Dear future best selling author,
I'm going to put myself in the line of fire today...
There's a lot of information available today on how to publish books for the Kindle and for Amazon's Createspace platform.
Some of that information is pretty darn good, but much of even the good training is flawed.
You see, many courses show you how to research, write, format, upload, and market books that are little more than repackaged content that's available elsewhere for free.
Sure, those books you put together using those methods will sell, but at what price? And how many?
You've heard the saying "you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.", right?
Do you really want to fool anyone?
Especially Amazon, the largest bookseller in the world... the company that sends you a check every month for what you've written, or plan to write? Remember they can change their minds at any time and decide they would really rather have quality material instead of compilations.
They could shut you down overnight if they want to.
In fact they did that last year when they shut down all the duplicate books they found that were just based on private label rights products, something others were teaching at the time.
People making good money on autopilot suddenly weren't making anything at all.
Most of the courses today show you how to find a niche, compile a book, (maybe) format it, upload it, and move on.
They tell you that you can make from $20 to $100 a month, sometimes more (often less, but they don't tell you that), per book, and you can do one every week if you really work at it. Maybe a few a week if you're ambitious.
Good grief, is that what you want to do the rest of your life?
This all reminds me of when people built Adsense sites in bulk, hoping to make a dollar or two a day from each one.
Where are those sites today? What happened to the income? It was nice for a while, right, but those people lived in fear of an overnight meltdown, and it happened.
Sure, some of those compilations that are done creatively and well will survive and continue to make money, but I don't have the energy to find and create 100's of them.
Do you?
So let's do some math, shall we? How many books would you need to create, if they each averaged $20 per month income, to make $1,000/month, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000?
Answer: 50. 100. 250. 500.
And that's if they really do earn $20/month each, and continue to earn $20/month for the long term.
I'll go out on a limb now and tell you flat out... that ain't gonna happen for the long term.
More and more Kindle publishers are coming on board, they're bringing their own compiled books to Amazon, and just like the guys that figured out how to "game Google" to get page 1 rankings, their books are being targeted, dissected, chased, and eventually replaced.
Even if...
... even if Amazon doesn't shut those books and those acccounts down sooner rather than later, eventually there will be a newer compilation on the same topic to replace the other ones on the ranking charts, and you know what's gonna happen to the income, right?
Down the drain.
What's the alternative?
So what's the alternative? Write 1000 books instead of 500? Keep chasing, keep building, keep outsourcing, keep working?
Me, I'd rather have one or two good books, maybe as many as 10 over the course of a few years, that are real quality, real best sellers, real good earners, really virtually guaranteed to stay on Amazon for the long term without fear of shutdown.
The cream rises to the top, and tends to stay there.
You want your books to be the cream of the crop.
And that's what I'm going to teach you over the coming weeks and months.
The Kindle Case Study
Years ago I put together a book on a topic near and and dear to my heart. Actually I had it ghostwritten for me, looked at it, and then put it away, not knowing what to do with it (at the time, I don't even think the Kindle device existed).
Months later, I had a colleague look at it, and he suggested that, though it was good writing, it needed to be punched up, to make it more interesting. So I had him do that.
And then, still not knowing what to do with it, I put it aside again.
Over the months and years (yes, years!), I kept thinking about that book and that topic, and knew that one day I'd finish it.
Now I have, almost. The book is days away from completion as I write this (the writing is finished, it just has to have final proofreading and formatting done).
So, I was thinking, what better way to put all I've learned from all those Kindle courses...
... plus all I've learned from publishing other books on Createspace and Kindle in the past, and observing my business partner, Rachel Rofe's, efforts, mistakes, and successes.
Why not give myself the ultimate challenge? A challenge to put myself in front of hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and attempt to show how to take a yet to be proven book, and turn it into an Amazon best seller?
Am I confident? Yes, I am.
Am I scared? Yes, I am.
I've watched my business partner, Rachel Rofe, make mistakes and still have a book that brings in over $2,000 a month in income. What could happen if I don't repeat those mistakes, or am nimble enough to fix the ones that I'll inevitably make?
During the case study, there will be regular updates sent to all followers by email, and posted for everyone to see on the blog.
You'll also see me experiment with the techniques that the other courses are teaching. I can't tell you what they teach because that would violate their copyrights, but you'll see me put into practice what I've learned, after I've learned their techniques, and separated the good from the bad, the white hat from the black hat.
I'm not going to teach anything "black hat" by the way, I don't want to risk my valuable Amazon account, and especially not yours.
You'll see what goes wrong, and how to correct it.
You'll see what goes right, and how to repeat it.
Like Reality TV
I have no idea how this will turn out, this is actually reality television on the 'net, isn't it?
In order to make sure that these lessons are appreciated, I'm going to charge an entrance fee. Actually it wouldn't be fair to give this information away for free, it would end up becoming unappreciated and less valuable.
So my question was, how much should I charge?
One of my mentors, when I told him what I was going to do, suggested a very reasonable $97.
I considered that, and said no, I want this to be affordable to a larger number of people because I really want to see more quality books put onto Amazon (I like to read also), rather than endless streams of compiled garbage.
