Is Selling Books on Amazon Worth it?

April 16, 2022

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In general it is extremely difficult to sell books and music as a new and upcoming author or musician. 1 in a million makes it with ease and a few more makes it with hard work and consistency.

Basically the there is only one way to go. Give people what they want (to pay for)!

This means if you write books or music no one want to buy, you are probably not going anywhere.

 

If you put music on Spotify or try to sell books on Amazon you need to bring your own customers. Nothing will sell itself. Except for that one in a million who strikes gold!

If you are a normal human being that isn’t persued by luck you only have hard work left to make it.

Amazon is a money machine. Mostly for Jeff Bezos of course. Putting your wonderful book on Amazon will not sell anything. You need a h*** of a lot of marketing to make it. Amazon will NOT put your book in front of anyone UNLESS you buy ads from them.

If you sell a book on Amazon for $10 Amazon will keep 8.0 for them selves. This means you have 1.5 dollar for each sale – but ONLY if you sell something. And you won’t sell without ads!

So you try to create ads and you soon find out if you do it as Amazon recommends you loose money like shit! Ads are simply too expensive and you are fckd! That is why Jeff B. is one of the richest people in the world.

There is a slow wasy though and it might work for some authors. On Facebook Bryan Cohen has a page where he runs The 5-Day Author Profit Challenge where you can learn to create ads on Amazon. 4 times a year he runs this challenge and it might help some. The essence is to lower your bid on clicks and create a ton of ads. It takes longer this way, but it works for a lot of people.

You can also check this out when creating ads.

 

Kindle Direct Publishing

Sign up for an Amazon KDP account here.

Amazon KDP setup – The MOST important things:

  • KDP Categories
  • Cover
  • The Blurb
  • Book Keywords

 

Amazon KDP Ads setup – The most important things

  • Bidding
  • The copy in the Ad (Ad blurb)

 

Amazon KDP Categories

It is very important (and difficult) to put your book in the correct categories. You can set TWO categories for your book on KDP. Amazon has a section about categories here.

Here is a category finder for KDP categories.

 

Your Book Cover.

If you get a lot of clicks on your ad but don’t sell any books you need to look at the cover and the text on your KDP sales page. In general great authors sell one book for every 3 ad click. But in the beginning it will take a lot more clicks.

Your cover really needs to be catchy and professional. Bad cover can ruin everything. On Facebook you can find groups where you can get feed back on your cover.

Indie Cover Project

Book Covers and Cover Artists

Does My Cover Suck

And there are probably more. Post your cover and listen to the feed back. Some times it can be cruel but be open!

 

The Blurb

It is extremely important to setup a sales pitch that works for you. You can use ChatGPT to help you write good text. First write your text as good as you can. Then go to ChatGPT and write something like this (You need to sign up for an account): Rewrite this text in an intriguing and exciting way: your text follows here.

Ot try something like this: Write a very convincing salestextest from this: your text follows here.

Maybe you can’t use everything the AI gives you and you probably need to adjust the text.

The very first header in your Blurb is the most important. It needs to be catchy! So doest the first line of the body text.

 

Keywords for KDP

Here is the KDP section on keywords. It is a good place to start. There are some rules you need to know. Test your keywords and see what kind of books comes up and keep on checking until your keywords are precise. Here is a great video on how to find keywords. And one more Dalelinks.com/7kindlekeywords

 

 

Amazon Ads Bidding

I will repeat what Bryan Cohen says:

39 cents for the first book in a series (you want people to read the FIRST book in a series first)

34 cents for standalones

15 cents for childrens, low content or short novellas.

 

Amazon Ads Blurb

You have 150 characters to create your Ad Text so you REALLY have to extract the essence from your book in a sales pitchy way. This is difficult and you need to create a lot of ads with a lot of different descriptions.

 

Getting help with your ebook setup.

Fiverr

 

 

Selling Music on the web

Spotify

Artist on music platforms are exploited like shit.  Stream revenue and book revenue is close to nothing. The platforms get millions. You get roughly 0.04 dollars pr. stream.

If you create something that is brand new and never seen before you wont get any support. YT, Spotify, and Amazon supports those they KNOW perform well and keep the rest of us in the dirt. It is extremely difficult but consistency is the key that has the best chances of getting somewhere.

 

Publisher Platforms

Amazon – Amazon is one of the largest online marketplaces where you can sell books. You can create a seller account and list your books for sale on their platform.

ArchwayPublishing.com

Kobo.com

Barnes and Noble

Apple iBook Store 

Goodreads

 

 

Larger Distribution Networks

These distributers are connected to a number of book stores so by publishing through them you reach a bigger number of book stores with less work.

BookBaby   

By David Holywood

Author of 10 books for men in relationships and 2 huge novels. Web designer and SEO expert since 1999. Hard Core user of Google Ads, Google Business Profile, AdSense, Analytics & Search Console. Expert in Speed & Load Optimization. Musician. Composer & Martial Artist. Psycho Therapist.

Running a few other blogs:
DenRigtigeMand.dk which is a book store and has a lot of resources for men in tough relationships.
AudioSchematics.dk which is an AdSense site.
BilligBlog.dk which is a web agency and some kind of a Danish version of PassionBlogist.com

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