It can be very demoralizing to have taken the trouble to write an eBook with the hope of making money only to record little or no sales after weeks of publishing.
There is no problem with your writing, you know you are a wonderful writer yet it is difficult for you to make money online with kindle eBooks. Be informed that there is a business side to every internet marketing venture which has to be learnt.
To begin, you need to understand how the kindle market works. A kindle is a portable electronic reader and individuals use it by simply going through the book selections to view the various offerings before they buy. It is a simple process that does not require the use of a computer. This is the reason it is used by a very high number of people all over the world.
- How Can I Get Started With Amazon Kindle?
- What Are eBooks?
- Can we Earn Money From Kindle?
- How do I Monetize my eBook?
- Are eBooks a Good Way to Make Money?
- How Much Money Can You Make on Kindle Direct Publishing?
- How Much Money Can You Make Selling eBooks on Amazon?
- How do Amazon eBooks Make Money?
- How Many Pages Should an eBook Have?
- How Can I Sell my eBook Legally?
- How do Free eBooks Make Money Online?
- How Much Money Can You Make From Writing an eBook?
- Where Can I Publish my eBook?
- Can I Make Money Self Publishing on Amazon?
- How Much Did JK Rowling Make Per Book?
- How to Earn More as a Self-Published Author on Amazon
How Can I Get Started With Amazon Kindle?
Amazon has also made it easier to succeed because you get to ride on its established kindle system, website and traffic as a writer. Below are some factors to guide you.
Research
It is advisable to research before you sit down to write. People love good and relevant content and an eBook that gives them just that will not be ignored. Get started by going through the bestselling books on kindle, checking the lengths and the prices.
Read Also: How To Earn Money Online With Amazon Music Reviews
You can also visit forums and blogs to find out the latest information. You also need to research on how other people have made money online with kindle eBooks so that you can follow the steps that they took.
Formatting
Formatting must be done following kindle’s guidelines. The table of contents is essential because it shows what the book is all about. This is the reason the pages should be clear and easily read. The cover graphics should be attractive but simple.
Promotion
You can make money online with kindle eBooks if you learn the art of promoting your books on Amazon. A book can be on the system for several weeks and people will not know of it. This is particularly true if there are well-known authors on the same niche.
The good news is that Amazon has an author page and blog features that can now be used for knowing readers and receiving feedbacks. However, the author is responsible for setting up the promotion. Amazon free kindle promotions can be used for a select period of time.
Reviews
As much as reviews are important for generating sales, it is not advisable to buy them. Amazon wants to maintain its credibility and as a result has a way of filtering out professional reviewers. You can write press releases on the product and do a little article marketing in order to make some sales. You can be sure that genuine reviews will follow.
Apart from the great sense of accomplishment you will feel, a well written eBook with fantastic contents can be a continuous stream of income for you. The process is simple to achieve as long as you believe in yourself.
What Are eBooks?
Ebooks are, well, books. But in a format where they can be delivered or downloaded online. You can write them yourself, employ writers, use public domain content, and create your ebooks from many sources. And just about any subject can be covered — just as many, if not more, than what a traditional publisher might release because you can tailor your tomes to niche markets.
Travel guides, how-to manuals, mystery, romance, science fiction, self-help, technology, religions… just about any subject is fair game as long as there is a market of ready buyers. (One of the best ways to check for is to scan the bestseller lists on Amazon. And not just the overall list but also the ones for categories and subcategories.)
Also, you won’t have to rely on an editor or publisher telling you whether a book will be published. And you won’t have to rely on a bookstore to put your book on its shelves. You’re in complete control of the entire process.
In fact, you’re going to handle everything yourself, including marketing and selling. And that means you get to keep all the profits. They’re nothing to sneeze at.
Self-published authors have had big success in recent years. Take Hugh Howey, who sold a series of science fiction books through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. At one point, he was selling 20,000 — 30,000 copies a month, which generated $150,000 in income monthly.
