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Can You Make Money from Amazon Self-Publishing? | SelfPublishedWhiz
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Oct 8, 2021
Today's topic of discussion is Amazon. More specifically, can you make money from Amazon Self-Publishing? A very frequent question for writers considering getting into self-publishing. I am here to tell you, yes - of course you can. But how much you make depends on a few factors... You can view the full blog post here: https://www.selfpublishedwhiz.com/makemoneyonamazon ***Other Posts*** Why Aren’t My Books Selling on Amazon?: https://www.selfpublishedwhiz.com/booksnotselling Self-publishing on Amazon For Under $200: https://www.selfpublishedwhiz.com/kdppublishingguide ***Get Started Today!*** Create your free Amazon KDP account and get started today!: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US If you need formatting, editing, book cover design, illustration etc on a BUDGET, I highly recommend Fiverr: https://tidd.ly/2VycjXu
View Video Transcript
0:00
What's good YouTube? It's Ariel here, self-published whiz.com
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If you haven't watched any of the other videos, actually, at this point there's only two
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But if you've not watched any of those videos, my aim here is to help as many people who want to become self-published or publish authors as possible
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There are a lot of people that are looking to get into self-publishing
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and don't know where to start and really just have lots of questions
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and also are not really well informed on how much it costs to do X, Y and Z
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I'm here to debunk any crazy cost myths because some people have come at me and said stuff
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like they think it's going to cost $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 to get their book done
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or dollars or whatever. And that's not the case. So with my blog, all I try to do is inform and answer all your questions
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So definitely check that out if you want to know more. I've got my recommended services, resources and just all my tips and tricks that has helped me on my journey
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As I have published a number of books, if you go to Google and check out Ariel Phoenix
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You type in Ariel Phoenix or Ariel Phoenix books. And you'll see a number of books, children's books, particularly that I have produced
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But yeah, so this post is about whether or not you can make money self-publishing
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And obviously, I'm here because I make money self-publishing. And it's a question that a lot of people have
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but it goes without saying that lots of people are making money self-publishing
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which is why it's a thing and which is why you're here, you know, checking out how to get into it
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But yeah, so the short answer is yes, of course. You can make money self-publishing
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How much you make depends on, obviously, how much content you put up, how good your book is, how well you market it, your description
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all of that stuff have to do with how much you actually make from the book
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because you could make a wonderful book, but if nobody knows about it, especially if you're selling just online
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If nobody knows about it, they're never going to find the book, and it just won't be the great book that it is because people won't be able to review it
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and the ball won't get rolling. So a lot of people nowadays are choosing self-publishing over traditional publishing
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and that is because it's very easy to get into self-publishing, whereas before you had to go down, well, going down the traditional route
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you would have had to get an agent and submit your book that way to a publisher
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So you'd have two middle people, and then even before getting approved
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I mean, you're probably going to get a lot of nose. as you know, or you may or may not know, but J.K. Rowling of the great Harry Potter
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she was actually turned down. I think it's 12 times. I don't know if it was Stephen King or her that
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was turned down 12 times, but they can all tell you that same story that they would turn down
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multiple times by traditional publishers, even though eventually with perseverance they did
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they did then get their book published. But in any case, without self-publishing
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Many people would not be making a living from self-publishing, myself included
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So self-publishing is the way to go if you just have your book or you want to get your book out there without going through the hoops
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Self-publishing is the way to go. And with Amazon KDP, it is very easy to do so
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It's so easy nowadays to just go www. Amazon. I don't actually know what the website is
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I'd never tap it in. I just type in Amazon KDP and it comes up
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It's very easy to sign up. Unlike some other Amazon programs, you will be approved instantly
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There's no vetting process. So I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but in this case, it's a good thing
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You can go to Amazon, KDP, and you can sign up and create an account for free
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There is no cost whatsoever to create your account and get your book published
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And that is the main thing. That's the first thing I think people need to know is that you can go on Amazon right now
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You can create an account and if you have a manuscript if you have a PDF of your book you can upload that now upload your cover and within 72 hours providing the cover and everything meets the guidelines and the very basic guidelines just sizing and formatting guidelines your book will be published and available for purchase on Amazon itself And that is a big deal Now with regards to actually making money
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from that book that you put up, it's important to understand that self-publishing is actually a
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trend right now. So there are a lot, there's a lot of competition for one, but there is also a lot
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of awful, terrible, terrible, terrible books on Amazon. And, um, Something I've also dabbled in, which is no slash low content books
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I will get into that at a later day in the video. I'm no longer doing those at the moment
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I'm just focusing on children's books and language books. Those are my main things
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But yeah, it is very, the market is very saturated in certain areas
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And that should not put you off because by no means is that something that you should be concerned about
