Self-publishing books isn’t a get-rich plan, but you’d be astonished at how much money you can make on Amazon.
Self-publishing on Amazon is one of the internet income sources I enjoy discussing the most. I’m usually a modest guy, but I have to say…I’m a natural at self-publishing!
Simply by selling books on Amazon, I’ve boosted my monthly income from zero to nearly $2K in less than three years…
Within a year, I was earning a grand every month.
This piece about how I make money self-publishing has been one of the most popular on the blog, so I wanted to update it with everything I’ve learned over the years. I’ve updated the information on how to turn your books into a passive source of revenue and how to make the process go more smoothly.
Okay, $2K a month isn’t a lot of money, but it’s a start, and it’s rising quickly.
However, self-publishing isn’t a surefire way to make money. According to The Guardian, the average self-published author earns roughly $1,000 per year. This includes several authors with multiple novels and a large following.
In reality, about a third of authors earn less than $500 per year, and 90% of publications sell fewer than 100 copies.
In April, I sold 624 copies of ten books, with revenue split almost evenly between Amazon Kindle, paperback, and audiobooks. This level of self-publishing success didn’t come easily, but it wasn’t impossible either. This essay will walk you through all you need to know about self-publishing books on Amazon, as well as five money-making tips.
Self-publishing as a Source of Income It isn’t possible to read a book in one sitting.
As you can see from the graph, reaching $1,900 in monthly sales wasn’t an instant success. In March 2015, I released my first book and made less than $100 in the first two months. I didn’t make more than $500 a month until the first full month after having six books out.
How much money do self-published authors make in a month? self-publishing
What is the average monthly income of self-published authors?
Remember that the books are on average 160 pages long and required between 100 and 200 hours to complete. That doesn’t account for the time spent editing and formatting a self-published book or promoting it prior to its release.
I’ve been fortunate enough to locate a few good freelancers who can edit, format, and design book covers for a reasonable price, but self-publishing each book still costs over $1,000. Fiverr.com is one of the best places for freelancers to find cover designs and formatting. The cost of a project starts at $5, so you can check out a few different freelancers without spending a lot of money.
However, if you do it well, self-publishing can be profitable. Four of my books are constantly in the top five in their categories, and the small promotion I do is all done for free via social media. Over the last six months, I’ve routinely made over $300 a month on these books, and it’s still going strong.
How to Make Money Self-Publishing Nonprofit and Charity Best Sellers
Even though I enjoy self-publishing as a source of income, I couldn’t work from home full-time without additional money.
This is arguably one of the most common issues I find among bloggers and anyone attempting to make a living from home. Only a few sources of income will provide enough money each month to cover all of your expenses. You may get close during the good months, but revenue is so inconsistent that you may find yourself short on cash in other months.
I make money from seven distinct sources on a regular basis and a few more on an ad hoc basis. Because I’ve diversified my income in this way, I’ll never have to worry about a single source of revenue failing or chasing clients for payment.
Make Money Blogging, a step-by-step guide to getting started making money online, including nine of the top revenue streams. I begin with the simplest and fastest sources of revenue, like as advertising and affiliate sales, before moving on to income ideas that generate thousands of dollars every month. Each chapter walks you through how to get started and how much money you can anticipate to make.
Make Money Blogging can help you start building your monthly revenue streams.
Self-publishing books in a variety of formats to make money
Earning money blogging is all about having several streams of revenue, and making money self-publishing is all about offering your book in multiple formats. It’s simple to publish your book on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback because you can do both from the same format, but generating an audio version of your book can significantly increase your income.
Recognize that various people will prefer different formats. Although I appreciate the lower Kindle costs, many individuals still prefer a regular paperback book. I’ve never been able to get into listening to audiobooks, but my aunt does so at least once a week.
The following is a list of my Kindle sales for the month of April.
How to make money self-publishing books on Amazon’s Kindle
Amazon Kindle Self-Publishing Book Sales
At the moment, I sell around a third of my books on Amazon Kindle, another third on Createspace for paperbacks, and the final third on Audible for audiobooks.
Because CreateSpace and Kindle are both owned by Amazon, the process of uploading your book to CreateSpace is extremely identical to that of Kindle. Your book will be listed as available in paperback on Amazon, and CreateSpace will print and mail it whenever someone buys it. After Amazon deducts its cut and after postage costs, your royalty for paperback sales will be roughly 30%.
The sales from CreateSpace for the month of April are listed below.
How much money do self-published authors make on paperbacks?
How much money can self-publishing authors make?
I have an exclusive agreement with Kindle Direct Publishing, which means I can’t sell my books in digital format on my sites or anywhere else. You gain a few perks from the exclusive deal, such as access to the Kindle Unlimited service and a slightly higher Amazon ranking, but
This year, I’ll most likely remove my books from the program. Lulu, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and SmashWords are some other places where you can make money self-publishing, however their traffic is far lower than Amazon’s.
Check out the video! In this video, I share all I’ve learned about self-publishing, including the 10 blunders that will ruin your book! Visit YouTube to see the video.