Amanda Hocking, who writes “paranormal romance” and fantasy novels, has sold well more than a million books on Amazon, generating over $2 million in sales. That’s proof that you can make money self-publishing on Amazon.
Keep in mind that while Amazon.com is the most common way most people think of selling ebooks online, you can also sell your ebooks directly from your own website as well.
Can we Earn Money From Kindle?
You can make money with Amazon Kindle in two ways on your own and two ways through affiliates. Firstly you can publish your own e-books on Amazon Kindle at http://www.kdp.amazon.com . Secondly, you can turn your blog into Kindle e-book and publish it on Amazon Kindle at Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing .
If you do either of these two things, you can earn up to 70% royalty from e-book sales. In addition to this you can also earn money through affiliates for this. If you have a blog related to niche where you are publishing your e-books, you can promote your book on that. Everytime someone buys your book through your affiliate link, you will earn a percentage of commission.
How do I Monetize my eBook?
You’ve probably heard people say, “You can’t make money giving away your books for free!” But that’s just not true.
Here are 10 ways you can increase your income by giving away your books for free:
1. Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime Borrows
If your eBook is enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Select program, Amazon Prime members and Kindle Unlimited members can read your book for free. But even though the customer doesn’t pay, Amazon will pay you based on how many pages of your book they read!
Most authors earn around $1-$2 every time a customer reads their book this way, and that can mean big money if your eBook becomes popular on Amazon.
2. Lead Generation
When you give away your book for free, you’re turning random people into prospects who know you, like you, and trust you. You can then convert those readers into lifelong fans, email subscribers, and paying customers.
Most businesses are willing to pay a fortune to generate leads, but you can do it for free by simply giving away your book!
3. Free Marketing and Exposure
Once you have a book published and available online, there are thousands of websites that will promote your free book.
It’s also a lot easier to get bloggers, influencers, and customers to talk about and share your book if it’s free.
4. Building Your Email List and Social Followers
Inside your book, you can ask readers to sign up for your email list and follow you on social media.
If you get 10,000 people to download your book for free, that could lead to at least 1,000 new email subscribers and fans.
5. Sell Products or Services
If someone has invested the time to read your entire book, they’ll likely want to learn even more from you. The back of your book is the perfect place to let readers know about any other books, products, or services you sell.
Many nonfiction authors earn more money from selling products and services to readers than they do from royalties.
6. Promote Affiliate Products or Offers
If you don’t have your own products or services to sell, you can sign up as an affiliate and get paid when your fans buy other products or services.
You can add affiliate links directly inside your book, or create a downloadable PDF or list of resources on your site that readers can use to find great products you recommend.
7. Get Tons of Book Reviews
With a free book, you can get more readers faster. That can lead to you getting lots of book reviews.
That’s why many authors make their books free for a limited time. After they get some great exposure and book reviews, they change the price of the book and benefit from all the great word-of-mouth and social proof.
8. Get Amazon to Promote Your Book
Amazon promotes popular books to readers, so if your free book is getting downloaded and read more than the average book in your market, you’ll get tons of extra promotion and downloads from Amazon at no extra cost.
9. Quick and Easy Search Engine Rankings
Getting your website to rank #1 in Google for a competitive keyword is tough, but it’s ridiculously easy for Amazon to get ranked #1 in Google.
You can get your book’s page on Amazon ranked very highly in Google, even for really competitive search terms, if you have a book that readers love.
10. Attract Lifelong Fans
Long-term success in business requires long-term relationships.
By offering your book free, you’ll attract more readers, and if what you have to say makes an impact, many of those readers will turn into lifelong fans.
Those fans could support you through future book sales, buying other products and services, supporting you on Patreon, and many other ways. Never underestimate the power of lifelong fans!
11. Patreon
Today, fans pay millions of dollars to authors, artists, and creative people through platforms like Patreon. By getting your message out there, you can attract fans and ask them to support you on Patreon.
Are eBooks a Good Way to Make Money?
Everyone knows that a free ebook is one of the best lead magnet strategies for businesses of any size. But did you know there’s a whole other ebook world where you can actually make money?
