not losing sleep.

I think that if authors wised up, they'd see how they are getting screwed and would quit their Kindle addiction. There are 1.5 million, 9 hundred thousand Kindle ebooks out there that sell less than one copy per day.

It then makes sense that the average income of most indie authors by survey is about $500 per year. Because most of these have published a single book which never sells, especially on Amazon-Kindle. And people can't find your ebook because it isn't recommended because it never sold to begin with. That's the way Amazon works.

Amazon Kindle is the ebook author graveyard. Cue the funeral dirge, please.

What Turns a "BestSeller" into "Makes a Living?"

You'll find that all these "bestselling" authors have built up an audience of rabid fans who buy everything they come out with. Takes some time, and some good writing, but it can be done.

Like Amanda Hocking, they don't just write a bunch of good books. They also borrow other's audiences until they can get enough of them to join theirs.

This is the lightbulb moment most authors are missing.

And frankly, it's a point of visiting podcasts as a guest. In Content Marketing, it's called guest blogging. Hocking got the book bloggers to take up her cause. Steve Scott and Mark Dawson visited the book podcasters. Same approach in all cases. Enough of these visits, with your own opt-in's and list in place, and you have your own audience.

At that point, you can do the Kindle Review Dance. You know the steps:

a) Give your audience advance review copies,
b) get some of them to put reviews out on the first days,
c) get some to buy it right off.
d) Then tell the rest of them so they can get it during the first opening week, and
e) then raise the price and get some more to keep buying it.
f) So then Amazon starts pushing it and drives the sales even higher.

That's all it takes to make a "bestseller" on Kindle. Yes, the reviews are all contrived. (Normally, about 1% leave reviews there or anywhere. But this strategy is legal and accepted.)

But what does it take to make a living there?

Well, the honest truth is that you can't get there from here.

No author I've studied makes their income strictly and only from Kindle. No one. Not any. Lots of "conventional wisdom" guru's say to just get your books on Kindle exclusively and - voila - instant 6 figures.

Nope. Doesn't happen. Except for the 1% - usually those with lists of rabid, buying fans. Like celebrities. (Cue the zombie march.)

It takes a couple of years to build up your audience to even start approaching 6 figures from book sales. It's a real grind, but necessary. Learn by doing, not by hoping for lucky breaks.

Let's crunch some numbers. Smashwords' Coker  has done surveys say ebooks sell the most at $2.99, but produce the most income at $3.99. We don't know how many 6 figure authors are using those numbers. Mark Dawson won't run Facebook ads for anything under $4.99. He's pulling down $500K per year, spending over $100K on FB ads - and making twice that back.

Let's figure you want to make $100K in a year. In New York and other high-tax districts, $50K won't even get you out of the poverty zone.

You need $2K per week. Let's take Dawson's book price - that's about $3.50 royalty per book. Just over 570 units sold per week. Or around 82 units per day. Your sales rank needs to be between 1500 to 3000 - meaning that you have that many books which sell better than yours in all of Kindle-land. The air is thin up there, for sure.

That's just one book to do all the heavy lifting. Most of these guys have an average of 10 before they get any decent income. That makes more sense, as then your average sales only need to be around 8 per day, meaning your sales rank for these are between 10K to 50K.

Now you can see why 84% of all Kindle authors make diddly-squat.

But crunch the numbers for yourself. Come to your own conclusions.

What the guys making real income from booksales are doing.

Their money is made with multiple versions on all possible platforms. By my last notes, Scott was sticking to KDP Unlimited with his ebooks and had given up around $100k per year. But around a third of the rest of his money was coming in from other versions. Print books, audio books, foreign rights. It was only when Scott moved into these additional versions that jumped him into the $300K range.

That's the model. Get all your books available everywhere possible in all versions possible.

If you're publishing original books and have a decent audience built up, you can very probably keep making 6 figures indefinitely - as long as you keep producing books they can consume.

