How to Write Less and Publish More - A Rich Adventure

Can you actually write less and profit more?

Introduction

Deep in the heart of the ever-growing Amazon Kindle jungle, there's a profitable under-served market which is not easily discovered. It sits in a clearing by itself, much like a massive stone temple rising above the forest. A temple with some gold-filled rooms.

Just my kind of area to explore. I've long been in favor of "find where everyone is going and go the opposite way." So this makes a lot of sense. And any adventure is always welcome.

We saw this expedition hinted at by Steve Scott with his non-fiction habits books. But he never really explored the opportunities this area has. In re-tracing Scott's own path, it showed me the turns he didn't take.

That inspired me to start my own journey around two months ago. I'm currently publishing an average of one short read ebook per week. And the results are promising, as the Christmas sales influence fades.

This path struck my fancy, as it told more about how to really use short reads as a business strategy. How to cement those 6-figures that Scott started having. What I've discovered accelerates that progress, perhaps even creating your 7-figure income.

(BTW, in Scott's recent videos, he points out that his income is still dwindling, down from a high of around $400K annually to an average of "just" $250K per year. While this is still great, it also shows that he's left tons of money on the table.)

One of the more profitable avenues is content writing as part of business publishing. A lot of businesses are getting into content marketing these days, but don't have a lot of thick texts sitting around waiting to be turned into Kindle ebooks.

What they do have is lots of shorter material which would be perfect how-to non fiction books about their particular industry. If these could also be quickly turned into small books to hand out at trade shows and by their sales people, a business could get a real marketing advantage over any competition.

And such production can be fast. The book you are reading (although more work could have been done in editing, to be sure) was created and published into four widely-distributed formats in only three days, at a cost of sweat-equity only. Imagine what could be done for your next product release...

This isn't just for fiction writers. It's for everyone with a message to get out.

So let's get started...

The Secret Map to Short Read Riches

Here's the secret map - How to Succeed with Kindle Short Reads, by Geoff Shaw.

There's a growing group of readers which Amazon has been catering to with their Kindle Short Reads. Shaw describes them like this:

"Introducing Coffee Break Readers

"There’s a new generation of readers.

"People who will download and read lots of books. They only have so much time and they want their fill of excitement in that limited time.

"We call them the CBR’s - the coffee break readers.

They’re not just people who have never read longer books before... They’re anyone who has limited time to read for whatever reason.

"These people aren't stuck into a certain author, it's more like the certain type of entertainment they want: short stories which they can read in their available time."

That idea opened my eyes quite a bit.

The price range for these CBR books is the same as Scott's .99 and 2.99, plus the 3.99 or 4.99 boxed sets.

But the trick is that you're having to write a lot less and profiting more from each bit you do write.

When we last left our hero, Scott seemed to be getting into longer and longer books as he went, but this is the reverse of where you want to go. You'll see shortly that this is more of a pioneer territory with a lot less competition and few tools to use to find your way. What Scott should have been doing is to figure out how to multiply his success in related genres, and stick to the short reads and box sets.

It's really all the "deep backbench" principle again. The more books you have up there, the more they can be recommended, the more chances you have to uncovered your room of gold.

Less Competition, More Profits

The great part is that this is still mostly virgin wilderness. Go look over Amazon short reads and you'll see there is a lot less competition, as the books are split up by length as well as genre. People can have 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90-minute reads. Your book still shows up in the regular categories. but the CBR's will specifically hunt up your books according to the time they have to read. So it's easier for them to find your books.

Basically, Amazon counts every 250 words as a page. Except for special instances, they generally only accept 2500-word books these days. So Shaw's chart shows the reading time category you'll fall into with your short reads, depending on word count.

Let's look at that competition you won't have:

For instance:

Literature & Fiction -

Kindle Books: 1,352,061
Kindle Short Reads (30 min): 48,093

Business & Money -

Kindle Books: 249,574
Kindle Short Reads (30 min): 15,937

Which arena would you like to compete in?

Another point is that there's higher turnover. People are basically consuming books like tasty snacks. This then leverages your writing far beyond anything we've seen before. They aren't looking for books they can read a bit of each day (munching all week long) but rather 5-10 books they can finish each week.

For the money they'd spend buying a traditionally-published big name author's ebook, they can buy just as much reading material for less than half - and it's all designed to be read in those tiny snippets of time they have available.

Shaw says that the bulk of the reads in this category are actually indie authors, so this means the Big 5 publishing houses won't compete with their big promotion budgets in this arena.

Shaw points out, as I did earlier, that you can publish a single 80,000-word book and take a month writing it. (And another month editing and proofing it.)

Or – write eight 10,000-word books and publish every two weeks. (One for writing at 2,000 per day - 10,000 words - and the next week for editing/proofing.)

In two months, the first author has one book, which will sell for 4.99 or so.

The second author has 8 books that can sell at 2.99.

The second author has roughly twice the royalties coming in, plus:

• the ability to get readers as email subscribers also from each additional book (with a Lead Magnet at both beginning and end)
• the ability to be searched for 56 keywords and in 16 categories, instead of just 7 keywords and 2 categories.
• the greater number of his books and his more frequent releases prompt Amazon to recommend these other titles.
• and you're making income while you are writing.
• then creating a box set of these (or even a couple) just adds to the above.

