Guy on reddit claims to make $1k a day on amazon and never did any advertisement

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FOTSGreg

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Throwaway Writer, thank you for a (reasonably) courteous and fair response. As someone who was at first somewhat critical, but then went back and reread what you were saying elsewhere, allow me to state that the folks here at AW are, by and large, very inviting of new people. We're here to help, up to the point where they tell us they already know it all.

I don't see you doing that.

However, we're still skeptics. We're wary of "pie in the sky". We want to see the proof in the pudding. There are far, far too many schemes and scams out there for a lot of us to just take things on face value.

Then, there are those of us who are just plain old curmudgeonly cynics.

But, with all that said, most of us are here to try to help writers or get help trying to be writers. I know I want to be a better writer. That's why I'm here, mainly.

But there are also close comradeships and friendships and other relationships that have been developed here at AW. Dive in. The water's fine. You can even share your work down in the appropriate Share Your Work fora and have it reviewed and critiqued by peers without fear of theft or infringement.

Share your ideas with us and we'll share ours with you. You may find that a thousand other minds all working on the same problem can come up with some brilliantly unique solutions.

Anyway, welcome aboard. I hope we'll see more of you in the future.

Come by the Horror forum too. I bartend down there. Please pardon the zombies though. They tend to leave messes behind.
 

Dani

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Oh, SF, and I would sub cat it as space opera.

Huh. Is Planet Janitor the name of the story? Because tbh I thought - by the picture and the title - that it was a non-fiction book about the planet and how to clean it up. IE: an environmental book.
 

Dani

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No, it's definitely fiction. Planet Janitor Custodian of the Stars. It only has an environmental back-drop or theme, that ties in with the press release to environmental publications and agencies.

Tri

Sorry to say but I'd ditch that cover and that title and start with something fresh. If you're not getting bites at all on your novel, I'd attribute it to the cover and title before anything else.

It really does look like a non-fiction environmental book. Something Al Gore-ish.

It's just mho =), take it with a grain of salt.
 

zegota

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I'm pretty sure he started this strategy at the beginning for the year, not that he started writing at the beginning of the year.

It's a fair point that (if he's for real, which I still doubt) he's probably been writing for a while. However, in the Reddit topic (which has tons of hate for absolutewrite, always lovely), he states:

The point is, in March I made ZERO from self-published books. I had no contacts, no idea how to do this, no back-catalog of books, no stories sitting in the hopper

This, to me, indicates that he wrote the vast majority of his 80 "books" (which he defines as any discrete Kindle product regardless of length) between March and November. That's around 8-9 stories a month at minimum. And that's fine -- if you can keep that sort of pace and produce quality material (which is in the eye of the beholder -- throwaway himself says it's not exactly great literature), more power to you. But that's a vastly different image than one of an author who has been working in the industry for years and years. That's all I'm saying.
 

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Okay, in time for the new month, I have all my Kindle books linked as per this guy's plan. We'll see if that makes a difference between this month's sales and next month's. (Assuming that the Kindle-Under-The-Christmas-Tree effect doesn't blow up any calculations.)

The results are in for the first month: My Kindle e-books sales in December are 25% lower than in November....
 

hughhowey

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The results are in for the first month: My Kindle e-books sales in December are 25% lower than in November....

I really admire you all being brave enough to experiment like this. I'm terrified of changing ANYTHING with my KDP books for fear of screwing up sales. Thanks for taking the plunge so we can see if this guy's ideas work in general or just for him.
 

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I'm going to let it run for a quarter to see if anything changes. Maybe the Amazon Lending thing screwed everything up. If things don't improve, then back to the old plan.

I'm able to experiment because, for me, e-pubbing the backlist is like looking under the sofa cushions for spare change.
 

MysteryRiter

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The results are in for the first month: My Kindle e-books sales in December are 25% lower than in November....

Well, since sales should have increased for the holiday season, especially the day after Christmas when everyone figured out how their e-readers worked, I think it's safe to say that these techniques work only for this guy IF what he said was legit.
Thanks for sharing the info.
 

James D. Macdonald

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Well, since sales should have increased for the holiday season, especially the day after Christmas when everyone figured out how their e-readers worked, I think it's safe to say that these techniques work only for this guy IF what he said was legit.
Thanks for sharing the info.

Not enough data yet to say that. I'd be very interested in hearing from others who've tried.
 

merrihiatt

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I've added links in my e-books, but not to only one book, so can't speak to how well that would work. I appreciate James writing about his results. I had fewer sales through Amazon in December. I think the new Amazon KDP Select program did make an impact on sales.
 

FOTSGreg

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I'm fairly certain of that as well, Uncle Jim and merrihiatt. I had a single sale of Hatchings BEFORE I put it into KDP Select and not one, not even a "borrow", reported since.

I'd love to hear from anyone whose book is being borrowed what their numbers are looking like.

Right now, this is looking like a colossal Fail for me.

(Hatchings isn't a great book, but it's not that bad)

It's interesting to note that there are now 3 of us seeing decreased sales in December. I wonder if Amazon shot themselves in the foot with this one?
 
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merrihiatt

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I had four or six borrows in December. I can't remember which. It was a very small amount. January sales have been good so far with twenty sales in two days.
 

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With regard to the OP. I can't see why this bloke would be lying. There seems to be no gain from it if he's staying anonymous.

If it's the truth, then good luck to him. I just hope if he's peddling crap that we don't all get tarred with the same brush by his disappointed customers.
 