If you're trying this with Public Domain books, figure that you're going to have to publish a few hundred to do this. The problem is that PD has been commoditized on Kindle so that the bulk of them are either free or very low price of 99 cents.

However, in print, it's a different story - with the proper approach, one can make those few hundred crank out 6 figures. And those sales are more regular, if "weak" compared to the topsellers.

Having a couple hundred PD books out there, giving you about $2 royalties, you only need them averaging about a sale every other day.

The trade off is about the same. It can take years to build up a backbench using either method.

What most starting publishers don't know is that to submit PD books to Kindle gets you a nastygram almost every time you do. (Of course they quickly find out.)

Hardcopy versions on CreateSpace and Lulu don't get that bizarre treatment. These two are only concerned with your technical accuracy so the book reproduces well. They aren't concerned with what the content is, but expect you to hold up your own end.

Quite a different scene entirely. You aren't threatened with account closure every single submission.

Meanwhile, as I've covered before, print books can bring you in twice or more income for the same text.

For my business model, the current work is converting all my ebooks that sell at all over to print versions. And meanwhile, look for additional PD books which are poorly marketed by their publishers and sell well in paperback despite of it. Adding these to my existing backbench then should take my income up to those six-figures, and perhaps beyond.

While PD publishing requires no audience (it actually works based on the legacy audience of those long-dead authors) I'll be also investing in audience-building to accelerate that process. That audience will tell me what books they want, giving us both a virtuous feedback loop for the marketing cycle.

All of this is based on those two points from our last episode:

1. Deep backbench - lots of titles selling well.
2. Multiple eyeballs - all possible versions on all possible platforms.

Add to this:

3. Velvet Rope Members

That's where you get your own audience on board, and give them a membership so you can talk freely with them and give them what they want.

There's only a few more key points to this system, but I've talked at you long enough for today.

This episode should give you the paradigm-shift you need to consider your own marketing plans. The days of the Kindle trolls and bullies can reach their end. But only if enough of us get people to examine the conventional wisdom Kool-Aid they've been swallowing.

Bullies get to keep bullying until they are stood up to.

Then they reform, or run.

Takeaway Steps

Of course, this is my trademark end to this episode - steps you can take today to fix things.

For original works:

0. Get an email provider, plus your own domain and web site. I use AWeber and Rainmaker, respectively.
1. Use an aggregator for your ebooks, either Lulu or Smashwords. Make sure they have a Lead Magnet that works to build your audience through the LookInside/Preview.
2. Publish paperbacks through CS and Lulu and get their extended reach options (cost you nothing but proofs.) Ensure they also have Lead Magnets for their own Look Inside/Preview.
3. Publish hardbacks through Lulu to their extended reach.
4. Record your own books into audio and post them to Audible and CDBaby. Also use them as podcasts to attract your audience.
5. Make the podcast interview rounds for your books. And tell people how to opt-in to your membership.
6. Build relationships with your list through give-aways and pre-release offers. (Several good workouts exist on this, such as Dawson's.)
7. Write more books. Publish. Repeat.

For PD/PLR works:

0. Mainly, these steps are the same, they just take longer. Probably twice as long or more. (Just how fast did you want to get financially independent.)
1. Aggregators won't ship PD or PLR anywhere, so you have to submit all your books manually.
2. My personal advice is to skip Amazon - it's way too crowded to be worth anything. Instead, use them to show you where the best prospects are. They publish sales rank data, which gives you clues (see my last episode for this.)
3. Publish all books to as many places as you can, especially hardcopy versions.
4. You might be able to use PD audiobooks (if you choose the right originals) for your podcasts. Otherwise, use the example of mine where I take the 4000 character description and podcast these.
5. The rest is no different. Build your audience and give them what they want.
6. Then find more books, publish them, rinse, repeat.

That's it for now.

See you next time.

PS. I'm working up the real marketing campaign that any self-publisher can use, so stay tuned.

How Steve Scott left Habit Stacking money on the table with his (former) bestseller

The point is branding and trademarks.