Look at the data visualization below and how ebook sales have exploded in the past few years, and yes, the growth is still happening exponentially.
Even though free ebooks offer value to the subscriber exchanging their email for the download, paid-for ebooks must deliver a wealth of valuable information plus actionable advice for the reader.
Are you an expert at something with lots to share? Or are you a great storyteller? Either way, you can make money selling ebooks. All you need is — well — ebooks, and a good dose of productivity, effort and passion.
Passive income is one of the most sought-after sources of income today. It means you’re able to generate income with minimal labor involved. In other words, work less and earn more. Who doesn’t want that, right?
Well, ebooks are a great addition to any passive income strategy. Why? Because once you create an ebook, market it and share it, it can technically sell itself.
Now, it takes a decent amount of effort to write valuable content. Not to mention, building a strong brand that will carry your ebook to success is not an overnight task.
But when you do set everything up correctly, ebooks can help you make money for a long time. In fact, the more evergreen your content is, and the more you keep promoting and updating it, the longer the life of your ebook.
Need more convincing? Here are some reasons why ebooks are great for passive income:
They’re relatively easy digital products to make.
Even though an ebook will take work to put together and publish, it’s still a much easier digital product to create than a multi-lesson online course. You might even have most of the content in your blog post articles that can together create the foundation for an ebook.
Templates also make ebook creation a lot easier than starting from scratch. Visme, for example, offers pre-designed multipage templates in lots of different designs and for a variety of industries.
Believe it or not, once you have the content, putting the ebook together is pretty straightforward. If you’re working with a team inside your company, then it’s even easier. Using collaboration tools makes ebook building an accessible and inspiring activity.
Plus, even if it takes you a while to create your first ebook, it will be much easier to make more. Why? Because you’ll learn from the failures and successes of your last ebook (or ebooks) and make sure your future works are best-sellers.
They make for great lead magnets.
Collecting leads for your business is a vital step in the marketing funnel. Ebooks are great lead magnets because you are offering value as you get the person’s email. Many people create free ebooks in exchange for a sign-up, so your paid ebook must provide more value than a free one.
The best ebooks, specifically the ones that are most suited for passive income, are the ones that offer evergreen content. A good example of evergreen content is a topic that won’t change or evolve too fast after you’ve written it.
They help with link building.
Ebook creation and promotion generally need a landing page on your website as the lead generation starting point. Add the landing page URL to relevant blog posts and other content on your site.
Likewise, other people can add your link to their content, and you can share the landing page directly on social media.
How Much Money Can You Make on Kindle Direct Publishing?
On average you can make $1.90 per sale from Amazon KDP selling a 120-page paperback book with black and white interiors. Based on that, you can make $1,140 / month from your top 20 books each selling one copy per day.
Out of 86 KDP authors, 79% said that they are making less than $100 / month from amazon kdp. On the other hand, KDP authors making over $100 / month are 6% while 15% are making more than $500 / month.
| Total Participants | Making Less Than $100 | Making Over $100 | Making Over $500 |
| 86 | 68 (79%) | 5 (6%) | 13 (15%) |
This small pole can give you an idea of how much you can earn from publishing low and no content books on amazon kdp. Only 10-15% of present kdp authors are making $1000 or more with kdp low content and no content books.
How Much Money Can You Make Selling eBooks on Amazon?
You’ll probably want to price your book between $2.99 and $9.99. In that range, for sales in most countries, Amazon pays a royalty of 70%. Otherwise, you get 35%. At a price of $16.00, for example, you’ll make $5.60 (35%), but if you price you book at $9.99 you’ll be paid $6.99 per sale (70%).
The best price point for small books is often right at $2.99, where you get a royalty of $2.09 per sale — which isn’t bad considering that for each $19.95 sale of a print book on weird ways to make money, a publisher can pay you just $1.50 (and that’s normal).
How do Amazon eBooks Make Money?
Here is the step-by-step process you can use to start selling eBooks online with Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon:
1. Get a KDP account
It’s completely free to sign up and this is where you will publish books.