Turndog-Millionaire

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The very idea of writing 80 books and putting them on amazon makes my head hurt. It's taken me 6 years (ok, on and off) to get to a point of nearly finishing one. I feel like such a slow coach now :( haha

Matt (Turndog Millionaire)
 

J. Tanner

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If it's the truth, then good luck to him. I just hope if he's peddling crap that we don't all get tarred with the same brush by his disappointed customers.

Discussed before, but it's safe to assume that's not the case as disappointed readers wouldn't keep coming back for more and his description indicates they are.
 

MichaelZWilliamson

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Every self-pubbed author I've met earns more than I do, apparently, and my current accounting puts me in the upper 25% income wise, upper 5% or better among freelance writers.

I'm apparently losing millions.
 

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Every self-pubbed author I've met earns more than I do, apparently, and my current accounting puts me in the upper 25% income wise, upper 5% or better among freelance writers.

I'm apparently losing millions.

Michael, my sweet. You sound a lot like you're sneering at self-published writers here, and it isn't going to go down at all well with me if it carries on. AW's One Rule of "respect your fellow writer" doesn't include the caveat of "except for the self-published ones"; it includes all writers, at every stage of the journey. You'd do well to remember that.

Moving onto your comment: being in the upper 25% as far as writing income goes is not very impressive. The Society of Authors and the ALCS studied how much writers earn (in 2000 and 2005 if I remember rightly--I've written about this on my blog if you'd like to have a look) and for most of us, it's bugger-all. If you were in the top one or two per cent you might be earning a half-way decent living from writing: but a writer in the UK who was just in the "upper 25%" would probably be earning below the average wage.

Now, let's get back on-topic, please, everyone.
 

Twizzle

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I'd love to hear from anyone whose book is being borrowed what their numbers are looking like.

Right now, this is looking like a colossal Fail for me.

(Hatchings isn't a great book, but it's not that bad)

It's interesting to note that there are now 3 of us seeing decreased sales in December. I wonder if Amazon shot themselves in the foot with this one?


Well, my overall sales increased in Dec from Nov, by a third, and I had an very sig increase from Nov to Oct. That extra third seemed to happen the first week of Dec and right around the holiday weekend. Big lag mid-month there...got a little worried for a min.

(I link to all books and my site-always have-in all my books, btw. No clue if it works, but I always do it. What's been more concretely successful? I bought el cheapo business cards for my site and I write the coupon code for a free book on the back and hand them out like candy. I leave them everywhere I can, and I have my husband and teenage son do it too. Turns out my son uses it as a way to break ice w those girls...sigh...anyway. Now that has worked, freebies. But that's all I've done to market. Sorry. And I do use psuedos exclusively. Six. Based less on genre than brand. Because privacy is priceless.)

Jan seems to be down a bit, more what I was pulling in Oct. Still very okay, but not as good as the holidays.

The catch? Several of my adult books are holiday-themed...and all my royalties go to children's charities...so.

Anyway, I put one children's book w select, just cause it's new and children's and you know how that goes. I ran 4 of my 5 free over the holiday.

The free went great.

Sales are negligible as well as borrows. I'm not surprised.

What did happen is I'd raised the price of another children's book in Nov as it doesn't sell as well as my others and figured I might as well to make more $ on less sales...and those sales shot through the roof during the other book's free period. They're still strong into Jan, w the higher price, while the once-free one is eh.

Go figure.

So, ime so far, free works. But the borrow and exclusivity is a fail for me. I won't be adding any others (or continuing once my time is up) unless terms change.
:Shrug:
 
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Saul Tanpepper

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...This, to me, indicates that he wrote the vast majority of his 80 "books" (which he defines as any discrete Kindle product regardless of length) between March and November. That's around 8-9 stories a month at minimum. And that's fine -- if you can keep that sort of pace and produce quality material (which is in the eye of the beholder -- throwaway himself says it's not exactly great literature), more power to you. But that's a vastly different image than one of an author who has been working in the industry for years and years. That's all I'm saying.

Agree. At that sort of output, it's difficult to believe we're talking about anything but short, formulaic works, which is fine for some people. Quality is another issue. That's a lot of material to have copy-edited, formatted and designed, and published. I haven't looked at his titles, so not making any judgments about any of this, but it does seem incedible.

I had four or six borrows in December. I can't remember which. It was a very small amount. January sales have been good so far with twenty sales in two days.


I'm just getting started, so I don't have much data to add. All my books are enrolled, though I'm seriously considering taking some out of Select at the end of their 3 months. In January I had only a couple borrows of my higher-priced books, which I would've thought would top my list. Interestingly, the most borrows/title (in the midteens) came from a title that had garnered a couple poor reviews and one good review. I don't know if this spurred interest in the title or not; I'm not complaining. February borrows are way down, suggesting a lot of my borrows were probably from free trials of Amazon Prime. Sales are about the same at this point compared to last month, but the numbers are probably too low to be meaningful.

I have a feeling a ton of free books were downloaded in Dec/Jan and readers are saturated and/or becoming more careful about what they're filling up their Kindles with now. My free promos this month seem to be garnering less attention. Today's free title, for example, had three times as many d/ls by noon of its free day last month. Lots of variables at play, of course, but this seems to be a general trend of all my promos this month.
 
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merrihiatt

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I had around 90 borrows in February, mostly of my latest romance e-book (the first in a new trilogy).

I don't think being able to write quickly negates quality. My writing wouldn't be any better if it took me longer. It's a bit like typing. I type fast. Really fast. When I slow down, I don't type more accurately, I just type slower.
 

James D. Macdonald

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After three months of trying this plan, I can state that it doesn't work for me. Sales are a quarter what they were in November before I started it. I'm going back to my original linking-and-promotion deal.
 
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