Once he had his bestselling book (and made as much as $61K per month off of it and a few others) he went on to writing books on habits in general rather than doubling down on his cornerstone work.

In his blog posts, you see that he complains how the book isn't well written, he needs to do a revision, he was shredded in the reviews, etc.

Practically, no. These are just excuses for lack of foresight (which we are fixing here by studying his back trail.)

The reviews are fine. He's got much better than average. You do want some pissy reviews, as that means it's a real book. Errors in the book are just an opportunity.

The main lesson from this is to trademark your hook right off. What actually happened is that a dozen or so other authors now have "habit stacking" in the front of their book title, as it's become a generic term.

(Note: a search on the U.S. Trademark office shows that the current publisher of Scott's original Habit Stacking book [Oldtown Publishing LLC] did trademark "Habit Stacking" - on Nov 24, 2014. The horse was well out of the barn by then. And I don't see that there was some effort to have those existing books by that name gotten into line - I do see nearly a half-dozen published in 2015 with that in the title on the first page of search results from Amazon. What good is a trademark if you won't enforce it?)

If you search on Google for that term just prior to his book being published (Sep 5, 2012) you'll find that the only mention of it is in a blog post that mentions "Stacking Habits".  Nothing on Amazon is returned by Google prior to this book.

His hook was that term - and he didn't trademark it right off. That would have kept the competition at bay by setting up a simple daily Google automated search to bring any of these to him - then a notice to Amazon that they were infringing on his rights would take down their book. Simple.

Once that book took off, he should have dropped any other project and immediately gotten out several small books on related areas, similar to "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series. ("Habit Stacking for Runners" "Habit Stacking for Writers" "Habit Stacking for Husbands" "Habit Stacking for Children") See how this could have taken off? All of these were areas Scott was familiar with and could have written short books about.

(Note: the cheap way to claim a copyright is simply put a small "TM" as superscript in the title, and then also note it under your copyright notice on your title page. Lawyers also have other tips - and I'm not one. Consult a professional. This blog is about marketing strategy.)

So, these steps:

1. Trademark your hook when you publish, (research it first, though) and file when you need to. Oh - and go get that domain name so others can't. Even if it just points to another site of yours. (Like habitstacking.com now points to Scott's orignal book, but was only registered Feb 2, 2014. In this case, better late than never. But... habitstacking.org and lots of others are still available.)

Sidebar: While habitstacking.com points to his book, it would be just as simple to set up a landing page which would link to all the Amazon properties, and could also sell bundles and collections based on the book right there. You can't get the sale you don't ask for - or offer.

2. Brand-extend your bestseller, as above. See also Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" series.

As well, If you look up "Duct Tape Marketing" by John Jantsch, you'll see another approach, which is to set up other services based on this book. More services would mean more income.

3. Come out with sequels quickly. As he knew about errors in his book, he would then come out with "Habit Stacking(TM) 2.0" and leave the original up there. Alert everyone on his site (and also update the Amazon description) that they need to get the updated version - "...while the original and now classic 'Habit Stacking' is perfectly valid, further research has found additional studies confirming it's effectiveness - and also another 54 simple habits you can stack additionally. So get 'Habit Stacking 2.0' today!" (And very definitely, do a quick update and put it into the front of the book so that link shows up on the "Look Inside.")

Since he's working in this industry writing more books, each one would be part of the "Habit Stacking" series and so be recommended by Amazon as well.

4. I've covered this elsewhere in this blog, but it bears repeating: publish your book everywhere else as well. It only takes maybe a half-hour if you already have the accounts set up. And may bring you another quarter of what you're already making in income. Bestsellers usually do well on all platforms, from my experience.

5. Publish in all other possible formats.(Which Scott eventually did.)

6. Set up a landing page on your site to promote the book, and use something like Ganxy to enable you to sell bundles of material along with the book. Like audio chapters (which promote the Audible version) and even custom-made dust-cover hardbacks which they can buy from Lulu.

7. Another smart move would be to claim the brand on the key social media. A search of knowem.com shows only Blogger and Myspace have been taken - out of the top 25, including Facebook. (Both "stevescott" and "sjscott" are all mostly taken.) You can do this yourself in an afternoon, or have Knowem do it for you. That Facebook scene is wide open for someone else to grab it, trademark or not... (And if you do it yourself, you won't have to pay a lawyer to do wrestle it back for you later.)

Then keep these updated as much as possible with IFTTT to automate your status updates on social platforms.

- - - -

OK? Makes sense?

I'm deep in the middle of my marketing research for my next 50 books, publishing one a week for a year. But my muse kept shouting this in my ear (among other things) and so I had to blog this and get it out to you.

Sorry no podcast on this one. I don't have the couple of hours it would take to record and edit it into shape.

Luck to us all. 

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When Book Marketing Becomes Just Another J.O.B.

Ever get fed up with stuff - when something you used to like to do has become just another chore?

No, I'm not quite there yet with book publishing.

But podcasting was taking me to the brink.

You see, "conventional wisdom" has it that you need to publish on a schedule in order to serve your audience best.

I've come to disagree with this idea.

That's not the way I listen to podcasts, and I bet you don't either. I can fall behind on keeping up with various podcasts. My iTunes will actually quit downloading them after awhile, which is fine with me. That means they are putting out too much stuff too often.

I listen and work in batches, best. When I find several books I want to publish in a certain format, then I'll get them all through to the point I can publish them. Marketing after publishing has been my sore point. Apparently, I wasn't through finding stuff to publish.

Right now, I've pretty much found all the stuff I need to - for now.

I want to get all these things I've published already selling better. 

Like I've been telling you for some months now. In fact, we started podcasting (me talking, you listening) right in the middle of some marketing work.

However, when I "had" to get a podcast out, I started resenting that work - because it was interrupting some line of work I was doing otherwise.

Right now, I've been trying to get this new livesensical.com site up on Rainmaker for months. One thing after another interrupted it. Some interruptions were good and needful, others were annoyances.

Over the past couple of days, I got four blog posts out, on two different blogs. Some of this was research based on what I'd discovered in revising the Living Sensical manifesto. When archive.org then shut down all my podcasts, this prompted research and so - I blogged about the raw reactions which prompted solving their problem.

You saw these two blog posts recently - but I don't know if I'll ever podcast them. Because I already took a day away from getting that book wrapped up.

The research work was was inspired was welcome. The research work caused by inane algorithms instantly dumping all my content was not welcome and was frustrating.

Which do you think I'd rather be working on?

Podcasting as a schedule is not always inspiring. I feel it's drudgery to have to do things which are not creative, not inspired, not calming.

I fired my last boss a year ago last May. 

Not that I'd been doing much work for his company for several months earlier. I'd been making enough through booksales to more than cover my expenses - so I didn't need to "work" at anything after that. He'd lined up others to do the menial copy work he needed - and discounted the breakthroughs I'd brought him in SEO techniques.

If the work you are doing isn't rewarding, if you aren't looking forward to it - then it's just another job. The phrase comes to mind, "I work just as hard as I don't get fired, they pay me just enough so I don't quit."

SEO had turned to content, which his clients either didn't understand or couldn't afford. The "content" he needed from me was to quickly set up a minimum number of pages on a website for his proprietary backend. Real content now means using a website to build your audience. "SEO" as we had been doing it up to that point was mostly a bag of tricks with a hole in it - the tricks had run out.

I've become "unemployable" as Brian Clark podcasts now.

Like I care.

As I said, I work on whatever the hell I want to these days.

Fortunately for you, this is an entertaining journey.

The conventional wisdom I'm exposing as false is that you have to stick to a schedule to podcast.

Any author will tell you that the book is done when it's done. Some authors can crank out 2-4 books a year. Others will crank out a single book.

The great books will generate millions.

The vast number of authors never quit their day job as they can't afford to.

