HOW TO BECOME A KINDLE MILLIONAIRE: 5 Best Practices According to the Research to create a successful e-book

THE KINDLE MILLIONAIRE

I am not a Kindle Millionaire. I have barely sold anything on Kindle. This is why I am researching how the successful authors do it so that I can turn at least one of my 100 books (yet to be written) into bestsellers. Maybe it will be the latest one? Infidelity? I have found some new information I want to share about what seems to be the best practices - based on my research. Here are 5 best practices:

1. You have to figure out market demand for your book.

That means you have to research the market and look at demographic information to determine likely demand for your book and your book's niche.

2. Go on Amazon's website and get to know who the bestsellers are in your niche.

Then find out what it is that makes them bestsellers. Look at everything from the reviews they have received, their rating and ranking on Amazon, how they actually describe their books. Emulate.

3.  Study how other authors price their books and stay within that parameter.

On Amazon Kindle the "sweet spot" seems to be between $0.99 cents and $2.99. This is not the same for paperback, btw. Only for the e-books.

4. Use social media such as Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest

This is essential but it seems that it is not the tool for direct promotion only for creating connections and expanding your network.

5. Create a blog that helps you promote the book. 

Blogs seem to get universal praise in the book-writing industry. If you have an e-book and you don't have a blog that corresponds, that seems to be a red flag.

This website is helpful: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2009/06/29/how-to-build-a-high-traffic-blog-without-killing-yourself/

Do Free Giveaways of e-books (Free Downloads) Help Authors to Sell More of their Books?

Hello Everyone!

So I just finished Infidelity. It will be published on Thursday on Createspace, Amazon paperbacks and Kindle. Yeah! I am not going to start the next book till the weekend. The next book is Alimony but I am going to take a few days to rest my head and think with a different side of the brain for a little bit.

Right now I am making lunch and while that works itself out, I am researching how to market and sell e-books online. As you can see I have been doing a lot of writing but not exactly the same amount of selling. Giggle, giggle.  I am definitely not a good saleswoman, OK? I have no idea about sales. But I have been trying to learn about it.

A lot of people who have been successful in marketing and selling e-books on Kindle, advise free downloads and free giveaways - as a sales and marketing strategy -  for a limited period. What do you think about this? Have you done this yourself? Was it effective as a sales and marketing tool?

I am thinking of making Infidelity a free download for 24 hours on Thursday on Kindle. What do you think? I sort of think that when things are free people may not value it so much and it could possibly not work. But I think it would be fun to give it a try.

So I have decided. I have just decided right now. In real time.  Infidelity will be a free download for 24 hours on Thursday in the Kindle Store. Yeah! Get it while it's hot!

I hope you will read it and give it some good reviews. Help me make it an Amazon Bestseller.

See you later! Talk soon!

How to Market and Sell an E-book on Kindle - 12 Steps For Beginners

12 TIPS FOR BEGINNERS WHO WANT TO MAKET THEIR E-BOOK ON KINDLE

I have been writing like an absolute nut job this weekend. I am still working on the book Infidelity. I have tentatively completed the cover as I said in the previous post, and then it occurred to me, heck, how are you gonna sell all these e-books Missy? How are you going to turn all these books into Amazon bestsellers? What the heck are you doing slaving away like this? For what? Who is going to read this stuff? Where are your readers Missy?

And so I stopped and I thought, "OMG." And so, I put the manuscript aside and did some research, and I just deflated like a balloon because selling e-books sounds like hard work! It is way harder than writing up all this stuff!! My god! And sheesh, I write a lot of stuff from divorce books, to books about food, society, law, language,  you name it. I have a lot of topics, ideas and books. But it is not worth it if I am the only one reading. I must be out of my mind!