In this hypothetical match-up, you have the same amount of words for each author, a tiny bit more overhead in producing covers and descriptions for short reads each ebook, plus building that box set. But then the box set allows a longer-read customer to consume the full novel.

As a sidebar, the box set looks to be a better bargain than the 80,000-word single book. Would you rather buy a collection of 8 books for 4.99 or a single book for 4.99?

This starts to point out the factors in Steve Scott's system that he was missing.

What you've also done is to create 9 books (8 singles, plus the box set) in the same amount of time as the other author, but on your author page, you've got 9 books they can check out (and buy). And that's two months' work. The audience then doesn't question if you're a one-shot wonder, but will know by the end of just two months that you're a serious contender.

The other successes I've studied spent an entire year or more creating their bigger novels in order to have 5 or 6 books available (which was Scott's average, by the way, and he was doing short books.)

Again, you can have 9 books published in just two months. Instant legitimacy, with less competition.

Setting the first ebook as perma-free is an even better option. Plus, you can give it away from your site (and also from your box set look-inside) to get their email address. You aren't giving away your first 80,000-word book (which freaks most beginning authors out) but only 1/8th of your total work.

(One tip here is to tell them in the first line of each single book's description that a box set is also available.)

Shaw talks quite a bit about Kindle Unlimited here, but I still hold that you're throwing away income if you're not offering your works for sale everywhere possible (see Addendum.) The places you should publish in my opinion are Amazon, Itunes, and Lulu (both as an aggregator and hardcopy publisher.) This gives you the minimal interfaces to deal with.

Hook, Line, Sinker and the Lead Magnet

This is a tip Shaw gives which I've seen nowhere else: Inside your first book, it says: "Get the next book in this series!" and has a link which goes to a landing page opt-in. When they sign up, they go to a thank you page, which lists all the rest of the books in that series, as well as your other series - and they can buy each of the books through that page, directly from Amazon. That "thank you page" also has the free samples linked.

To my mind, this would be where you also give a link to sell a bundle for each ebook. It would include the PDF, epub, and mobi files as a download from your own site.

(Shaw does give a way you can help them side-load it with their Kindle email link. This builds relationship.)

Now, note that you will be building your ARC (Advance Review Copy) subscribers with your email. This segments part of them into a special list so you can sent preview copies in exchange for a review on Amazon. This is the key way to make "bestsellers" on Amazon. I did find a slightly better take on this from Mark Dawson, who has:

a) Tell your ARC about the release date.

b) Tell the rest of your list the day after, letting them know the price is going up.

c) Tell your entire list the day the price is going up.

d) Then (my addition) post to your blog/podcast with the release data and use IFTTT to syndicate it everywhere.

e) You'd then run Facebook ads about the book, particularly if it were a boxed set, where the increased book income would pay for those ads. ($4.99 or so.)

What that does, per Dawson, is to give you immediate reviews and sales, then gets continuing sales afterwards, as Amazon will promote books which are new and continuing to sell well.

Additional Short Read Marketing Tactics

Shaw comes up with some marvelous tactics with short reads, which are just as applicable to bigger books, but not as quickly or easily done.

1) Collaborations with pen names

This tactic can be used for testing other genres, but is also essentially brand-extension. Your first pen name is known for a certain sub-genre, then you write a book in a related sub-genre adding a co-author that is actually just another pen name. It's not hard to see the cross-selling aspects of this. You can now can have several authors with their own list segment, for each sub-genre you want to write in. Shaw explains this in more detail in his course.

Your emails then come from an embracive source (like your publishing house or an "imprint" of it) which then lists the books by each author for each sub-genre. Each author could have their own special offer going.

As you segment off your hotter audience (more opens, clickthroughs) then you can give them polls, in order to narrow down what they like most and so create a better experience for them.

2) Collaborations with other (real) authors

If you have a box set with books by several of your pen names, you can then offer other authors in those sub-genres a chance to get into that box set. Since you have several "authors" already, it's a no-brainer. And that new author then emails his list about that box set. This is an old standby of affiliate marketing. It builds both your lists.

3) Cloning

For fiction short reads this is a viable option. Taking your book outline (Shaw has a course on this as well on Udemy) you then get some ghostwriters to produce another book with the same basic plot. You then publish this under that pen name. Similar cover, similar title, cloned. It works because people want more of what they love.

4) Reverse Launch

You can also release the box set first, and then offer them your first book in that series as a sample - and put that in your "Look Inside". Then you can go ahead and release the other books on a schedule, getting people to opt-in to your list to get the "early bird discount" as each new single is released.

Non-Fiction and Public Domain Publishing

Amazon is seeming to do all they can to discourage any more PD from showing up there. I got reminded this last week as I had a special report (quick read) that wound up in their very slow PD queue because of its title alone. My other books were getting approved in about 12 hours, so having to spend 5 days getting a book out of that queue back into draft was really annoying.

So I will definitely avoid this route just because it slows the speed of publishing. This also points out that they are primarily working with a database of titles (and maybe authors) as opposed to any search of submitted content (which might occur later, once it gets kicked into human hands, but that's doubtful.)