My tests have shown that there are sufficient numbers of public domain and PLR books out there ready for re-publishing, that anyone can make a decent living from this alone. Not rich - yet - but plenty of time to get there.

And this is using a fraction of what real marketing consists of.

I do like my freedom of schedule however. And being able to post whenever (and whatever) I feel like - useful stuff that no one else is covering.

Keeping a schedule means having a job - to me, anyway. So "having" to podcast is just putting on the wage-slave shackles again.

Book marketing isn't what it used to be. 

Some of my more recent posts have pointed this out.

The Book-As-An-Idea-Container is closer to what we should be doing. And freely repurposing content into any and all formats to encourage discovery.

So "book publishing" is a smallish part of everything we can and should be doing.

Here's an example:

• LinkedIn is bigger than Twitter and allows long-form content posts.
• 8 images per 1000 word LinkedIn post was found to be optimal. 
• LinkedIn won't accept audio, but will accept video.
• Meanwhile, Google considers 2,000 words to be best for their uses.
• Some LinkedIn authors put a 1K post on LinkedIn, then link to their much longer original post over on their blog.
• If you take that article (or the long post) and podcast it, you'll get more traffic to your blog.
• Take that podcast and 8 images and create a video for LinkedIn - but also for YouTube and everywhere else.
• Each of these posts, podcasts, and videos contain a call to action to opt-in to your site as a member.
• Take 5 such posts and make them into an ebook on Amazon, and everywhere else - again, with that CTA.
• On your site and BitTorrent, offer a bundle which has the ebook, podcasts, and videos.
• Members get a discount on the bundle, or an exclusive version.
• Oh - and you post a hardcopy version as well, which members can buy at a discount also.
• IFTTT is meanwhile sending out status updates consistently on all your new posts, articles, videos, podcasts through Twitter, G+, Facebook, etc.

Sure, this type of marketing is a lot of work. Booksales get all this promotion, but so does your membership. And members get treated best of all - they can access your material anyway they want it.

Now, you can monetize a lot more than just ebooks.

5 articles, 5 podcasts, 5 videos - 1 ebook, 1 "Spoken Word Album", 1 hardcopy - all on Amazon and everywhere you can port them to. You can even make a DVD of the video's if you want.

Your members are encouraged to leave reviews on Amazon to put it up on top with their algorithms.

That is marketing. And I didn't mention Synnd in the above, which is more social signals through network syndication.

We're evolving this podcast and blog.

I'm actually going to have yet another podcast over at livesensical.com, which is really "book" reviews. These will be done by series, and then marketedNew name,  new look coming. as above - resulting in multiple formats, which in turn push the original books at the same time (most of which are already on Amazon.)

This blog will continue to simply describe the process, and give you a chance to participate.

The other will be aligned to telling people about the "secrets hidden in plain sight" - which I've republished - and how they relate to improving your life.

But I'm not going to burden you with having to listen to these. As I go through that process, I'm sure to find more material and breakthroughs about media production. That's what this blog is for.

(I may even start up a third podcast, which will simply be repurposing an existing audiobook to promote that book - since there are 50 essays in that book, it will run for most of a year - all on automatic.)

The work on these promotions may mean that I don't blog here as regularly. Or post in spurts (like this week) when I have something to say.

More than likely, I'll work in batches and then review what I learned from that as I refine my techniques. You'll then hear about that discussion as I do.

There's a new name,  new look coming.

This blog will ultimately move over to livesensical.com as I've got better tools to create with over there. You'll only notice an improved format, if I do it right. All the oldest posts are already over there - just the new ones need to be updated. This blog will still stay here, though. Because Google likes old blogs.

And that will happen right after livesensical.com goes live.

Yes, I have a whole blog post crying out in my head to get posted - but I'm still working out the details. (The sneak peak is that you're publishing work should revolve around a theme, not just a genre.)

Right now, it's late and I'm to bed. Tomorrow, I'll spruce this up a bit and probably even podcast it.

You win, either way.

Have a nice weekend.

See you on the other side of it.

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