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If you've got a great book idea. this is just about getting your book done and knowing that you can actually make sales on that book
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Again, although it is completely free to get your book published essentially because even the ISPN, Amazon provides an ISPN
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And if you were to buy those, which you need to buy an ISBN for any book that you have published
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And again, that is something for a whole different video. but an ISPN generally cost, I think it's about you've got Boka for the US
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Canada, I think, do three ISBNs and the UK, you've got Nilsons
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So they cost around the same amount. I think it's like $18, $90 or something per ISBN, which is a lot because per ISPN means per book format
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So if you had a hard cover and a paperback, they'd need two separate ISBNs
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But what people tend to do is to buy a batch of 10, then they become, they become about 15 pounds each, I think. So it works out way better that way
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But yeah, so although it is free to publish your book, Amazon do take royalties. Of course
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they have to take something. This is business. But you keep about 70% royalties. It does depend
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on whether you're selling e-books or print or books for print. But you can sell both
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You can list both under the same kind of name under the same and posting
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And there are different rules based on the size of your book
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Whether it is a public domain, whether it's a book in public domain
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there are different variations that affect how much of a royalty payment you will get
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but generally you get a decent payout. I think you get about 60 to 70% generally
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And as I said before, Amazon is the biggest seller. You've got Ingram Spark, you've got Book Baby, you've got Lulu, you've got..
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The list goes on, but Amazon has, I think, a 70% market share of self-published books
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So Amazon is where everybody goes because it's free, because it's Amazon, and it is already a marketplace
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So if you are very smart with your marketing strategy, you have access to everybody that is coming on Amazon
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Everyone that's coming on Amazon. And that's amazing. So, yeah, if your book is good quality, influential, entertaining, well-formatted, then there's a good chance that will be successful
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But you still have to be smart about how you do that. So, steps for making money self-publishing
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I've got my notes here. If you see me looking down, it's just because I've got my notes
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And like I said before, these are all blog posts. And I'm just putting this in video format for those of you who don't read blogs
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So I'm just going through my notes. So steps for making money self-publishing
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Amazon themselves have said that KDP publishers in 2019 made $1.1 billion in that year alone
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Yeah, imagine how much Amazon made. If we made 1.1 billion, imagine how much Amazon made
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But anyway, we're not here. We love Amazon, okay? We love Amazon
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And that's what it, that's what it's doing for us. Okay, so they made that from the Kindle Unlimited program
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So it's not necessarily booksells. That's just the Kindle unlimited program. And that's something completely different to just putting your books up and selling them
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So that something important to note What you need to do is make sure that your book is in the right category the right genre So if you writing a novel or a cookbook you need to make sure you done extensive research
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because a lot of books are played out and the competition is just crazy
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So you want to make sure that your book fits in one, a category of passionate about enough to write a book on
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but also that it's not oversaturated with just rubbish content because then your book's going to be
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overshadowed. So you want to make sure the genre is right and also the categories you select
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are right. And if I can show you, if I can show you, I think I'll just cut it in this video
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but if I can show you the category selection progress, progress, what's the word I'm looking for
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process if i can show you the category selection process you'll see there are a range of categories um
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you don't really want to go throwing it into any category just because it's low competition but you
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do want to do research on categories that are getting a good search volume but also um
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but are also low competition so that's if you're going to if you're if you want to go through
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all of that if you're really trying to maximize your sales if you just want to
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get your book done, you don't have to do all of that. It's just the batter of getting your book
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published. So getting your cover to the right dimension, this is something that gave me a lot of
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headache in the beginning because they've told me this is the size. I've given it the size
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I'm having all sorts of issues with bleed. All of that stuff can be really frustrating
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So making sure your cover meets the specifications that they've outlined. making sure your book, your actual manuscript, is formatted well and edited well
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I can't stress that enough. People skip and skimp on the editing process and then have a bunch of errors in their book
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a bunch of formatting issues. And that leads to negative reviews. And once you have negative reviews, you can kiss your sales goodbye
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You're just going to have to start on a new book. You're just going to have to start on a new book
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Make sure that you're not skrimping. I don't know what the word is
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Just make sure that you're putting effort into the editing process. In my blog, I just talk about ranking
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Oh, and also, you can look at some of the books that are doing really well
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and you can kind of reverse engineer that, so you can really look at why they're doing so well
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You don't have to go as far as buying the book. You can look at things like the cover
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the description, some people use HTML in their description. Some people don't know how to do that