Another cross-over point is improving your writing. Writing a good non-fiction book has a great deal to do with how they write good fiction. Mainly things like having a good hook, and using emotional descriptions.

Plus, fiction is more profitable in general than non-fiction. People like to be entertained and to escape. If you can bring these same writing styles into non-fiction, then you have a popular hit.

All short-reads do is to make your books more consumable, which is the same point of learning fiction-writing techniques.

The benefit of this strategy is to enable you to get more leverage out of the same amount of content that you're going to create anyway.

Pen names to fill space in a magazine is nothing new. Prolific authors have often resorted to these for any number of reasons. Being able to cross-connect these authors and their readers gives you new opportunities for income.

I just wanted to tell you all about these, as this is a breakthrough down this line of short reads.

And authors with existing books - depending on how they are written - can break up their books into a serial format and do this same thing. The first short-read excerpt becomes a sample, then release the other chapters along this same line. Gladwell's Tipping Point could have been released like this, if that were a publishing option at the time. Remember, it has to read like a serial to be successful along this line.

Leveraging Your Resources

Further, I still recommend coming out with both paperback and hardback editions to get the most out of your title. And don't forget your audio book.

Some tips came to light this last Christmas season. It turns out that Amazon will stop ordering books for certain titles if they come from Lulu or other publishers, but not their own CreateSpace (CS). You can see how this makes sense from a shipping point, but you'll also see that you just lost sales for the couple of weeks just before Chrismas. That means all the last-minute shoppers can't get your books if you don't publish to CS.

CS doesn't do hardbacks. Period. They do a lot of different cut sizes in paperback that Lulu doesn't, however. So you can make a pocketbook paperback version on CS, and a trade paperback version on Lulu, as well as a trade hardback version (both casewrap and dust-jacketed.)

Note, Amazon will show your CS version on the front page, and your Lulu version will have to be searched for. Having your expanded reach on Lulu gets your book into the other distributors with higher royalties and no Amazon stigma attached.

The general theory is this:

• You have titles which are selling as ebooks and long enough to make at least a 32-page book in print, or about 8,000 words.)
• Paperback version on CS, just to Amazon.
• Paperback version from Lulu with their expanded reach. - Casewrap hardback from Lulu with expanded reach.
• "Deluxe" dust jacketed version at a much higher price.

Work your books backwards in order of sales so that improved title sales pays for the proofing costs of the hardcopies.

Editing itself can give you an audio book.

You have four drafts of your book. First is your rough draft. Second is cleaning up your errors and inserting links, plus general formatting. Third is reading the book out-loud and correcting anything you find. At this point, you record everything you read out loud, with attention to reading the final version into your recording. You then send off that 3^rd draft to a proofer. Meanwhile, you edit your recording into shape as an audio book (or as a podcast.)

For instance. this podcast transcript is now over 4000 words in print. So it would qualify as a 30 minute quick read, but isn't big enough to print by itself. (I could add material to the end pulled from my other books, and also put in ads to buy my other books on Amazon.)

So we will probably use this as a test of this whole publishing scene

While your recording can become your audio book, it's also a podcast. Including that link into your ebook then gives you added value. I also include the link into the PDF version at the bottom as a footer. So when you submit the PDF to make your hardcopy version, they can always type that link into their browser and get the podcast.

Of course, that sends them to your podcast where they get your ads, and another way to get them into your membership/mailing list.

Quick Reads Other Than Amazon

Of course this strategy works everywhere else, too. Your ebook are the same. You don't have the "Look Inside" but all the ebook distributors enable previews - just make sure the PDF you upload has links to where you want readers to go. I'm also a fan of uploading the entire PDF, as it builds trust and encourages them to get a version they can read more easily on their smart phone. (But I do format my PDFs for 6"x9" as these are more readable on smaller screens.)

Podcasts and Keeping Updated

One final thought is to tell you to follow my Authorpreneur Flipboard magazine to keep up with all that I'm finding daily on book publishing and content creation.

I may work this up into publishing this as a weekly digest at some point, but don't know when. Let me know by return email or comment on this episode if you think that's something you could use.

This podcast was started as another self-publishing test, and it's succeeded far beyond what I expected. However, I have no need to simply work at finding more stuff to talk about just to have a podcast. I do like to share breakthroughs. But at this point, I've covered the bulk of the basics and have no reason to do like Steve Scott and others who are now trying to profit off selling courses to their list.

This is mainly as that market is so saturated, it's not funny. The ebook market is, frankly, glutted. The how-to books market for new authors is worse. Amazon is more the new-author graveyard than ever before. Most of this is because authors are following the followers rather than reaching for the top 5%. That's where the real creative energy is. Market leaders are constantly creating. And that's what makes them leaders. Everyone who tries to just copy what someone else is doing is just another also-ran.

Scott was onto something with his short reads. But he's another follower, even though well-paid. Essentially, he's always been an affiliate marketer. And that's always a follow-the-follower scene. It shows in his latest course in how to write and market books.

Any breakthrough in leveraging Amazon is in finding what are still niche areas, such as short-reads. Amazon is a complete pain to work with, as they nickel-and-dime your royalty income every chance they get. But they can be leveraged and they can be used to build your own list.