Just go to this page here to get started.
2. Find a good niche you could rank in
Find a niche (preferably nonfiction) that goes after people who have a specific need that they really need to fill.
To find a good niche, go to book categories and then click on some subcategories on the Amazon website.
If a book is under 100,000 on the Amazon Best Sellers Rank, the book is probably creating good income. Look at the first and second page of search results.
If most books are under 100,000 on the Amazon Best Sellers Rank, it’s a niche that’s selling. Also, niches with 50,000+ search results have a good market demand and probably high competition.
You might aim for 5,000 results or so instead and try to be the top ranked book.
To help with your keyword research, we recommend tools like Keywordtool.io (which has an Amazon-specific tool) and Google Trends (for finding rising keywords and topics).
3. Meet 3 requirements with the title
There are 3 main things you need to focus on when you make a book title that you want to perform well:
- Rank for keywords
- Be very compelling (better than the competition)
- Don’t mislead people
SEO-friendly titles
When it comes to building an eBook publishing business on Amazon, you need to focus on ranking books for keywords, so that people who don’t know about the book yet can find it easily.
Now, obviously famous people who already have a reputation don’t have to do this and can have a more catchy, creative title.
But, when you aren’t well known yet or you’re just trying to create passive income from lots of books, you need to keep SEO in mind with titles.
Make your book title jump out at them and make them almost have to click it because it sounds so good.
Compelling titles
While SEO is very important for your titles, it isn’t the only thing you should focus on.
You also need something compelling that makes people want to buy and read your book.
It has to sound really good and not like some SEO robot wrote it.
Now the first part of your title might be mostly keywords for SEO purposes, but your subtitle needs to be more about selling the book.
One thing you can do to come up with a great subtitle is look at books that get lots of sales and see if you can find some patterns.
Then, craft your own in a way that uses some of the same elements while relating it to the main topic your book is about.
Once you have a few subtitle ideas you like, enter them in the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.
This can help you figure out whether you’re using the right language in your subtitle to get the reaction you want out of potential readers.
Non-misleading titles
The last aspect of a good title is to make sure that it doesn’t mislead people to think it covers something that it doesn’t.
Otherwise, you can expect bad reviews and very little success on Amazon.
4. Get a professional book cover
Either do the book cover yourself if you’re artistic or outsource it. If you’re artistic, you can create your own book cover using photoshop or something like that.
If you’re not artistic, but still have a good eye for what looks good and want to save money, you can use templates from Canva.
And, if you want to take the safest approach to getting a good cover, you can hire a freelancer on sites like 99designs or Fiverr.
5. Make sure it’s well-written
When it comes to making money from ranking eBooks, you don’t have to write a super long novel every time to be successful. In fact, some publishers test the market with shorter books and then add to them later.
Either way, make sure the book is at least 15 pages long and is full of amazing information. For example, As A Man Thinketh by James Allen is a successful book that is only 26 pages long.
Now that you know what the minimum length needs to be, you have to make sure the book is easy and enjoyable to read.
To ensure that a book is written well, some people actually will hire ghostwriters to write the book and just give them the notes of information and maybe an outline for what it needs to contain.
You can hire ghostwriters at freelance sites like UpWork. Also make sure and follow the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines.
6. Publish with proper settings
Make sure you go for categories you can rank in, write a description that is well thought out, and have a good pen name (if needed) for the niche your book covers.
Also, start the price very low ($0.99). This will help you get more people to try the book and hopefully review it.
7. Promote other books
If you want to market other books and include links, consider making the book an .epub file type. You can use this file converter to do convert it.
Otherwise, if you use a PDF or word document format and the links aren’t clickable, you might shorten them with a service like Bit.ly.
You also might want to give people some bonuses at the end of the book in hopes of getting them to subscribe to your email list, visit your website, buy other products, etc.
8. Get reviews and market it
Reviews are what really rank your book on Amazon. Don’t ever buy reviews or get friends and family to do them though. Amazon has cracked down on those strategies.
