Lesson I: Making Money – How It Works
This lesson is an overview of the business side of self-publishing. It is about making money, not writing or being creative. We love those things, but this is about how the sausage is made. And it doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to get the bills paid.
We love the creative process. We are not cold-hearted business people. In fact, we are exactly the opposite. We are writers who have worked hard to find a way to make a living doing what we love. Writing should be fun. But we want to do it all the time, which means it must also be profitable.
Viewing #1: Watch the short video below to learn how the different factors turn into real money when you get them working together.
As we can see from the video, these factors all work together to either spin your career into the stratosphere, or cause you to toil in obscurity, wondering why no one reads your books. We wish it wasn’t like this. We wish people who wrote good books just made money. But it isn’t that way, and to be honest, it never has been.
Writing In A Series
If you write one book, and make $2 for each book that sells, things are very simple. Unfortunately, they aren’t very profitable. No one is making any money from a single book as a self published author. Here are some reasons why:
If you write in a series, you can spend a lot more money per click to promote your first book because some of the readers who buy that first book will buy more books in the series. And those are purchases you don’t have to pay for with more advertising. So an author with a nine book series can spend $1 a click and still make a profit, while an author with a single book would lose money at that price.
This drives up the price of advertising on Amazon, and makes it very tough to compete if you only have one book. If your bids are low, you won’t get many clicks and your advertising budget won’t be efficient.
Reading #1: Read Chris’s article Why Do I Need to Write a Series?
Publishing Consistently
When you publish a new book on Amazon, you get a boost in the search results for that book for thirty days. This Amazon’s test period to see how well your book converts views into purchases. This boost exposes your new book to a bunch of new potential readers for free. And if you can convert those readers, they will often go read some of your other books if you have other books to offer.
This means that every time you publish a book, your whole back catalog gets a nice boost for a month. So you are building a bigger catalog, and also increasing the number of people who are exposed to that catalog, every time you publish a new book. Publishing more books leads to making more money. And as that back catalog grows, your advertising becomes more efficient too.
Reading #2: Read Adam’s article Series and Speed.
Converting Views Into Sales
It doesn’t do anything for you if lots of people see your books but no one buys them. Your advertising money will be wasted, Amazon will stop sending you potential buyers, and you will rarely if ever get any sales if your book’s Amazon page, including the cover and description, does not convert well. Don’t underestimate how important conversion rate is to your book’s success.
Advertising And Promotions
Even with all the other factors lined up perfectly, a great book with great reviews that converts well and a consistent publishing schedule, you will likely need to spend some time and money on advertising and promotions. Whether that is social media, buying Amazon and Facebook ads, making Tiktok videos, or attending live events, getting some more eyes on your book will be a big help.
A lot of authors just want to write. In fact, that is true of most of us. But we have to make money or we can’t write full time, so you’ll have to figure out how to promote your book if you want to be an independent author. Luckily we have a course on that too.
Reading #3: Read the essential skills article Advertising Basics.
Building An Email List
Building an email list is the best way to increase your sales numbers. With every new book, your email list can grow, and you get a nice boost in sales from the email you send about the new book, which may get you on to an Amazon Bestseller list, which increases your sales even more. Your email list is also full of people who are much more likely to buy your book if they visit the link, which increases your conversion rate and causes Amazon to show your book to more people.
We have a course on building and hosting an email list as well. You may be surprised at how simple and effective it is. There are solid free options and for $20 a month you can maintain a list of thousands of people and send them very professional looking emails.
Reading #4: Read the essential skills article Email Lists.