You do need your own site, and you should be able to sell your own books from your own site. I should finally have my own ecommerce site up later this month. You already see my membership site is up as a bare-bones operation, but I'm adding content to this each week. And my email lists are slowly building as I go.

Here's the minimum basics in sequence for a successful author, outside of their ability to write:

1) an autoresponder service

2) a domain of your own

3) a membership on that domain

4) your own hosted bookstore

Everything else is getting your books also offered by the main distributors so you can use those distributors to build your email subscriber lists.

If you don't have these four points above in, then you are just asking to be booted off Amazon at some point and left with no income, nothing.

The secret to profits from Amazon is to leverage their ebook sales into hardcopy sales, which are not subject to their money-grubbing policies on royalties. The real market for fiction and non-fiction, especially PD and PLR books, is in POD versions, not ebooks.

And those few comments above sum up my entire accumulated wisdom on selling books profitably. The rest is technical how-to which can be dug up just about anywhere (although the books I've already published in this area have been described as a Gold Mine with all those technical nuggets you can find inside.) My earlier books were to help anyone start with just the computer and Internet connection they already have, plus a common sense approach mostly lacking in the bulk of the other books in this area.

But I have no reason to revisit my own books. This scene is constantly shifting and evolving. I'd be forever just keeping these updated.

I'm not going to promise you that my podcast will continue. If I don't find anything really interesting, or a breakthrough, then it's just another day in the life. Frankly, these two Shaw courses on Udemy have inspired a completely new approach for me - but there's no reason to repeat what he's already written, other than this review.

I'm also studying Mark Dawson's course on Facebook advertising, but this is a back-up to having a lot of books out there already. Your sequence would be to study the two Shaw courses and then Dawson's free videos (until his pricey FB ad course opens up once again.) If you only have a couple of nickels to invest, then get my cheaper ebooks and work on building your backlist. Once the money starts dribbling in, then invest in the above - AFTER you have your own list, domain, membership, and ecommerce set up (which can be built with just Blogger, PayPal, and MailChimp - all free to start with.)

Again, before you start publishing your books (you should always be writing, every single day) get your basics in above. Then expand your training with Shaw and Dawson. If you go back through my blog posts, I've given you other downloads to study through. All free.

Your main focus is to thoroughly study and test everything for yourself, then throw away everything that doesn't work for you. Especially what I've told you. No prophet is sacrosanct, regardless of how many followers they have or how much money they make.

Your life is your own. Live it to the fullest you can. Enjoy every moment. Listen only to those who have escaped that bucket of crabs where everyone else lives.

While I'm way behind and underneath my production goals these days, I still work to see how I can help you with whatever you need. Your input helps and inspires me. Email me directly or leave a comment.

And, thanks for being there.

- - - -

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6 Simple Steps That Guarantee Your Publishing Success

Hello again,

I actually had a rant ready to spring on you, but decided against it. This is the holidays after all. And it goes against my grain to simply diss someone for acting stupid and selfishly.

So, we’ll leave that for another day.

I did find a great nugget for you. Unfortunately, I don’t have a transcript.

But you’ll want to hear this anyway. Joe Pilizzi of Content Marketing Institute was on Chris Ducker’s show at Youpreneur.fm. They are discussing his new book and lay out the 6 steps all the multi-million-dollar companies have been using to achieve their success.

Because if you want to be successful, you need to find what the successful people are doing.

That’s why I spent a solid week analyzing Steve Scott’s six-figure success and several days working on Mark Dawson and the half-million he’s pulling in – both are doing nothing but books, building on the sands of Amazon. Well, not entirely – and Joe’s 6 steps tell more about how these authors made their success. They both used the same 6 steps, although they actually did go through them in less than a year before they were able to branch out into other things.

I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Have a listen, and I’ll meet you on the other side…

– – – –

Always like listening to Joe. He comes highly recommended from Bruce Clark, so I try to catch Joe’s weekly “This Old Marketing” podcast when I can. Always interesting.

Our approach is to apply content marketing to book publishing – which is the business we are in, after all.

What’s the takeaway from this?

0. Follow your bliss and get into a very narrow niche with fits with your particular expertise. Double-down, as Scott found.

1. Get your list started today. Now is the second best time to start, best would have been 6 months ago.

2. Get your own site, whether it’s blog or podcast or whatever. Have a place you can build on which isn’t someone else’s. You have to be prepared for changes like Facebook has made, or Amazon nuking all your books (I just read about it again today.)

3. Get regular content out consistently and have your list popularize it on Amazon. Yes, that can be your own books, which is what both Scott and Dawson did.

4. Keep doing this consistently. Keep showing up consistently.

5. Then monetize by diversifying. Dawson started his FB ads course. Scott started a podcast and focused more on his site.

It’s just that simple. Six steps.

And that’s how we’ll leave it with you.

Here’s wishing you a great Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Here some links:

• I had to cut out the Youpreneur host’s interruptions from the audio you heard, but the whole podcast is at Episode 138 (http://www.chrisducker.com/podcast/content-marketing-entrepreneurs-joe-pulizzi/)
• Content Marketing Institute with “This Old Marketing” podcast. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/pnr-with-this-old-marketing-podcast/
• Content Inc. – Joe Pulizzi’s new book.
• Steve Scott’s analysis of his last book launch. http://www.authority.pub/podcast/book-launch-strategy/
• Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. http://www.selfpublishingformula.com/

Originally published on http://livesensical.com/podcast/selling-books-online/6-simple-steps-guarantee-publishing-success/

My Google Play Books Were Killed and Replaced With Zombies

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They came for a friend of mine first, and I didn’t have anything to say. Then they came for me. Then I did want to say something, but it was too late.

My self-published books now lay dead – or were they?

None of which I’m about to say can easily substantiated.

That’s probably because self-publishing on Google Play never really took off. So there are few self-publishing authors affected, and as their sales have been piddly, those authors could care less if a minor player ditched them.

Google Play Books is dying/dead because for all they may know about search engines, they know squat about hosting ecommerce. I’ve been supporting them for years because, well, they’re Google – and any book there will show up in their rankings.

That’s probably also why the pirates liked them. Pirates would be able to simply come back once they were dumped off GooglePlay, often within hours. They were pirating original works of other authors with the same cover and description. Google had a convenient bulk upload which made this turnaround extremely fast. So Google shut down their site to all new authors, as of May 15, 2015.

And apparently, they are gradually getting rid of their remaining self-publishing authors.

This is very hard to find data on. It’s happened to me and a friend of mine, but apparently not enough to cause any outcry on forums. Searches bring up more about app developers, and no one has complained about not being able to publish their books on Google anymore.

Google has also had the worst royalty set up (52% flat rate) and also auto-discount your book/ebook by 20%. Meaning that if you put up the same title with the same price on Amazon, both would shortly be 20% lower. Which means 20% less royalties on both platforms.

If you haven’t guessed, Google cancelled my account last week. Which explains the sour grapes. No real explanation or recourse, just “you violated our terms of agreement.” This week, they sent me a jovial auto-responder broadcast saying”you’ve just received another payment! Check you Google account to find out how much it is!” Of course, my account is shut down, so I’ll have to wait until that last payment shows up in my account, and guesstimate what my actual book sales were.

The 217 books I had there are now gone. That took a few more days to scour clean. Today I searched and somehow my books I just recently published through Lulu have appeared there with the Lulu description. Like Living Sensical. You can buy this as an ebook. But look at the price – instead of $2.99, it’s $2.51 – meaning that Amazon will price-match that. Thanks for the lower royalties, Google.

Google Turned My Books Into Zombies

How did my new books wind up on Google? The hint was that Lulu description (which reads like a pile of unfolded laundry, right out of the dryer and dumped in a basket.)

It looks like Google is now simply going to get their books from distributors. Like they do with Shopping. Lulu won’t distribute public domain or PLR books outside their own garden, so that makes it safer for Google. They’ll just get their books from regular publishers or aggregators and play it safe. Their experiment in self-publishing then looks to be over. Contracting with aggregators is much safer.

The Zombie part is that now you are going to have to set your price higher on Lulu in order to keep Google from taking your price down on Amazon.

Thanks Google. Thanks Lulu.

My official opinion is now for authors to pull their works from Google while they still can. This is based on how they treated me – and how they will screw your royalties if you give them half a chance. So pull them now, so you can still have an account. Only leave original works up there. You may yet survive.

Further thanks are still in order, however. I will now have to start removing all traces of Google Play from my earlier posts anywhere. And all my Google Play buy now buttons on my book landing pages.

Factually, I’ll go further and update my “How to Publish on Google Play” with a short addendum right in the beginning (so it’s visible in Amazon’s “Look Inside”) to tell people not to submit anything to Google Play, but buy my other books on self-publishing instead – from Amazon.

Lulu Plays Sharecropping Vampire

This is what I concluded, that Google is getting my latest ebooks from Lulu, who sucks their own bit of blood out in passing. The problem is more than royalty deep.

On paper, Lulu takes only 10% of what it gets for distributing your work elsewhere.

Actually, these other distributors are taking out their pound of flesh through “distribution fees.” See this chart, for a $3.99 ebook:

price	$3.99		fees
Lulu	$2.70	68%	$0.99
iTunes	$2.51	63%	$1.20
Nook	$1.80	45%	$2.00
Kobo	$1.71	43%	$2.09

Per Smashword’s survey, $3.99 is where authors could have the highest income, $2.99 is where they have the best unit-sales.

Now, with Amazon’s cold-blooded price-matching we have to adjust things. In order to not let Google suck your Amazon royalties down, you tell Lulu to set your price at $3.99 and Amazon (you publish direct there) at $2.99 – so $3.19 would be their price. Just 20 cents different. You’ll make about $2.00 in royalties after Amazon subtracts the broadband charge (still cheaper than Lulu’s .99 each.)

Note: I don’t recommend Smashwords over Lulu as 1) they also only give you 80% of what they get from their outlets – meaning you lose even more, and 2) you have to create a special edition just for them. I already change the links inside the book for Amazon and non-Amazon. I don’t need a third version.

Best Survival Strategies from Blood-sucking Sharecropping

After all this time, I’m still amazed by  how much I’m leaving on the table. Let the self-publisher beware.

You have to realize that all these book distributors are just letting you sit there as a sharecropper, farming on the land they own. You have to be prepared to be ditched at any time. (You do have your own email list and your own site, don’t you?!?)

What I recommend at this point:

Publish to Amazon and iTunes directly to control your sales best. Both have various programs to give you pre-sales and promotions. (No, that doesn’t include KDP Direct or their worse-yet KDP Unlimited, which are both financial fiasco’s.)

You want to be able to update your meta-data each month to keep them fresh in both the distributors and Google’s eyes.  Direct to Amazon and iTunes means you don’t lose out to all those fees above.

You do let Lulu publish for you to Kobo and Nook – since whatever sales you do get from these are nice, but not much worth your time.

Right now, you don’t have a choice with Google Play.

So your price is always at least a dollar higher on Lulu to make up for the lousy sales and royalties these areas give you. That keeps Amazon honest.

Your iTunes price should be competitive within iTunes – and as least the same as Amazon, probably.

Is Public Domain the Victim Here?

Not hardly. Since it’s actually harder work to get income from these. That friend of mine who suffered at the cruel teeth of Google Play, found that the best way to publish public domain is at .99 on Amazon, and skip everywhere else. But he is a trained writer and his descriptions and covers can make you shudder as you pull out your virtual wallet to buy that version first. You’re still competing with a commodity. The .99 price cuts everyone else out but the freebies. And those publishers simply don’t care to make nice covers and titles. That’s why you get the sales there.

My own option is to channel existing demand by creating special reports out of chapter-excerpts which then point to collections of these books, which can be priced at $4.99 or better.

No, you don’t ever, ever publish those collections on Lulu. Why bother? Google will just undercut your price, or they’ll be too high to buy.  The special reports you publish on Lulu then send them to your own landing page, where they can buy from you direct.

What you can publish where is on this chart:

Distributor	Original Works	Public Domain	PLR
Amazon	yes	yes*	NO
Lulu	yes	yes**	yes**
iTunes	yes	yes	yes
Nook	yes	yes	yes
Kobo	yes	yes***	yes
own site	YES	YES	YES

Notes:
* Has to be “translated”, “illustrated,” or “annotated”
** Won’t distribute anywhere else.
*** Only gives you 20% and you have to publish directly here – not worth your time for the piddly sales.

Another Stalker Lurks – PayPal

Micropayments suck your royalties on everywhere except your own site – and they take a sizable piece out there.

Paypal charges 2.99% plus a .30 fee. You can opt for 5% and a .05 fee, but you can only do one or the other, not both.

If you sell your books on your own site, you get this:

Pay Pal – 3%
Price point	You Get	Actual % at 2.99+.30	Royalty
$0.99	$0.67	32%	68%
$1.99	$1.64	18%	82%
$2.99	$2.61	13%	87%
$3.99	$3.58	10%	90%
$4.99	$4.55	9%	91%
$9.00	$8.44	6%	94%
$10.00	$9.41	6%	94%
$11.00	$10.38	6%	94%
$12.00	$11.35	5%	95%
$13.00	$12.32	5%	95%
$14.00	$13.29	5%	95%
$15.00	$14.26	5%	96%
$50.00	$48.21	4%	96%
$100.00	$96.71	3%	97%
Pay Pal – 5%
Price point	You Get	Actual % at 5%+.05	Royalty
$0.99	$0.89	10%	90%
$1.99	$1.84	7%	93%
$2.99	$2.79	7%	93%
$3.99	$3.74	6%	94%
$4.99	$4.69	6%	94%
$13.00	$12.30	5%	95%
$14.00	$13.25	5%	95%
$15.00	$13.25	5%	95%
$50.00	$14.20	5%	95%
$100.00	$94.95	5%	95%

These two models swap out at about $14.

But that’s if you’re selling direct from your site. This is the reason for the 10% fee which Lulu and the rest charge. (I have no clue why they are sucking those other exorbitant fees out of you.)

This came up on trying to pay my VA a .97 payment as a test – and only .63 went through. Similarly, a $50 payment wasn’t just 3% cost.

Ganxy and Sellfy both take 10% off after you pay the Paypal fee – only Gumroad does the activity for you, and charges a flat 5%+.50 per transaction.(Much less blood-sucking involved.)

Plantation Owners Make the Best Vampires/Zombies.

When you self-publish to Amazon and the rest, you are committing digital sharecropping. They can (and will) shut you down at any moment. This is an old MLM tactic, as you don’t really own your downline.

The trick is to have your customers on your own mailing list. With any MLM opportunity, you can simply take your downline somewhere else – and this gives you instantly high payouts wherever you wind up. That pyramid scene again.

Self-publishing doesn’t scale that well, but scale it does.

The way to make your books into bestsellers on Amazon is to get early, high numbers of reviews and sales that last more than just the first few days. Then Amazon will start marketing your books for you. To do this strategy, you have to have a decent-sized list with both pre-reviewers and regular folks. You price your book low for the first few days or a week and let your list in on it. Then you raise the price right after that.