5 Lessons I’ve Learned from Self-Publishing Books
It all comes down to hustle when it comes to self-publishing books. You must publish many books and promote them on social media at all times. That means writing practically every day and simply putting in the effort necessary to generate money and succeed.
However, there are several strategies that can help you make money self-publishing books on Amazon or other sites.
In self-publishing, strike a balance between quantity and quality.
A book cannot be perfected and written over a period of years. Even well-received novels are unlikely to bring in more than a few hundred dollars every month. While the money you make from a self-published book will be long-term passive income, it’s difficult to justify years of labour for a couple thousand dollars per year.
Not all of your novels will make money, or at least not a lot of money. Approximately half of the books you’ll publish will make very little money each month, based on my own experience and what I’ve heard from other self-published authors. Another one out of every four of your books will generate money, but not much, perhaps $50 to $150 each month. Only around one out of every four self-published novels will earn you more than $150 per month.
This implies you’ll need to keep coming up with new book ideas and self-publishing new titles on a regular basis. Having more books implies you can make more money in two ways:
You have a better chance of hitting on a hot topic or self-publishing a bestseller.
You gain from Amazon’s cross-advertising. If someone buys one of your books, Amazon will send them an email with recommendations for other books you’ve authored.
Of course, you can’t expect to make money by writing bad books. I know one author who began by using overseas freelancers to churn out two low-quality books every month. The books were terrible, but the price was reasonable, she reasoned.
She made a few sales in the first month, but then the negative reviews began to pile up, destroying her Amazon image. She now writes behind a pen name because no one will buy her novels if they are published under her real name.
Consider taking a course on Udemy if you don’t feel confident in your knowledge of a subject. The site provides video courses for as cheap as $15 and is an excellent method to learn about a topic.
Starting a blog on the subject is also a smart method to establish your credibility and competence in the field before committing to self-publishing. Because your blog will lead thousands of people to your book pages, blogging is a good fit for generating money self-publishing. Check out my 10-page guide to everything you need to know to create a blog and generate money, or click here to receive a special deal on Blue Host WordPress hosting, which includes a free domain name and hosting for just $3.95 per month.
Learn how to create a WordPress blog in under 15 minutes.
Find out how to make an Amazon book page.
Amazon is a great place to generate money by self-publishing books.
A successful book launch will boost your Amazon ranking, but you’ll need a fantastic Amazon page to continue selling books after the launch. A good description will not only encourage readers to buy your self-published book, but it will also drive additional traffic to the website when they search Amazon or Google. When you publish your book with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, you’ll create an Amazon book page (KDP).
To discover how I make my Amazon book pages, go to the Make Money Blogging book page.
The title and keywords you choose in KDP are the foundation of a fantastic book page. Make sure you’re using all seven of your keyword selections, and do some research to see which ones receive a lot of traffic.
In a subsequent essay, I’ll delve deeper into keyword research. Keywords should be included in your title and sub-title, but you shouldn’t sound like you’re trying to pack everything in there. The title of your book must be the actual title on Amazon, although you can add a few words to the sub-title if you want.
For your book’s description, you have up to 4,000 characters (about 600 words) to work with. Don’t be a slacker when it comes to your description! This isn’t simply to explain what the book is about; it’s also to assist Amazon and Google find your book when people are looking for it. People will locate your book when they search if you use your keywords in the description.
Using H-tags is a part of making a book description stand out and attract search love. This is just some basic html code telling Amazon that a particular line of content is more significant.
Using an H-Tag will help readers and search engines recognize the material.
In your description’s paragraph heads, you should use H-tags. In my descriptions, I use an H2 tag for the first line and H3 tags for the rest of the paragraph heads. Other html tags can be used to make your description more noticeable, but the H-tags are the most significant.
Don’t forget to ask people to return to the top of the page and purchase the book! Readers will be staring at the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section if they read all the way through your book description on Amazon. That’s a bummer because it means they’ll be distracted from your book if they see anything else that seems fascinating. By asking for the sale, you can retain their attention on your book.
Two other sections of your book page are also critical for self-publishing success. To include Editorial Reviews and your ‘From the Author’ sections, you’ll need to use the Amazon Author Central site, which is separate from Amazon’s Kindle Publishing.
You may need to add reviews later if they arrive, but they are an important selling element for your book. The finest reviews are from well-known people, but you should include at least five for your book.
Customer reviews are also featured near the bottom of the page, but they don’t have to browse down to discover how fantastic the book is and why they should buy it.
One of the last chances to sell a reader on your book and generate money on the page is in the ‘From the Author’ section. Talk explain how individuals will benefit from reading the book in a conversational tone.
Carefully select your book categories.
When you self-publish a book on Amazon, you have the option of choosing between two categories in which your book will appear. This is critical since your book will be competing with these books when people are looking for good reading in a particular category.
People will not see your book if it does not appear in the top 20 books, and you will not make money self-publishing.
It’s annoying, but there is a game you must play in order to make money on Amazon. If you check through a few categories, you’ll see some books that don’t appear to be entirely suited for the category yet nevertheless rank highly. The author has placed their book in that category not because it is the most relevant to the book, but because it is less competitive than others and will sell more copies.
