How To Publish On Amazon And Make Money

Clive Williams is an internet researcher and writer on many genres. He has a BSc. Degree in Information Systems.

Being a writer is such a thankless job. If it was not for the deep love and dedication of writing, many writers would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. But luckily for us in the world of writing, many things have changed. Technology has brought about a complete evolution as it relates to authors self-publishing and making good money doing so. In this article, I will teach you how to make money on Amazon Kindle Direct after you have published your eBook. Well, if you are as ecstatic about making money writing as I am you surely want to dive right into doing so, well let's go!

1. Market By Niche

A common mistake many independent publishers do is to create an eBook of a particular niche and then market that book to the wrong set of audience. What do I mean by the wrong audience? Well, the answer to that is in this parable; One day, the people of tool town were building a great building, they were interested in tools of any kind that would get the job done. They looked for and purchased all types of tools, even tools that they did not need. Then one day a salesman came along and tried to sell them chopped logs. Oh, that is the end of my parable, forgive me if my parables could not make it into the scriptures, but I don't think that you are ready for the writing world if you went to tool town selling chopped logs. The point is that you cannot sell people what they do not want or are not interested in. When you decide to market your book, do a little research before being so happy to broadcast your pet eBook to romance readers. You will reap faster and greater rewards if you are able to grab the attention of the intended audience the book was written for. Easier said than done right? Well, that's not entirely true. Let's look at an example of proper niche marketing.

Suppose you are the author of a fabulous dog training eBook, You decide to do a little marketing or promoting. You wouldn't want to go on a Facebook page called "desperate hot dog eaters" to post information about your book. Instead you would probably look for relevant Facebook pages related to dogs and dog training and post meaningful comments and links to your eBook. One more powerful social media marketing is the use of twitter, if you use twitter the right way, you can easily get your eBook buzzing on the fingertips of the billions of tweeters.

2. Good Book Pricing

So your eBook is complete and all you see is dollar signs around your head like a halo. You visit the top sports car store and tell the sales rep you will be back for the blazing red car. You start plans on the color and name you will give to your yacht, and to top it all off, you just cussed out your annoying boss. Well, I can tell you that you better have the greatest eBook in the world selling and being sold at the right price too, or else some naive eBook author will not be making any money, jobless and probably hunting food stamps. But aside from counting your chickens before they hatch, you must decide on a good price to set for purchasing your eBook. The sale price is also an important factor in how many people will buy your book. Amazon Direct Publishing does guide the author in this area. They will recommend the best price for your book based upon books of the same genre past performance. So let's break down how amazon helps you to determine the best price to sell your eBook at.

They analyze total books sold against different price ranges, by book genre.

A romance novel with around 100 pages gets the best sales when it is sold for $2.99 vs if the same book is sold at $5.99, even though you would have to be selling more books to reach the total sales for books sold at 5:99. The sale value of $2.99 proves to be a better option as people tend to gravitate more to low or cheap prices and will tend to spend easily on much cheaper goods. EBooks sold for 2.99 seems to be a good price which readers love. Especially if you are a new author in the eBook world and have just began to develop your brand.

3. Enroll Your eBook in Amazon Kindle Select

Amazon loves its authors and will do as much as it can for the authors to make money, but will work ten times more to make money for themselves. Amazon has a program called the KDP Select. When you, as the eBook author, enrolls in the program, you make your book become exclusive to Amazon, meaning it should not be available anywhere else in digital format. This can benefit the authors significantly if his eBook is liked and well shared. Here are the benefits of enrolling your book to the KDP Select:

Your book becomes included in the Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners Lending Program (KOLL). These are not just cool words being used by Amazon, but these programs will provide some cool cash in the author's pocket. When your eBook is enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program or the Kindle Owners Lending, you will earn a share of the KDP Select Global Fund based on how many pages KU or KOLL customers read of your book.
When your eBook is enrolled in the Select Program, you will be given access to promotional tools to boost book sales hence make more money. You will have the option to enroll in the Kindle Countdown Deals and the Free eBook Promotion. The countdown deals simply allows you to place a discounted price on your book for a particular time period. As time elapses, you can set an increment on the cost of the eBook. So let's say you price your eBook at $4.99. You start a countdown deal promotion and the promotional price starts at $1.99. Your promotion may run for a week and as each day passes, your book price may raise by increments of 0.99c or more, this depends on your preference. This is a good promotion as people tend to love and gravitate to deals.
Readers will be able to access your book for, well, free! This offer is also for a limited time period. I know that many authors may shun this "give away my eBook free" deal. Imagine putting your all into a book and then told to give it away free, that just does not go down well with many writers. But there is a method to Amazon's madness. Have you ever been to the supermarket or any super-center and notice little booth setup which is giving away free samples of products? Do you believe that these companies love you so much that they just want to give you free things? They are simply sending out the bait for a much larger catch. When you give away a couple of books, many people will start talking about it and you may end up with some good reviews and hence other readers may become interested and become potential buyers.
Enrolling in KDP Select makes your book eligible for 70% royalty earnings on sales to customers in Brazil, Japan, India, and Mexico.

4. Make a Video

People are video magnets and videos on YouTube get millions of daily views. You can make money from your eBook by creating a video talking about your eBook highlighting the greatness of your book. But one thing you can probably do is get friends or family members to create their own videos about your eBook and post their videos on any popular video sharing site. Remember a video is just like watching television and people believe in TV.

Conclusion

There is without a shadow of a doubt that when it comes on to making money with your eBooks, Kindle Direct is a great option. They provide great promotional tools to get you started on your first sale. But publishing your eBook on KDP is not a get rich quick scheme, just like any legitimate business, it takes time, commitment and dedication. Once you produce a great product, market that product at a great price, and provide good promotional techniques, then you should be counting your cash just about now.

This article is accurate and true to the best of the author's knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.

Farrah Young from Lagos, Nigeria on June 19, 2020:

Thanks, Clive. I appreciate it.

Clive Williams (author) from Jamaica on June 19, 2020: