Indie Non Fiction

Now those of you who live in the other hemisphere might not realise that the Australians and New Zealanders get a bit competitive with each other – like its OK so long as the Kiwis win – of course – so the Ozzie chick’s update on her book sales has me kinda bummed – she won – but not by much and there will be a comeback! Also I was really, really busy last month: So what happened while I ignore my sites and my outsourcer added some low value BMR links links to them?  (I did do some random blog commenting as well, but not much). Books sold: Smashwords 1 (5 in July); Amazon US 16 copies (9 in July) Amazon UK 3 copies  (0 in July) Nothing exciting about my affiliate sales through the site – but as the sales are spread out through the month I have hope that some of these are “real sales” ie to strangers!  Especially as the Smashwords sales collapsed (real people buy through Amazon not some website they never heard of). Mind you I might have sold zillions through Barnes and Noble and iBooks as I was approved for Smashwords “premium” distribution so [...] Read more »

Inspired by Tracey’s first month’s sales report - I thought that I should peak a look at my own sales figures for my shiny new eBook. Yes I have been quite good and haven’t logged on more than one a week – after all it took me 9 months to make my first $100 on Adsense – so I wasn’t holding my breath on Amazon – particularly because I have issues around being a non-American and having to deal with the US tax system for the first time (maybe – I will check with my accountant re Tracey’s suggestion to get around this). BTW why the heck do they not treat authors the same as affiliates – bloody weird the US tax system. Anyway back to the point – I have sold a million copies and am retiring to Thailand on Thursday. Hmmm not quite. But I’m not unhappy. This is not a get rich quick scheme (yeah you might as well unsubscribe now – sorry). So the bottom line is that I have sold 3 paid on Smashwords (plus a couple of freebies); 7 on Amazon @ 70% 2 on Amazon @ 35% That comes up to a grand total [...] Read more »

OK I’ve done it I’ve published a book! I was beaten to the chase my good friends Tracey, Terry and Dave all got over the line first – but we all know that line is just the start of the race! But bloody hell could someone at least mentioned that the formatting step was going to steal 2 days of my life, and awful lot of coffee, 1/2 a bottle of gin, and the odd flounce! I mean FUCK ME how hard is it to get the formatting right!!!! (3 weeks and counting!) But its OK – I am – almost – over it. Deep breath. Its been a learning experience – and I need to write some of this stuff down so that I can get it right for the next book. What You Need to Start  A nice cover design Sybille Yates did mine and I’m very happy with it. If you use photos you didn’t take make sure you have the right license for those to – hint you will have to pay! Unless you are very good – you will need an editor. My editor, Debi Willis, took some time out from California vacation planning from her Kauai [...] Read more »

Yeah I know adding “non fiction” to my title probably cut down my potential search traffic by 9o% but what the heck – I really do think fiction is a whole other beast. Also I am only talking about eBooks – not dead-tree books (dtBooks) – though so a lot of  what I have to say is probably relevant for them too. OK so you did some keyword research before you decided on your book’s title (you did, didn’t you?) – so if for example you don’t have a book titled “Packing Secrets of the Not So Famous” – rather you have one called “Vacation Packing List: How to save your back, time and money”. You also have a series of books planned so that you can get the most bang for your buck in terms of cross-promotion. The Key To Promotion – Promote to Customers NOT Writers! When I started getting into this writing a book gig I went searching I found a bunch of forums and an even bigger bunch of blogs about publishing your book – usually written by writers who had – yup self-published their book! This all felt very, very familiar – yup its like [...] Read more »

Will anyone buy my eBook? Well people will buy stuff if it solves a problem for them – at the right price. I know this because I make a living from it from affiliate marketing and advertising. Would someone buy something I wrote? Well I don’t know for sure, but I know that when my hub ranked well it got about 50,000 unique page views last year. Is There Demand? What if, instead of finding a hub at the top of the serps, the searcher found a cheap little Amazon eBook.  Say a book for $2.99 – would they buy that? If someone bought my book on Amazon for $2.99 – I’d get about $2 (if they were from the US, UK and some other places I can’t recall, otherwise about $1). But the topic is an American term, not a UK English usage. So lets assume $2. So if all 50,000 visitors bought the book – that would be … But they won’t maybe only 10% of them will buy – still $10,000/year – who around here has made that off a website yet? Maybe only 5% of them will buy… bummer only $5,000 – its still not bad for [...] Read more »

For nearly as long as I’ve been in Internet Marketing I’ve heard the old “you must have your own product” to really make it in this industry. The “product” most commonly cited was , of course – an “infoproduct” – a pdf of your real or perceived wisdom typically retailing for around $27 to $97 or $147 – didn’t really seem to matter so long as the price a) ended in a 7 and b) did not exceed your ability to keep a  straight face when promoting the price. I couldn’t buy into it  - it sounded like a border-line con to be, and what is worse it was a favoured technique for some of my least favourite people in the game. But it niggled – how hard could it be to write a book? I’d read books almost all my life, and like any vociferous reader I’d started writing my own book, several times, I never got past Chapter 2.  Was it actually possible to produce a “info product” at a fair price, that someone might want to pay me for and read. I kept on making money with Adsense, and affiliate sales, eBay and Amazon.  Panda happened, trashed hubpages, [...] Read more »