About a month back I wrote an article about my experience with writing my first eBook. What were the challenges I faced while writing it and how did I manage to overcome my procrastination to finally finish it.
Overall it was an exhilarating feeling and a sense of great achievement. Honestly speaking I did not expect any financial returns from this endeavour. It was like a running a marathon to me. I just wanted to prove to myself that I can finish it. I did not expect any prizes or rewards for doing it.
I had read many blogs that highlighted the fact that platforms like KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) have made publishing books accessible for everyone with an internet connection which is a good thing for sure. On the flip side it has created a huge supply of books with many of them being sub-standard. This makes it a herculean task for you to make you book stand out, get users attention and the final step of clinching a sale.
I had no marketing budget to promote my book so that made my chances of striking a sale even slimmer.
After considering this context you can imagine my surprise when today I noticed that my book had actually managed to get a sale. It didn’t feel anything less than a miracle.
Interested to Know the Sale Value?
If you were expecting this post to be about how I made a million dollar book deal and lived happily ever after then what I am going to say next is going to be a major disappoint.
The sale was of $3, from which Kindle took it’s commission so the net amount credited to my account was $2.1 which will not be sufficient to get a cup of coffee.
Why Does this $2 Sale Matter So Much to Me?
Despite being a meagre insignificant amount this $2 is huge for me. It may not be enough to purchase anything but it is an eye opener for me that despite the huge number of eBooks available my first humble book was able to find an interested buyer willing to shell out $3 for it.
It shows me that the this model still works despite the high number of writers publishing their content online. This makes it clear that for writers willing to make the effort there is still earning potential in ePublishing of books.
I has hesitant to start working on my next book as I was not sure if it makes sense putting in the efforts again and again if there never will be any financial benefit coming out of it.
It gives me the optimism that this model can be scaled up in the future.
What It Means for You?
Well if you hate writing then not much but if you enjoy writing then it is definitely an option as a side hustle you should try out.
Some years ago publishing a book meant heavy investment of time in writing a big book. Then investing money through. Publisher who would agree to print and market you book. The downside risk if your book did not do well was huge.
Now with online publishing platforms you don’t need to spend anything and the whole publishing process takes 5 minutes after you have the book ready.
You don’t need to wait years to write your 100,000 manuscript. There is a huge demand for short books. The one I wrote was about 12,000 words.
In blog terms that is like 14-15 blogs so yeah the effort would be much more than writing a basic blog post but not as daunting as you might have imagined.
If you belong to the category of people who have already been publishing eBooks then I would really appreciate some tips on how do you market your books to get better visibility, without spending a bomb of course.
What Next for Me?
I have a big closet of procrastination where I store my big ideas for writing a book but never implement them. Now I actually plan to get my behind moving and start putting those ideas on paper, digital paper that is. So watch out as there will be follow up posts about how I wrote my second and third book.
If you are interested to read my previous post about my experience of writing that book you can find it here - https://medium.com/@sambtc/how-writing-a-book-changes-you-completely-252d632e3d3c
If you are interested in contributing to the second sale of my book, you can find it here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3RRRKSB
Cheers,
Sam
About the Creator
Sam BTC
My Post will be focused around Spirituality, Mythology and Blockchain proejcts which are the topics that interest me the most.
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