Amazon can forces you to profit from your own site is when you want to offer multi-media bundles – such as audio, plus your book collection, plus book trailers, plus infographics.  Again, bundles are in the $4.99 range and up for just the book collections on Amazon (original books, anyway.)

So you can let your insider reviewers in at $.99, your regular list in at $2.99 and then everyone else at $4.99 – all over the span of a few days or a week.

The general strategy is to keep Amazon buyers going to Amazon, but opting in to your email subscription. For all other platforms, you send them to your own book landing page so they can buy your book there – or go to one of the other distributors. (Frankly, I’d actually only send them to iTunes or Amazon, everywhere else you make much less than you would selling direct. Might as well build up your own sales locally.

Now, your hardback is similar, but your royalties here will be far greater.

Like this:

And that is the difference between renting as a sharecropper and being owned by them.

Right now over 50% of my Lulu monthly income is from hardcopy books. I can only see increasing these, due to that difference in royalties. While my PD ebooks which sell well everywhere else have a hard time getting on to Kindle, my hardcopy versions do not have that problem with Amazon.

My own site (even Lulu’s bookstore) are fairly unknown, I can put links inside these hardcopy books which can get email subscribers and possible book sales just from the “Look Inside” feature. The viewer doesn’t even have to buy from Amazon to click over to my site. (The trick is to upload a PDF with hard-wired linked in it as the preview – which is under testing as I tell you this.)

Audiobooks vs. Spoken Word Albums

Amazon owns Audible, and gave them an exclusive platform for audiobook sales there. They also have an exclusive contract with iTunes, which expires in a couple of years or so. Meanwhile, another test I’m gearing up for is creating “spoken word albums” via CDBaby with the podcasts I’m creating. I hope to use the same audiobook I’d earlier created and pitch these as a discounted CD so that it’s obviously promotion for the audiobook. It should sit right up there with the Kindle version, the trade paperback, the hardcover, and the audiobook. This gives the reader even more options. to have a set of CD’s up there which they can buy through Amazon – or as digital downloads direct from CDBaby, or – wait for it – my own site.

Again, I can offer discounts to members inside my own site. Amazon can’t see these and so can’t lower their prices to match. But chiefly, I’d give the value that they can’t. Bundles with these other media materials, and the option to buy dust-jacketed, limited-edition hardbacks – all at a steep discount for members.

There’s a lot to be said for having a sensible approach to this.

Join Today.

While I’m just getting this site started, you’re welcome to join me here. Big plans are afoot, most of which has to do with enabling you to access books, podcasts, courses, and even video webinars to get the data you need to improve your life markedly. Of course, my work has to go one title at a time. I do hope to have our first collection-bundle available within three or four weeks.

Yes, I’ll set up discounts for everyone, especially if they leave a review on Amazon.

The point is to stay focused on what you are actually here for. For me, it’s serving humanity by giving them a site they can visit which will unlock the secrets of the universe. Oddly, these secrets have been hidden in plain sight. The trick is that we’ve all been trained not to look, and where to not look. Fortunately, this is all easy to fix. It only takes a personal decision. And then be responsible for that decision and all the ones that follow.

Your choice.

See you up the line.

– – – –

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My Google Books Killed and Turned Zombie from Robert C. Worstell

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What Do You Really Want? Need Help? Just Ask...

Just an ad lib today. No real transcript this time. Just me talking to you.

We've been around the pike and I'd like to hear what you need help with or have questions about.

Next will be some very intensive work in Marketing ebooks and books in general, so I wanted to check with you before we moved forward.

Visit livesensical.com and sign up, or simply opt-in on this site and we can be in touch. Once you get an email from signing up, then answer it with any question you have. I'll be in touch when you do.

Simple?

OK.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Robert

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• The Marketing Books You've Always Wanted Are On Their Way...
• How Great Books Get Forgotten
• Some copyright notes - where to check for public domain issues
• How I Got My Financioal Freedom from Publishing Books
• A Review of Secret of the Ages - by Robert Collier
• Contempory Editions from Classic Bestseller Authors for Our Modern World Problems

The Rainmaker Solution: An Expensive Date That Turns Out to Be a Priceless BFF

The Rainmaker Solution - a BFF which starts as an expensive date.

Have you ever been in this situation? Having a significant other who is costing you a mint in maintenance - only to find out they are actually so priceless, that you could never let them go?

The biggest problem is that I already know how to publish a book for little or nothing. And here I am with a very powerful tool which is costing me money every month and is just sitting there.

I'm frugal by upbringing. If I'm paying for something it should be earning its keep.

The easiest thing to do would be to cut my losses and go back to what I already know.

But the old saying, "begin with the end in mind" tells me if I'm ever going to turn over this business, it has to be a great success, not just a very profitable hobby. Putting what I already have onto a system would leverage it into something that will take my income into a "comfortably well-off" range.

The main problem is that Rainmaker comes off as just too damned complicated. Everything has multiple parts to it. It's incredibly powerful (like I said already) and can do just about everything except brush your teeth for you after it woke you up on time and has your coffee ready.

I thought it was because I'm too used to Blogger, and not used enough to Wordpress.

In my current model: I simply create a blog post, upload an image, tweak the text, add in the Ganxy script for that product, tweak the meta-data to fit - and then publish.