Besides, I intend to eventually turn this, if it succeeds, into a book, and sell it later. So I didn't want to disappoint anyone who would pay a much higher price and find it on the Kindle marketplace for $9.99 or $14.95 later.
He reminded me though, that live followers will have a huge advantage. They'll learn the techniques many months before the final book gets published on Amazon, and if they start making $2,000/month or more 6 months early, that's worth something, right?
And followers are going to be getting some special bonuses as well, which I'll talk about later.
The Bottom Line
While I've been thinking about this project, one guiding thought has been going through my mind. Amazon wants quality books more than they want quantities of books.
They'd rather have you write one good book that sells 1000 copies in a month, than a bunch of garbage books that will sell 2 copies a month each.
You could conceivably pump out those 200 crappy compilations and make an average of $20 a month each, and earn $4000 from them.
Maybe. For a while.
I'd rather write one book, sell 300 or 500 or 1000 copies a month, and make $2000 to $5000 or more from it.
It would take me a lot longer to write 200 books, after all, in the long run.
And my one book will be something I'll be proud to tell my spouse, my children, my friends about. It will be part of my legacy after I'm gone.
So that's what I'm going to do, and that's what I'm going to teach.
Join in the fun, and watch a best seller go from a dream to reality (gulp, I hope)...
So what if I fail?
Well, I really doubt that I'll fail, but at the very least, you'll learn from my mistakes, and you'll at least be entertained. :-)
But to make sure you get more than your money's worth, regardless of my success or unlikely failure, I'm going to give you something that the other courses don't:
Kindle publishing is red-hot right now, and smart authors are making sure their books are available in physical book form by using Amazon's print on demand service CreateSpace. It requires little technical skill to navigate either the Kindle or the CreateSpace publishing interface. It’s as easy as filling in the blanks and uploading your files.
Unfortunately, preparing those files for publishing is NOT so easy. As a result, many authors’ books are being rejected by Amazon, and/or receiving brutal reviews by readers. Kindle formatting is tricky, and getting a CreateSpace book formatted to look like a REAL book instead of a self-published one is a mystery.
And most of the courses on the current market don't bother to tell you how to do the formatting properly. This can lead to frustration, delays, huge losses in revenue, bad reviews (more lost revenue), and other problems which I'll explain during the case study.
With the Self-Publishing Tool Box you'll find out how to format your book for both publishing platforms with ease.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
(Kindle)
• Which formatting you can use and which to leave out.
• How to create a hyperlinked Table of Contents
• How to insert working hyperlinks into your ebook
• How to convert your Word doc to MOBI files using Calibre
• Step-by-step walk-through of Kindle publishing platform
(CreateSpace)
• How to set up your book's interior template for any trim size
• Which pages you should always add, and the order in which they should be added
• How to create a Table of Contents
• 9 "best practice" things to do to ensure that your book has that professional polish
• How to create running headers (this one is tricky, until you know how!)
• How to convert your Word doc to PDF with the correct settings for print
• Step-by-step walk-through of CreateSpace publishing platform
NOTE: This tool box was created with a suggested price of $27 all by itself, so by joining the case study follow along, you're going to be "money ahead" already.
ALSO: There may be other surprise bonuses that I can make available to you as the case study progresses, among those will be a free copy of the book that I'm publishing. I think you might like it. :-)
Now's Your Chance
So here's what you need to do if you want to join the fun and get started profiting from self publishing:
1. Click on the big button below, after deciding if you want to sign up by PayPal or credit card.
2. Submit your payment details.
3. Instantly after your payment completes, look for an email in your inbox of the email address you used, which will be the welcome letter. It will give you the location of the blog, and the password you need to log in with.
4. If the case study is already in progress, you'll want to quickly catch up on the earlier progress, and then watch the blog and your inbox for updates (they won't necessarily come every day, and some days there might be multiple updates).
So click below and watch this all unfold.
Note: The case study will begin approximately February 10th, though there may be some preliminary posting made to the blog before that to get you ready to go.
At this point I don't know how long the case study will go on, it will last as long as it takes to make my book into an Amazon best seller, or to at least give it my best shot (I won't give up easily, I promise that).
Just to be clear, no matter how long this takes, your one payment below is all we'll ask. There is no monthly fee, no upsells, nothing other than the price below.
GUARANTEE? You might know me, or maybe not. I nearly always guarantee everything, but this time, I can't. I already explained to you that there is a possibility of failure, but also that you're getting to see what works and what doesn't work as it unfolds. We'll be exposing followres to the best ideas around, including some that you might not be able to find elsewhere. Once you get access inside the protected area of the blog, I can't erase what's there from your mind. Therefore, no refund will be available. If that's a problem and you can't afford to risk this small investment, I wish you well finding another course somewhere else that won't waste your valuable time.
Dennis Becker
P.S. I did talk about the possibility of my failure above, but really, the odds of that happening, considering the awesome potential of the Amazon publishing programs, is remote. I know I have a solid book, solid training, and no matter how long this takes, I will definitely succeed. (Gulp. I hope.). So sign up now before it's too late.
