Some Amazon Stats
Due to the new KENP Program on Amazon we’ve been putting a lot of resources into monetizing the huge catalog of eBooks in our catalog at Adoni Publishing.
So this is some solid information for authors that are doing their own Indie or Indy self-publishing at distribution channels such as Amazon.
Adoni Publishing was created in the 1990’s to carry new book titles for my own books I was writing in the 90’s and for some of the writers who were providing a lot of content across our large network of websites that featured mostly alternative news and a ton of stuff about ‘paranormal’ themes.
In the old days there was no way to sell eBooks on Amazon. I approached Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon numerous times in the 1990’s to carry our books. Since at that time I didn’t have the 1,000’s of ISBN’s we now have due to my philosophical objection to ‘numbering’ things such as ‘humans’ and my literary works, I refused for a long time to not use ISBN’s.
So our eBook DVDS and such were not allowed on Amazon back then, they have since loosened up about ISBN’s and have their own ASIN numbering system that allows ‘Indie” authors to “self publish”.
I never paid much attention to stats on ‘Zon’ (Amazon) as many like to call the tech giant, nor stats on Nook or iTunes.
I have a huge network of sites and large email lists to ‘sell’ eBooks to.
For a while we pulled most of our titles from Amazon over a dispute about how the Amazon network was allowing scammers to use my name and some other pen names I use and my titles to spam search engines saying they had my PDF files of my book.
Eventually the scam sites were either removed or became irrelevant in SERP’s (Search Engine Response Pages).
I have been following the launch of the Select KU program and KENP but since my titles were pulled by our company we could not test it, so when our titles were put on Amazon we began to issue new releases into the Select and KENP program.
I like what I see and we have tested various pricing points in our genre’s which is mainly NF (Non Fiction) and we found that having ‘low priced’ books on Amazon made little impact on sales. The minor bump you get from having .99 cent to $2.99 cent books was not enough to match what books priced at 70% royalties with $6.99 to mostly $9.99 prices earned.
If anything lower prices in the NF genres probably cheapens an authors work.
Also, a member of KU may be more likely to download for ‘free’ a KU title that is higher priced since they pay Amazon a set fee to download any title they want that is in the KU or Select program which larger publishers have thus far ignored.
Back in the ‘old days’ when I began writing my paranormal related NF the fact was I could charge whatever I wanted since I would appear on paranormal radio shows and say go to my site and then the new fan would see prices from $19.99 to even $49.99 to buy a nice formatted PDF file, now this was in the 1990’s.
Since the 1990’s my network has formatted for high quality PDF files a lot of great ‘classic works’ that were all PD (Public Domain) works, and we used them in the early era of the Net to entice users to ‘join’ our FREE EBOOK network so they could access our large catalog of high quality PDF public domain works and then we sold those users our new titles for whatever we wanted.
eBook publishing changed radically with the Kindle and Nook an later the iPad, books were now being consumed in vast numbers for the new generation of eBook readers that could all read high quality PDF files which is still in my opinion the best way for an author and publisher to present their work.
The last couple of weeks we have released a substantial amount of new titles via Zon into Select and thus far I like what I see for several reasons.
Zon does appear to me to be pushing Select Titles to entice more users of Amazon to join their subscription service known as KU or Kindle Unlimited.
For authors and publishers of larger works that NF often is, this means substantial income can come to an author and publisher from the KENP program where Zon compensates authors not on free downloads of their Select Titles that used to earn a small ‘borrow’ fee, but for EVERY PAGE A READER READS on a Kindle or on any device that has a Kindle app to read Zon Select Titles that are in the KU catalog.
There is one major drawback to entering any title into Select and that drawback is you agree to not sell the title anywhere but Amazon for each 90 day period you have that title in Select.
That means you cannot sell it yourself from your own website(s) and you can use other major eBook channels such as Nook and iTunes.
Why would a publisher or author agree to this?
Well as I stated earlier if you look at the various TOP SELLER LISTS that Amazon has for many genres you see KU titles all over the new top seller lists.
This is what I stated it is my OPINION that Zon pushes new KU Titles to entice new subscribers into join their subscription service. It’s basically Zon showing a new KU title with you can read this $9.99 book for FREE if you join Kindle Unlimited TODAY.
So Zon USES new KU Titles to bait their users to JOIN KU.
Some go for the bait but many just BUY the new KU Title.
One of the big perks in my opinion in having a title in Select is the new KENP royalties, the fact is Zon has a huge base of users in their KU program and all are looking for NEW TITLES to download for ‘FREE’ and yet the free download by KU users earn publishers and authors a nominal amount for EVERY PAGE the KU users actually reads.
Larger books fully read in the KU program can make the author and publisher a nice amount for each KU download. It’s easier to give away eBooks than sell eBooks, and Amazon has figured that out with KENP.
Another perk for books in the Select program is you get to have the title offered for FREE on Amazon for FIVE DAYS and these five day windows of FREE can help a new author or an author or publisher with a large back-list get traction. New authors should try to get their work in promotional sites such as BookBub which can generate tens of thousand of downloads for many titles.
In my opinion any decent sized work should be sold in the $4.99 to $6.99 price range, we tried lower prices on Zon and the minor bump in sales didn’t cover the loss of royalties from full priced works.
Being a top level writer that can get the public to pay for your work requires usually years of hard work earning almost no money for most authors.
In fact the industry stats for ‘authors’ as a whole from the major publishers is that the average earnings any ‘author’ makes per year is a paltry $5,000.00 USD per year from royalties.
The industry average for ‘Indie’ authors is worse, the average is that in the $500 to $1,000 per year range.
Amazon has a glut of low grade ‘books’ in their network, many are short 13 page articles really if that masquerading as a ‘book’ and some of this crap even hits top seller lists.
If you aspire to be a ‘writer’ JUST DO IT.
Many famous authors agree that it was not until they had actually written OVER 1 MILLION WORDS that they considered themselves to be a real ‘writer’.
Writing in a genre such as fiction is best done by people who have ‘creative minds’ and they with practice become artisans of the wordsmith variety. Yet, some with a keen analytical mind that can put a few words together into a compelling sentence can also be writers in the NF genre.
Writer is a lot like Golf, you get some basic instruction and then you PRACTICE and after lots of practice you get decent at the craft and if you’re meant to become a great writer, you will be recognized for your skills, but it’s not an over night sensation type of thing.
JUST DO IT
Books by Dr. Sol Adoni
