Just over a month ago, I launched a free book promotion for my best seller at the time 'Your First Marathon' on this Blog. I had taken part in a couple of KDP's FREE promotions prior to this one, but the downloads I received for the Marathon Book were twice as high in comparison. I think the downloads from you fellow readers were a huge part to play in that. Thank you so much for your help! I wasn't sure what people would think of me doing these promotions on the Blog, and I was surprised not to receive one negative comment on it. The comments and emails I received were all positive and it seemed like people were either genuinely interested to help out, curious to see what I had in my books to see how I made money or to a lesser extent, interested in running a marathon.
I'm running another FREE book promotion on Amazon for Richard Bond's second book - 'Your First Triathlon'.
It's starts on Sunday 3rd May and finishes on Thursday 7th May
You don't need a Kindle device to download the book, you can do so with the smart phone or computer. If you're interested in learning about completing a Triathlon, what content I put in my books, or just wanting to help out, I would hugely appreciate you downloading it.
Link to Amazon UK
Link to Amazon US
If you decide to download the book, and find any value in it, then please feel free to leave a positive review. Downloads and Reviews help the books rank higher on Amazon and give other customers a better perspective of what it's all about.
Marathon Book Sales After The Free Promotion
As I discussed on my previous promotion, the more downloads it receives, the higher it ranks on Amazon for people searching for Triathlon books. More people are exposed to the book and you get more reviews. When the promotion finishes, it should make more sales than what it was making before hand.
My Marathon book sales increased after the promotion ended and I'm hoping the same thing will happen again with this book.
In the 4 weeks prior to the promotion (most of March), the book made approximately £27 and had 2 x downloads from Kindle Unlimited customers.
In the following 4 weeks after the promotion (most of April), the book made around £36 from direct sales and had 12 x Kindle Unlimited downloads.
At the end of each month, Amazon pay me a cut of revenue for the downloads made with Kindle Unlimited for my books. I made £9 more in direct sales (33% increase) and 10 more sales from KU downloads (500% increase). I hope this can be replicated!
Kindle Niches Lead To Success
One of the biggest learning points I was taught in my Kindle course was the importance of authority creation or building a brand around a topic/niche.
Once you find a topic that sells well, keep the pen name, design covers that look similar and produce books around that area. People tend to buy the other books in the series or even the whole lot. At the same time you're also building more credibility for the customer in that area.
For example, if you have an isolated triathlon book for beginners, like mine, it might generate decent sales. But, if you sell the triathlon book, alongside an Ironman Triathlon book, and a Nutrition for Triathletes book, you're much more likely to boost the sales for your beginner book, as well as total sales across the board. People will be more receptive to hear what you have to say.
You're also widening your readership to three areas rather than one. People might buy the Nutrition book, because they liked the Triathlon beginner book, and the cycle continues with all the other books you produce. Its impact is similar to compound interest in that regard, and I've noticed this benefit with other pen names I have in certain niches.
I've been a beginner marathon runner and triathlete, so I knew the topic well. I wanted to publish two books that helped people like me in that position. I have a couple of other books that are being created for Mr Bond, and I hope to continue developing the readership and sales in that niche. The progress has been halted a little but I remain positive for the future.....
Writer Ups and Downs
Once you find a good writer, and they're hard to find, you want to cling onto them and never let them go. My Mr Bond writer has been told by his doctor to write less due to a strain he has. He wants to finish the book he's currently doing for me, but it's taken him a long time (understandably) to complete it. After that we're going to part ways so he can get back to full health. It's such a shame because I've really enjoyed working with him, and I know he's struggling with not being able to write. He enjoys the process, and it earns him a nice side income. I'm hoping that later this year, we'll be able to team up again and develop the Mr Bond niche further, but I hope he gets back to full health more than anything for his own well being.
On a more positive note, I have another writer that's doing exceptionally well for himself and consequently me. He's written 4 books for me now, and is about to finish the 5th one - all under the same pen name. The sales from this niche are going from strength to strength. I've paid off the costs from 2 out of the 4 books already, and the third is close to being paid off already. He's recently handed in his resignation to his employer, and plans to write full time. It's all very inspiring! He asked if I'm happy to provide books to him on a weekly basis as he'll have more time to write, for which I answered:
"Do residents from Omaha know it's Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting this weekend?"
It's fair to say I snapped his hand off!
This alone should help me get towards the 50 books I want to publish in 2015, but I don't want to stop there. I have other plans.....
Writing My Own Book
My aim is to continue publishing books that other people are writing for me. The formula is working, so why change it!
Why bother?
I enjoy the writing process first of all. I don't think I'm a strong writer right now, but in time I'll improve - as is the case with anything you enjoy doing regularly.
I edit a lot of the work that comes back to me, which is my choice, and it can be quite time consuming. I find myself thinking about how well my version of this topic would do in comparison. One of the benefits to writing yourself is full autonomy, no parameters, and no cost. I can write 20,000 words on a topic and not worry about the money it will cost to pay for the work. It's tough when someone writes 10,000 - 15,000 words and you want to change a lot of it.
I'm interested in putting my own work out there on Amazon. I plan on covering topics/niches that I'm passionate about like Early Retirement, living frugally, investing, health and fitness etc. Perhaps I can create my very own niche around Huw or FFB40?!
For the last 3-4 weeks, I've been writing my first book, which will be about my life, how I got out of debt, how I changed my life, how I budget money now and live on less than £10k a year to fund my early retirement.
I've set a new goal to write at least 500 words every single day to keep my momentum going. It might not seem like a lot of words, but the everyday part is hard. Some days I write 3,000 words no problem, and others times I struggle to get to 500. I've started a new morning routine to help me achieve this goal, which involves me getting up at 4.55am during the week. I used to get up at 6am, but I found the hour wasn't really enough time to make substantial progress on anything. Now, I work between 5.15am and 7.15am, which guarantees at least 2 hours of writing to meet that word count goal. If I manage to come home in the evening and write a little more then it's a bonus, but it rarely happens. The first week was horrible. I was knackered at work come 3pm, but I've slowly adapted to it like most things in life. For example, I slept until 6am this morning without the alarm, it was wonderful! :-)
I would encourage anyone to get up 1-2 hours earlier than they normally do to complete a task that's important to them
I'm going to be adding the Goal of launching my book on Amazon to my current list. Partly to keep some urgency, but mainly because I want to pad out that list a little more! ;-)
I'd like to release it by the York Gathering in August as it's 3 months away, but we'll see how I get on.
I don't know how it'll be received. It could be a giant flop or a minor success. Part of me doesn't really care about the outcome. I've learned a lot from doing this process, and I still have a lot more to learn. Watching Jason from Dividend Mantra release his book was very inspiring and gave me a much needed boost.
Perhaps one day, when I'm FI, I could continue to write for a living on this Blog, and release other books on topics that I love. That's the outcome I'm really after.
I plan on writing more specific posts on Kindle in the near future, and I'll continue to keep you all updated with my progress.
Thanks again for all of your support! I hope you all have a great Bank Holiday weekend!
Are you interested in Downloading the Triathlon book? Do you want me to cover any areas of Kindle Publishing on this Blog? What do you think about my book idea? Are there any other topics you'd be interested in me writing about? Are four questions at the bottom of a Blog too much? How about five?
Labels: Free Book, Kindle Publishing, Triathlon