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So you can have plain text where everything's just bunched together, or you can use HTML
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have basic HTML. They don't let you go and put big H2 headers or anything like that
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but you can, you can use HTML to break your, to break your description apart and really try and
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sell your book that way. So the cover design, the description, these are people that have
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have not had the chance to flick through your book as they would in a bookshop. So you really want to
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try and sell them that cover, that blur, what they can see of the book. You really want to try and
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sell that to them as best as you can. And on Amazon, you do that by writing a kick-ass description and
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making a kick-ass cover. And then hoping that as people come through, they review your book so
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you get more people. Once people see reviews, we all just think about yourself
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as a shopper. Once you see positive reviews, you see lots of stars. Just a few stars is good enough
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and that will make you want to buy the book? So will you make money self-publishing? If you
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make a decent book, you will make money self-publishing. Where people go wrong is putting
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is making their book and putting it up and expecting that sales are just going to magically fly in
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They think their book is the best book since sliced bread and that people are just going to
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flocking from nowhere, having not heard of it at all and just start buying it and that's not the
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case. So you really do need to understand having a great product is one thing, but having an existing
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like having your website, your author website, having an existing, well, if this is your first book
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you not going to have a fan base but having a marketing strategy So using social media using things like Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook um using Amazon advertising Amazon advertising is huge it is such a good
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tool a lot of people tend to go to Google and try and run Google ads which doesn't make any
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sense because Amazon where the book already is allows you to not only target keyword
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but you can also target similar books. So I had a book, well, I have a book called The Tale of the Three Cookiemen
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which is like a play on the gingerbread man story. And all I'd done initially to get my first few sales was run an ad
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a sponsored ad against similar books. So the three little pigs, the other, all the other gingerbread man stories
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things like that. And it's the same with my Kwanza book. around this time, around Christmas time, around the season of Kwan, around the actual holiday of Kwanza
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obviously my book's going to sell a lot more. But run an ad at that time, run an ad October, September, October, November, November, December and my sales just skyrocket
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So using that Amazon advertising is a huge opportunity. And yeah, again, the fact that you get the amount of
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of royalties that you get. For a book you could essentially, if you are skilled in graphic design
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you written your book and you're good enough to edit it yourself and you've not put any money
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into it besides, you know, your electricity, then you're essentially publishing your book for
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completely free. You're publishing your book for free and then every time that sells
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that is essentially a hundred percent profit because despite how much royalties they take
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you've not spent any money so everything you get is just all profit and that is the potential of
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selling self-publishing and doing that with amazon kadp and then you also have the opportunity to
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take that one product which i go on about all the time is an intellectual property to take that one
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e-book or um physical book and turn it into an e-book or an audio book so you can have three different
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formats from that same book and really maximise your sales. So your job is to focus on content
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to focus on your content, to focus on your formatting, your editing, your cover and your description
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And also making sure if you've not already written your book and you're just looking for a way
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to get it done, if you're just planning the stages, just make sure you think hard about
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what genre and what categories you're going to try and fall into
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And then the rest is just up to you being very smart with your advertising and your reviews
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And also there are actually review programs you can join. You can send your books over to people to get them to have a look through and review it and get edited
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You can add that to your description. I talk all about this in the blog, but generally
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There are a lot of tips and tricks to maximising your sales
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but the most important thing to know is that you can get your book published very easily and very free if you want to do it for free
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You can also do it for if you've got a budget. Lots of people have asked me that, you know, what's the lowest
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You can get it done if you need to hire a freelancer to do XYZ
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So I made a plan. I made a plan or a guide of how you can get
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your book published on Amazon for under $200. So that's another thing to look at
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If you're not able to design certain things yourself, and you do want to have a proofreader and things like that
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you can still get it all done for under $200. And that is whether it is a children's book that needs illustration
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or a whole 60,000 words. You can still get that done for under $200
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But that's it, guys. I do tend to go off on a tangent. but when I'm trying to reduce these 1,500, 2,000 word posts into a short video
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it just never goes, it never goes to plan. I can't just put it into succinct points because there's so much to be said
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But yeah, if you found this useful, please, please, please check out the blog
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It's www.selfpublishedwiz.com links in the description and everything else. Peace
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