Well, if you are also writing up a storm, if you are a writer in the same boat, here is what I have learned so far about selling these e-books on Kindle or anywhere for that matter. Read with a grain of salt and see if there is anything on the list that you think will help you:

HERE ARE 12 TIPS THAT MIGHT HELP YOU

1. Participate in AMAZON KDP Select - always. Stand for Kindle Direct Publishing.  Research it if you don't know what that is. Start here.

2. Blog about your book (yeah! I am doing that instinctively. At least I get one out of 12!)

3. It's all about SEO - on Amazon, Google & Facebook ads - and this needs the right keywords so you have to research keywords in your niche and when you do your marketing you have to incorporate them into your materials including your blog. As you know my niche is basically divorce books.  But it is not all I write about. Still, I have to find the right keywords for that and god knows, I don't know where I am going to find time to do that along with everything else I am doing at the moment.

4. Apparently, you also have to join Ingram in addition to Amazon and Createspace (e-book distributor) and Bookhub. (I read that on Huffpost.)

5. Then, you have to get friends and family to review your book and give you lots of stars - if you can. My friends and family are just saturated with all my projects so I am not going to bother them but you should tap yours if you haven't reached saturation point.

6. Also, you have to constantly update your Author Central profile on Amazon. You are going to need a nice author photo which I don't seem to be able to upload because of the pixels, but...

7. Then, you need to price your book right some people say $0.99 and others say no less than $2.99 (who knows which is correct?).

8. You need to understand that e-books are not going to make you rich. If you sell 100 books, it is plenty. Do it for fun, not to make a lot of money.

9. Investigate alternatives to Amazon such as gumroads.com, woocommerce, shopify & paypal.

10. Help out other authors by offering to review their books in exchange for a review.

11. Look into this thing called e-junkie for self-publishers. (If you want to bypass amazon) and make friends with Paypal (I had a bad experience years back and I never looked back so I am not sure I could ever work with Paypal but you might be able to so go for it!)

12. Start an email marketing campaign so that you can connect directly with your readers who are in some cases your customers.

CONCLUSION

To tell you the god's honest truth, this is a lot for me to handle while I am trying to write 100 books. I don't see myself being able to do this without absolutely losing it once and for all. Am definitely gonna lose it, I think. But if you have the energy, focus and moxie and you are trying to market and sell your e-book online, these are some of the things I read you will have to do and it took what? 30 minutes of research? To get all these goodies. Bite in, darling!

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Read my new book about BULLYING which is available on kindle and in paperback

"How to Divorce Part 3" is available on Createspace.com. Now for the memoir and "infidelity."

So book 3 in the trilogy How to Divorce  is now available. It is on createspace.com. But it is also available on amazon.com and in the kindle store (this could take up to 24 hours because it just went live on create space. I will share the links when they are live.)

I am psyched. Now I can give my attention to the next book in the pipeline which is the Paris memoir: PARIS: My First 3 Months I am kinda finding that I am not huge into the memoir. It is bringing back memories I kinda don't want to think about.

I mean, everybody knows I dropped out of Phd school. I am a phd dropout. And the reason ultimately is that I decided that I needed the experience like I needed a hole in my head. But writing the memoir also reminds me of how I came to this decision. And the missteps and the naiveté and the outright sabotage that resulted in this decision to drop out.

Don't get me wrong. I have not had a day of regret. I don't think phds are for everybody and ultimately, if you can't find work when you are done, what the hell is the point of all that torture and torment? But still. I find this memoir a little bit difficult to process emotionally. So we shall see if I finish it or push it to the side as I tend to do with things I find unpalatable. You should know that I am the ultimate escape artist. I like to just escape - that is, tune out. Into my own world.

But, so, yea, book 3 is ready. And now I am working on the memoir. Right behind the memoir is another book called, Infidelity.

So my favorite chapter in How to Divorce Part 3 is "How to Have a Zen Divorce."

The chapter that scares me is "How to Hide Money From Your Spouse." I think I could get in trouble with that chapter. But let's see what happens. I tried to stress the disclaimer that I was not advising anybody to actually do it.