At the very least, your category should be connected. It’s pointless to be highly ranked in a category if your product is radically different from what people expect. I wouldn’t put an investing book in the travel area, but it may go in the education, reference, or business categories.
A little study is all it takes to find a category in which your book might fare better.
Change “All Departments” in search to “Books” and click the magnifying glass on the Amazon main page.
Scroll down to the left-side menu, where you’ll find Books and all of the categories. The number of books in each area will be listed in parenthesis, for example, Arts & Photography (1,540,490)
Choose a few categories where your book might fit and click through them one by one.
Each category will be subdivided into sub-categories, and each sub-category may be further subdivided into sub-categories.
There will be less competition for your book to rank well if there are fewer books in a sub-category. I aim to group my books into categories with less than 2,000 additional titles.
The first book in the Wealth Management series is Investing.
Checking the Amazon Best Sellers Rank of the top 10 books is another approach to see how competitive it is to rank a book inside a category. In this best sellers category, books are rated against all other books based on how many daily sales they average.
The table below offers an estimate based on my research on how many daily sales a book requires for various Amazon Best Seller rankings.
self-publishing for profit Amazon’s best seller list
Click through the top-ranked books in the category where you’re considering putting your book.
Find “Amazon Best Sellers Rank” at the bottom of the “Product Details” page.
Take the average rank of a couple of the category’s best-selling books.
It will be challenging to keep your book placed in the top 10 in categories where only Amazon Best Seller books with a rank of 50,000 or fewer are allowed. Consider choosing a category in which you simply need to be rated in the top 100,000 to stay in the top ten.
Launching for free is not a good idea.
This one will be contentious because some authors have had great success with free book launches. They are offering the game for free for the first few days in the hopes of receiving thousands of downloads. The idea is that people will return to give a review for your book, persuading others to buy it if it isn’t free.
I tried it on my first two books and didn’t like the outcome. Few people, perhaps one out of every 200 readers, ever post a review for a book. The number of reviews you’ll typically receive isn’t worth devoting all of your launch advertising efforts to simply giving away the book.
Another reason I despise the free book launch procedure is Amazon’s dual ranking systems for free and paid books. Your free book launch could be a huge success, propelling you to the top of your category…but only on the free ranking scale. You lose all momentum when you change the price.
When you debut your book for $0.99, you immediately enter the paid ranking scale, and you won’t lose all of your launch momentum once you raise the price. You won’t sell as many copies as a free launch, but you’ll make money and benefit from Amazon’s premium ranking system.
Make use of social media.
If you can use your book to encourage people to buy other items or services through a sales funnel, you might be able to get away with giving it away for free. I’m aware of authors that offer their books permanently free in order to monetize them with other items.
There is no better approach to market than to a pre-existing audience that is familiar with your company. If you have a strong social media presence on one or more of these sites, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or anything in between, use it! Your most devoted fans should be the first to hear about and buy from you. If you ask them to leave some reviews, you might get lucky.
Whether or not you have a sizable following on your social media platforms, it is still a good idea to take advantage of their reach and publish to all of them. The reason I say this is that you can then dig deeper into your advanced analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. Hashtag methods and good social media management strategies may help you reach a lot more people, and if you don’t know how to do it yourself, you can easily hire someone to do it for you on Fiverr.
Fiverr is a website where freelancers and employers may collaborate on a variety of projects. Skilled freelancers will offer their services as gigs, and an employer will pay the freelancer a defined fee to execute a work for which they may lack the necessary skills or time.
Start looking for a virtual assistant for all of your needs on Fiverr today!
Early on, request reviews.
Reviews are crucial for a self-published book, but they are also the author’s most difficult challenge. Although Amazon claims that it does not utilize reviews or the amount of reviews to rank books, it is undeniably something that readers consider before purchasing a book.
Only a small percentage of people who read your book will leave a review, so you won’t get many until you sell a lot of copies. Instead, seek evaluations from bloggers and others in your own network. Before the launch, you’ll send them a free digital copy and ask for a review once the book is available on Amazon.
It’s crucial to inquire early because it could take a month for someone to read your book and write a review. It is not necessary for reviews to be long or detailed. They can be as short as a few words, but a couple of sentences is always preferable. Within the first month of releasing a book, I prefer to get at least ten reviews. More is ideal, but reaching to double digits is usually sufficient to distinguish your book from those with only a few reviews.
It’s simpler to gain reviews from other blogs, friends, and family for your first few books, but it becomes more challenging as you publish more frequently and every year. Don’t be overbearing; just inquire once or twice. Having a blog simplifies things because you can reach out to readers and offer them a free copy.
Everyone has a book idea, and it’s the best source of passive income I’ve ever discovered. Don’t give up on your self-publishing dream in the middle of the process as so many others have. I’ll show you how to make it a reality, as well as every tactic I employ to generate income every month! Click through for a coupon code and a special launch price for Self-Publishing for Passive Income, which is 75% off the standard price!
I’m going to conduct an entire series on how I choose book themes and make money from self-publishing. Make sure to check back in for more posts as I’ll cover everything from writing to promoting and how to publish your book on a budget. If you have any questions about self-publishing on Amazon, please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
