Over $322,650 in Book Sales on Amazon

I was looking at my Amazon historical sales today and in lifetime commissions I just went over $100K to $101,743.87, I average about $10/book. So in retail sales, I have sold $322,650 dollars in books based on selling 34,605 books. Hard to believe. It looks like they are keeping records for me back to Jan 2011. The above and below charts are from 2011-2020.

Self-Publishing Questions and Answers April 3, 2020

In today's self-publishing Questions and Answer live broadcast, I answered all kinds of great questions on publishing, marketing, royalties. Check out the video below.



In today's live broadcast I cover lots of great questions
• How to publish or market my book?
• Where to go to publish your book?
• I write in lots of genres, what should do?
• Who pays the best royalties and has a good reputation?
• How to start?
• How to publish, what channels should I consider?
• I am writing a biography?
• How to publish, create the book, cover, making copies, sell it?
• Best self-publishing marketing strategies?
• Best marketing promotion tactics?
• How to book? Formatting and marketing?
• I'm 10 years old, can I publish a book?

Come over and join the How to Publish Your Book Facebook Group. Get your questions answered
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook

How to Create a Product from a Book, EASY PRODUCTS Live Training

How to create a product, EASY PRODUCTS Live Training. Today we start creating our first product that we can sell online. In this live training, I will show how I put a book together from an existing book. We are repurposing out content

Updates for How to Publish Your Book Trainings, Making Products, Gumroad, Easy Workbook

UPDATES: Latest news for training on creating a product and selling online, using Gumroad and we create a new workbook with Easy Workbook

Creating Your Author Website or Blog

Creating an Author Website for Your Book. One of the essential components for your book marketing is creating an author blog/website. Both will work, I like the blog better because you can continually add new content. Your website gives you and your book a home on the web. It gives you a central place to focus your marketing. In this video, I talk about what you should have on the site and some excellent examples of some author websites.

Want to know how to publish your own book? Check out my Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book. Click here to pick up a copy.

Excellent Guidelines for Marketing Your Book

I read two excellent blog post recently on Jane Friedman's blog, janefriedman.com, about how to market your book. Most geared to first-time authors who don't really have any platform to speak of.

The first is by Jane Friedman and the second by Beth Alvarado. Both articles on Jane's blog.

A Book Launch Plan for First-Time Authors Without an Online Presence. This article contains four basic concepts to follow for authors.

1. Market and promote your book to people who know you. This would be your platform, your email list, FB followers, friends, family, customers.

2. Encourage your fans and readers to share your book with people in their network

3. Connect with influencers. Russell Brunson calls this your Dream 100.

4. Market to people who don't know you yet. A Facebook group on your topic is an excellent way to do this. Along with YouTube, social media and blogging.

The second article is 9 Ways (and 2 Rewards) of Marketing Your Own Book, by Beth Alvarado.

In this article, the author takes some of the lessons she learned from publishing some books with some pretty small publishers and apply them to her own marketing. She applies these lessons to the steps outlined by Jane Friedman in the first article.

Lessons such as building a list of book reviewers and then sending your book to them (influencers). Maybe look for influencers in your market that might not always deal with books. Getting your book nominated for prizes. Maybe advertise your book-you can do fairly inexpensive advertising on Amazon. Network with other writers. Conduct a book launch. Pushing your book out to the world in anyway you can.

We all have to market our books. Pretty much no one else is going to do it. Both of these articles are pretty good guides.

Need help getting started with your book?
Download a free Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist, Takes you through the entire process, step-by-step, Click Here

Self-Publish or Traditional Publishing?

Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing?

• What Do I Do? Self-Publish or Traditional Publishing?
This is a big one and a question I am often asked. There are two main routes, traditional publishing or self-publishing.

To go the traditional publishing route, you will generally need an agent. Not always but often, and it is the agent that approaches the publisher. This can be a difficult, and long journey. Publishing is a business and they want books that come with an audience and will sell. I am not a fan of this route. If you have a big following, then it is possible, but for most of us, this route is very hard.  In traditional publishing, your publisher gains control over your rights and content. If you control your rights you control your content. I teach using your book’s content for marketing and selling. I also want you to create other products by re-purposing your content. This isn’t available to you if you give up your rights and go with a traditional publisher. The author retains ownership and control of their rights and content. One of the best decisions Amazon made. The copyright stays with the author.

I am a huge fan and supporter of self-publishing. Self-publishing before had a bad taste to it, but not anymore. If you want to publish a book; you can publish a book. It is being done all over the place with great success. The gatekeepers have fallen. We have Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Smashwords.com, IngramSpark.com and more. No one is going to say no to you publishing your book. It is all up to you. Self-publishing has become easier and easier to do and very often free. For self-publishers, the world is opening up.

The writers I know, who have gone the more the traditional route, have found success with smaller, more focused publishers. Publishers who know their market and can work with an author. For me, it comes down to control. Who controls the rights and uses to our content? I like being able to use my content in any way that I want.

Self-Publishing
• No one can say no. If you want to publish your book, you can publish.
• Faster to market. I have done books in one weekend.
• Control of your content, you keep your copyright, this is super important.
• You can re-purpose your content for marketing. Create other products such as workbooks and journals. Make podcasts and videos.
• Free to publish or close to it. You pay the costs to edit, design and format your book, free if you do it yourself.
• You will have to market your book yourself. But even with most publishers these days you will have to handle the marketing.
• Higher royalties, estimate $2.50-$3.50+ vs. $.70 for traditional publishing.

Traditional Publishing
• You will need an agent to approach a publisher.
• Lots of people can and will say no to publishing your book.
• It can take a year to create and release your book.
• You lose your copyright and your rights to control your content.
• You will not be able to re-purpose your content. The publisher owns your material. This is important in marketing your book. You want to be able to use your content how you want.
• A publisher will do the production work for your project. Don’t pay a publisher to publish your book.
• You will most likely still have to handle all the marketing yourself. This can be a challenge because your publisher now controls your content and may not like your ideas.

Excerpt from the new book Self-Publishing SECRETS, Create, Publish and Launch Your Book, by Bruce Jones.

Need help getting started with your book?
Download a free Self-Publishing SECRETS Checklist, Takes you through the entire process, step-by-step, Click Here