Instead, just price the book low, create an amazing book on a niche topic, and use some other tips in this article for getting reviews.
You can also try to get top Amazon reviewers to read and review your book as well as members of the KBoards forum for Kindle readers.
You could also try giving your book away for free in Facebook Groups and other places where eBook lovers of your niche gather.
9. Increase price after first 10 or so reviews
After you are ranking your book in the top 3 or so results, raise the price to $2.99 or whatever you think the book is worth so it will start making some money.
How Many Pages Should an eBook Have?
Length matters less for ebooks than it does for print books, but there are some acceptable lengths and norms that are still a concern.
We wanted to see the page count and pricing of actual books, so we pulled the data below from Amazon. We looked at 5 different genres, recording the pricing and length of 13 books in each genre.
You’ll see that each genre has two “pages” and “pricing” columns; this is because we sorted the search by “Average Customer Reviews” for one column and “Featured” for the other. These two sorts will show us the most successful books on Amazon. Each genre also includes average and medium pages and prices for the data.
From this chart, we can see that the romance genre is around 320 pages, the YA genre can vary greatly, science fiction and fantasy are generally on the longer side, and mysteries and thrillers are in about the same spot as romances. Self-help books, which are nonfiction, are shorter, as expected, and more expensive.
How Can I Sell my eBook Legally?
As an ebook publisher, you have a few options available for selling your works.
You can set up your own website and sell your ebook directly online. You might make a PDF available to your readers for example. A simple shopping cart or PayPal link and you’re all set. A reader visits your site, they order, and they get a download link and get your book. It’s pretty much all automated, and you simply keep an eye on things to make sure the site is running smoothly.
The benefit of this is you control the entire process, get all of the customer information (so you can promote additional products, services, or books), and you can charge higher prices.
One of the easiest ways to sell ebooks is to work through a third-party site like Amazon. You may have ordered products, even books, from Amazon in the past. But this is a whole different side to this massive e-commerce site. Below are some other places to sell your ebooks legally.
1. Sell On Amazon Kindle
Amazon kindle is the biggest online eBook platform in the world. So it’s no surprise that many writers are turning to self-publishing on amazon kindle. One question you may ask is, how much can I earn by selling an eBook on Amazon Kindle?
Amazon advertises up to 70% royalty payment on sales for your customers who are based in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and more.
2. Sell On Lulu
Lulu is also a vast and fasting publishing company. They also currently operate a print-on-demand service. Lulu writers earn up to 80%.
As the world’s largest independent bookstore, they also have maybe features and benefits. So feel free to head over and see their book calculation to see how much money you could earn with Lulu.
3. Sell On Smashwords
If you are looking to publish your eBook in the Philippines but are not interested in print books, Smashwords could be perfect for you. Smashwords is a company that distributes to many platforms and retails.
The downside is that some sources report that earnings are less than other eBook publishers in the Philippines / globally. However, you could reach a much larger audience, and they are connected with some of the biggest eBook giants in the industry.
4. Sell On Kobo
Kobo is slightly more technical with its eBook publishing service. They offer their writers deep analytics of sales and views, which can help start an eBook business in the Philippines.
The Kobo network is continuously growing thanks to its affiliate program. Currently, they have millions of readings on their system. Recently they also launched Audiobooks.
5. Sell On Tradebit
Tradebit states, “It doesn’t matter if you are a poet or a technical writer – Tradebit enables you to publish your book/content within a few seconds so that you can start selling the file on eBay or your homepage immediately.”
Tradebit also runs a similar affiliate program to Kobo, but one thing to note regarding payment is that payment must be made through PayPal (currently).
6. Sell On Pressbooks
Pressbooks is a little bit different from other eBook publishing in the Philippines / globally because they do not sell your eBook directly but help distribute your content similar to Smashwords.
Pressbooks aim to reach the education industry and, therefore, a unique customer group who may be your ideal readers for your eBook.
How do Free eBooks Make Money Online?
Believe it or not, you might already have most of an ebook written already. If you are already making money with a blog, those blog posts could be turned into an ebook with some editing.
Simply collect relevant blog posts into an order that makes sense, make any needed edits so that references that aren’t relevant are taken out, and add an introduction and conclusion, and you’re done. Any blog posts you use should cover the same or related topics and work well together.
Although the information can be found for free throughout your site many people are willing to pay money to have it formally organized into something easier to consume, like an ebook.
Of course, that’s only one way to put together the content for your ebook. If you want to publish an original work of fiction or nonfiction — something you write yourself fresh — that is also a good option.
The key part, if you’re starting from scratch, is to work steadily towards your goals of finishing that book. Write something every day! Start with an outline and then fill it in.
You can also repurpose a book that is in the public domain. This means the copyright has expired and anybody can take the content of those books, and publish them, either updated or reworked in some way or as is.
How do people make money by offering free ebooks, you meant? It’s simple by embedding affiliate links in the free ebooks and hopefully, the recipient of the free ebook will take the necessary action as directed by the embedded links.
How Much Money Can You Make From Writing an eBook?
Producing an eBook can be ridiculously cheap and, often, completely free, and selling your own ebook can net you anything from several pounds a day to almost nothing.
The good news is that you get lots of say in your potential earnings, so it’s worth taking a look at the sums:
- eBooks sell for anywhere between 99p to £8.99 and up, but the store (and your publishing platform) will take a chunk of each sale
- You can sell your book for whatever price you like – and you can alter the price to test different tactics – but the ideal price depends on your book’s length, reviews and competition
- If you’ve got cash to invest (or can crowdfund to pay for it), you could spend money on extra marketing for your book to increase its chances of success, but there are lots of ways to market it for free, like on social media.
Where Can I Publish my eBook?
The list of companies below follows no particular order. You can choose to publish with one or more of them.
1. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
Owned by Amazon, KDP publishes and retails ebooks that can be read on Kindle devices or on devices that have installed the Kindle app. This is one publisher that an independent author cannot afford to ignore: About 80% of all English-language ebook sales occur via Amazon, and self-published titles alone account for 42% of this figure.
If you are willing to grant Amazon exclusive distribution of your ebook for a 90-day period, you can enroll into KDP Select, a marketing program that helps authors promote books largely through discounts and countdown deals.
If KDP Select works well for you (and discounting is an effective way to promote sales—as the success of book promotional services like Bookbub shows), you can re-enroll into the program as many times as you want.
Participation in KDP Select also makes your book available to subscribers of Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners Lending Library for Amazon Prime members, and you will receive additional payments depending on the number of pages subscribers read.
Kindle ebooks use the .MOBI format, unlike most other publishers who use .EPUB. If you have created your ebook in Word, you can convert it to .MOBI using free conversion software like Calibre.
KDP pays authors royalties of 35% or 70% on the book’s list price.
2. CreateSpace
This is Amazon’s publishing platform for print books and uses print-on-demand publishing, where no stocks are held—a book is printed only when a customer places an order.
Books published with CreateSpace retail exclusively on Amazon, unless the author has opted into their Expanded Distribution program. Under this program, authors can make their books available to online and offline retailers such as Barnes & Noble, and to distributors such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
On being added to the distributors’ catalogs, the appear in the ordering systems of the distrubutors’ network of retailers, libraries, and academic institutions, and can be ordered whenever a customer places a request at any of these places.
Amazon gives customers a better browsing and purchase experience by linking a book’s paperback and digital versions during the publishing process, provided the details of both versions match exactly.
Amazon takes a 40% cut from every regular sale, and 60% from sales made through their Expanded Distribution program. Royalty is paid after deducting Amazon’s commission (40% or 60%), a fixed charge, and a per-page charge from the book’s list price. Note that CreateSpace does not at present offer the hardcover format.
3. iBooks
Apple’s iBooks is the second-biggest ebook retailer after Amazon, accounting for 10% of sales in the top 5 countries. Its more than 40 country-specific ebook stores give unique benefits to authors:
They can price their books differently in each country depending on the prices of comparable books, and even set prices in the local currency. Moreover, authors can schedule free book and discount offers anytime, and there is no exclusive distribution contract.
To publish directly on iBooks, you must have a Mac device; else you will have to go through an ebook aggregator.
Apple offers a flat 70% royalty rate.
4. Barnes & Noble Press
Formerly known as NOOK Press, this is a self-publishing portal from Barnes & Noble. It accounts for 3% of ebook sales, almost all of it from the US. It also offers print-on-demand publishing. Books published with Barnes & Noble Press retail only at their online and physical bookstores.
Royalty rates range from 40% to 65%, depending on the price of the book.
5. Kobo
An anagram of “book,” Kobo accounts for about 2% of total ebook sales in the top 5 English-language markets combined. It is a significant player in Canada, though, where it accounts for as much as 25% of ebook sales.
Like the Kindle, Kobo offers an e-reading device as well as an app for reading on other devices. Ebooks published with Kobo are available to readers in over 190 countries. It also runs the Kobo eReading Program with the American Booksellers Association, and member bookstores can give their customers access to Kobo’s 5 million+ titles. Kobo also has partnerships with e-book retailers around the world.
Royalty rates are either 45% or 70%, depending on the ebook’s price.
6. IngramSpark
This is a self-publishing service established by Ingram, the world’s leading distributor of print books connected to 39,000 bookstores, libraries, and online retailers in more than 150 countries. IngramSpark also distributes ebooks to all the top online retailers, including Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.
They publish hardcover books, and even offer a premium level of printing—this is useful for books containing many pictures. They also offer authors a book returns option; authors who opt in stand a better chance of being stocked by brick-and-mortar booksellers, who are otherwise reluctant to carry self-published titles.
IngramSpark charges a 53% commission for sales to bookstores and 30% to online retailers, after deducting book production costs. They also charge a $49 set-up fee and $12 annual fee.
7. Smashwords
Smashwords is a popular ebook aggregator and distributes ebooks to almost all the top retailers, including Kobo, iBookstore, and Barnes & Noble. They have extensive ebook formatting guidelines that enable easy conversion into the formats required by their multiple retail partners.
On the flip side, Smashwords does not distribute to Amazon, and offers no support with ebook formatting. If you need help formatting your ebook, and/or if you would rather publish with an aggregator that also distributes to Amazon, you may be better off publishing with Draft2Digital.
Smashwords takes a 10% cut on books sold through their own retail channel, and 15% on books sold through other retailers—this is in addition to the retailer’s own fees.
8. Draft2Digital
Although Draft2Digital has fewer retail partners than Smashwords, it distributes to Amazon and covers all the major ebook retailers. They have another significant advantage—they will format your ebook, and for free. They charge 10% of the retail price at most retailers.
9. Lulu
Lulu is one of the oldest online self-publishing companies and a popular distributor of digital and print books. They retail books through their own bookstore as well as distribute to other online stores (Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.) and book distributors (Barnes & Noble and Ingram). Lulu offers both hardcover and paperback formats for print books.
Their ebook conversion, publishing, and distribution services are free, but they sell an array of support services including editing, cover design, and book marketing.
For books sold through their marketplace, Lulu charges a 20% commission after deducting any book production costs applicable to print copies. Sales generated through partner retailers would additionally attract their own commission.
10. Bookbaby
Bookbaby retails books through their own Bookshop and distributes to other retailers as well. Apart from publishing and distribution, they also sell services such as editing, cover and interior design, and marketing. Services can be purchased individually or as a package. All services are paid.
Ebooks earn 100% royalties after deducting the retailer’s commission. Sales made through Bookshop, however, earn 85% royalties. Bookbaby also has a print-on-demand service. Printed books generate royalties between 10% and 30%.
There are other ways to publish and sell, too. For example, you can publish and sell directly to your customers from your own Web page by using Gumroad.
You can also crowdfund your book using platforms like Unbound and Inkshares: Pitch or directly post your book/book proposal—as required by the platform, set a funding goal, and create a campaign to get support. If the goal is met, the company will edit, design, publish, distribute, and even market your book like a traditional publisher would.
Can I Make Money Self Publishing on Amazon?
Self-publishing is a quickly growing industry. Authors have found a step-around for the toiling, exploitative traditional publishing industry, and they’re taking hold of their own career and art. While the creative freedom, quick turnaround, and higher royalty rates sound amazing, how much money can you actually make self-publishing your books?
A major platform for writers is Amazon. As a tool, Amazon can be tricky to learn and master. But with a little research and a strong strategy, a self-published author can make $10,000+ per month publishing their own books on Amazon.
The income self-published authors make on Amazon varies greatly from writer to writer. The format of your book, how many you sell, and decisions you make when you’re setting up your book for publication can all affect the money you make.
How Much Did JK Rowling Make Per Book?
JK Rowling may be the richest author in the world today, but the woman who invented Harry Potter once struggled to make ends meet. Before she became famous, Rowling was a single mom in Scotland relying on welfare benefits to get by.
Rowling spent years writing her first book, Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone. During that time she relied on welfare benefit to support herself and her daughter.
After finally landing a literary agent, the book was rejected by a dozen publishers. Finally, Bloomsbury, a small press in London that mostly published literary titles, agreed to take the book. Rowling was paid an advance of just £2,500 – roughly $4,100 in 1997 dollars.
The book, which was later published in the U.S. as Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, went on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She went on to pen six more books in the Harry Potter series, which have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.
Then there were the movies, a Broadway play, theme park attractions, and more. It’s all combined to make Rowling a very wealthy woman.
How to Earn More as a Self-Published Author on Amazon
You can make more money as a self-published author on Amazon by strategically releasing and marketing your books. Here are five ways you might increase book sales on Amazon.
1. Publish more books
Not only does having more books increase your revenue because there are more products being sold, but the Amazon algorithm favors accounts that publish regularly, pushing your books in front of more readers in suggested sections.
2. Offer your book in multiple formats
Even with a single book, you can have more “products” available by offering your book in multiple formats. Hardback, paperback, audiobook. You might even republish your books in different formats, like compilation books for series, companion novels, or new editions with fresh covers.
3. Write a series
Publishing a series can be more lucrative than publishing a standalone novel. If you write a stellar first book, one customer purchase can turn into several, as they come back to buy each new installment of the series. It’s also easier for readers to get immersed in a series, just because they’re spending more time with the story and characters.
Read Also: 45 Best Amazon Skills You Can Leverage As A New Marketing Channel
That immersion can translate into them recommending the series to more friends, making fan art, buying merch, preordering the new books, and other actions that greatly boost sales and lead to more readers.
4. Increase readthrough for your books
To make more money, you should have a strategy for increasing readthrough on your books. Readthrough refers to how often readers are buying more of your books–particularly more books in a series. There are a few strategies for increasing readthrough, including:
- structuring your endings in a way that makes your reader want to read more
- publishing your books as a full box set instead of one at a time
- setting advanced pre-orders so your readers can commit to reading more even with a slower publishing schedule
- encouraging your readers to follow you on Amazon and socials so they stay plugged in and updated for your new releases
Regardless of your strategy, increasing the readthrough for your series will boost sales.
5. Continuous marketing
And obviously, marketing your books well will lead to earning more. This could mean participating in Amazon’s advertisement programs, or it might mean utilizing your author platform to draw in more sales. Some strategies include:
- Hosting book readings and other events
- Offering limited time sales and specials
- Making a special event of bookiversaries and other significant milestones
- Social media campaigns
The marketing for your book doesn’t end after the launch. Try to plan how you’ll market your books for years after the publication to keep sales consistent and increase your income with every publication.
You’ll see a wide range of income sizes from different self-published authors. If you want to make a living through self-publishing your books on Amazon, do your research, track your data, don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies, and don’t give up!