But I can't do memberships. I can't do discounts (much less offer 50% off of everything I sell.) If I want to do discounts, I should put in a Sellfy link - which is essentially uploading a complete new set of ebook files and descriptions, etc.

And while I dither, all the link-love I'm accumulating for livesensical.com is just piddling away - while I pay another monthly fee for a site which isn't ready. All that I've been building up for months would be for nothing at this point.

Some things you have to see through, no matter what.

It's the learning curve which is killing me. Because I needed all this done yesterday.

Too many products as a problem.

Right now on GooglePlay, I have about 215 books. On Lulu, I have over 400 various versions of books - in different formats. On Amazon, I have about 70 or so. Itunes, Kobo, and Nook are somewhere in between.

Out of these, somewhere around 70 books sell regularly, so these are the ones I need to get up and running on my site - selling these directly in order to get higher royalties and also to build an audience. All of these have been extracted from sales data, and are on a spreadsheet.

All the old pages have been transferred (uploaded from backups) and very few have to be created - all the data for these is already on Calibre, so that's really just copy/paste.

And that's the rub - should I cut/paste to Ganxy to get these books posted on Rainmaker fastest - or figure out how to get it built using Rainmaker itself? Going with what is familiar would be faster - but it would cost me more.

In the end, my frugal side won out. I need to make Rainmaker pay for itself - so I invested some more time figuring out how to get things done.

Enter: Setup Wizards.

Now, if you are happy with Ganxy, this isn't a section that may thrill you. On the other hand, it's how to get your stuff on a site which will enable you to scale your existing content into 7 or 8-digit income - by all reports.

Because what we need to be doing is building an audience with the existing content we already have. At least, that's my problem - and has been for years. Getting sales through ebook distributors only disguised the problem by throwing money at me.

Rainmaker has simply opened up paid hosting for a tool they are themselves using. And they are useing to make 8-figures currently.

Set up wizards - these are for single products and also libraries. We'll do the single products to catch up with the existing (selling) pages we already have.

And it's quite simple, actually. It integrates with AWeber (my autoresponder service, but will also do MailChimp and others) and also is tied directly into the memberships. So the two targets here - of building an audience and having a free membership to host my content - are both integrated every time I post a new product.

When I've done it once, the settings are the same. At this point, I'll only need to copy/paste from Calibre to get everything posted. (Yes, if I ever leave Rainmaker, I'll have to do this all over. So I'm committed even more to getting this to pay for itself.)

Starting a free download library

This has always impressed me with Copyblogger - all those great ebooks available for nothing. (No, I haven't had time to read them all as yet.)

How I'm going to use this is simple: give away the PDF's and sell the other versions. Seems counter-intuitive. But it's also a way to see where the demand is. I'll also be able to email those people directly to give them a special offer on epub/mobi/hardcopy versions and the bundles I can make with podcasts. These same viewers might be interested in courses to help them study the book - and special books which accompany the course.

The point is - this will help me sell more books. And Amazon can't access these prices with their search bots, so it won't affect any price I have on their site. This gives me exclusive value to offer members - a great way to build audience and where I've been headed for some time.

This is also the key to leveraging material and escaping the glass ceiling which the distributors enforce.

But can't you just do all this for free?

Well yes - and no. Ganxy and Sellfy - no. Gumroad comes closest to handling memberships.

Technically, you can make a membership with nothing but an autoresponder and Paypal. You don't need anything in between. Just get them to pay, and AWeber (the one I'm most familiar with) will send them their first download. Then password protect part of your Blogger site (or the whole thing - a great description of how to do this is at BlogsByHeather.com )

The drawback is that once a year or sooner, you'll need to change the password for the site, since everyone gets the same one. But it's free, so...

Note: Free means you spend your time. Paid means you pay someone to take care of the backend so that you have more time to be creative. It's called leverage.

The deal is: start frugal and get your publishing to pay it's own way. Reinvest your profits back into the business. Once your self-publishing business is paying it's own way, as well all your living expenses - Congratulations! You're now financially independent. Probably somewhere in the middle, you'll either need to cut back on living expenses (like debt) and invest in some services to free up your time to be more creative.

Along the line, your passive income does start paying everything and you can start socking away reserves as well.

This is the goal. At that point, you can play the game of getting as rich as you want.

Rainmaker is our new BFF.

Well, as long as they keep improving it and it keeps having more bells and whistles than I can use.

I'm into the "getting rich" mode now - which essentially means leveraging my time to improve my income.

It can be done. And that's why I'm telling you that when someone living in the farm belt can do it (or even someone in India) then you can, too.

With today's breakthrough, I'm back to hopeful again. Even though this summer has been mostly overcast and rainy, it seems that there's some bright sunshine breaking through all around.

I hope that yours is going as well.

See you next time.

- - - -

And thanks for listening to another installment of "Selling Your Books Online."

Make sure you're subscribed by email or RSS. You won't want to miss a single white-knuckled, hair-raising, cliff-hanging installment in this adventure in self-publishing.

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• What Begins Well, Goes Well - and You Can Always Start Over
• Getting Your Book Discovered, Finding More Sales, Having More Fun