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Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon. Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of wo
by impostervt 5y ago
Publish books on Amazon. I've published 4 and make about $3k in profit per month, after paying for ads on amazon.
Don't write them yourself, that's a lot of work.
Instead, do key word research about what books sell in non-fiction categories (fiction is a whole different ballgame). Look for keywords that 1) auto complete in the amazon search bar, and 2) have less than 4,000 matching books, and 3) have an average Amazon BSR of less than 150k.
The above isn't easy, nor is it particularly difficult.
Once you've found a good keyword, create an outline on the subject. You'll have to do a bit of research here, but this can be done in a few hours to a few days. The more time you spend here, the better your result will be.
Then, hire a ghostwriter to produce a 30k-ish word long book. This will run you around $1000, and produce a book long enough to turn into a 3+ hour audiobook on Audible (audiobooks over 3hrs get significantly better royalties than less than 3 hours).
Get a cover made. This will run from $50ish on fiverr to several hundred on 99designs or upwork. Don't cheap out, good covers are important.
Publish on amazon. Run ads.
There's obviously more too it than this. If interested, look up the Mikkelsen twins or Dane McBeth on youtube.
- bugzz 5y agoAre the books any good? What are reviews like?
- impostervt 5y agoI like to think my books are good. One has over 900 reviews with an average of 4.8 stars. Two others have over 100 reviews with about a 4.6. The 4th one has about 20 reviews with 4.4 stars-ish (I didn't follow the formula on this one, my own fault). I'm not the only one doing this, of course. Most of the books I see my competitors make are of lower quality, but they probably paid a lot less for them. In general, books made by people like me read like really long blog posts - because that's where most of the information comes from.
- glenneroo 5y agoDid you buy any of those reviews?
- robmerki 5y agoThey are poor quality and clearly written by ghost writers. I don't blame people for going for the easy money, but it's like paying "writers" to write thousands of articles about "best pool equipment 2021" to target keywords on Google just so you can soak up Amazon affiliate revenue. Sure you make money, but how many people are reading your "blog" as fact?
- marmot777 5y agoYeah, the review sites that drive affiliate revenue with content marketing SEO tend to hire low cost writers to do web searches and write articles, stopping just short of the plagiarism line, realizing that duplicate content isn’t good for SEO. These sites aren’t going to to really test the pool cleaning equipment, the web hosting services being reviewed and ranked, learning Python tutorials. Nobody is going to pay anyone to test anything to make sure how the how-to cobbled together from three similar articles actually works.
- starik36 5y agoWouldn't the author have to be knowledgeable about the subject? 30k words for $1000 sounds pretty low for an expert.
- impostervt 5y agoThey do their own research too, but they're not experts. You'll have to get at least mildly informed on the subject to make the outline and make sure the writer stays on track. I tend to read several book on whatever the subject is to make sure my book captures the best information I can find.
- marmot777 5y agoGhost written or quick buck books are super common in Google Unlimited or low priced books. I can now spot them pretty quickly. Tech books are an area where I’d go with a known publishing house that has a good track record.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoSeriously, whatever happened to being an expert on a certain domain of knowledge? This sounds like a disgusting startup-esque approach to writing a book.
- twox2 5y agoHow much do you have to spend on ads to make the $3K? I I imagine it's a hefty sum?
- impostervt 5y agoAround $1000 - $1500. The $3k varies by month too. April and May have been slow, while Jan/Feb were really good.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- secondcoming 5y agoIncredible. Do you publish under a ghost name?
- impostervt 5y agoYes, several. Each pen name has their own "personality" and focuses on different aspects.
- dotBen 5y agoThere's something about this that just makes me really sad. I guess being in my late 30's I hold on to the flawed notion that there is sanctity in something that is 'published'. Does anyone here want to read a book that wasn't written by an expert on the topic? How upset or sad would you feel if you spend several hours reading a book only to discover it was produced by an opportunist who picked that keyword and asked someone in a developing nation with no expertise about the subject to grok some blogs (which might or might not be factually correct) and pad out to make it a 3hr audiobook read. I'm sorry, I just think it's a shitty thing to be doing. I'm not against making money (I'm a VC!) but it just undermines the integrity of the medium of books because now you have to sort out 'real' knowledgeable authors from this carpet bagging.
- brailsafe 5y agoAgreed. Not that Amazon is where I normally buy books anyway, but it makes me think twice baout doing so. Feels like a bit of a dilution of an otherwise well-regarded art form when someone can just be producing arbitrary books. That said, I suppose this isn't new, and has been happening with textbooks forever.
- satvikpendem 5y agoWho says the ghostwriter is not an expert on the topic? The above is quite similar to a startup incubator, there is a demand in the marketplace that's unmet, one hires people to meet that demand and develop a product after which customers buy it.
- crucialfelix 5y ago$1000 says he isn't.
- satvikpendem 5y agoMaybe. Looks like the OP says his books are pretty good with high ratings and a high volume of ratings as well, so they must be enjoyable enough to the people who buy them.
- Poiesis 5y agoIs this $3000 for one book or all four?
- impostervt 5y agoAll 4.
- pjdemers 5y agoThe big reason to get a ghost writer is because writing books is easy, editing them is hard. Amazon's search algorithm dings books for every little grammar, wording, and punctuation error. Unless you were an English major, you will spend 75% of your time getting every sentence perfect. Hiring someone to edit costs about the same as hiring someone to write.
- impostervt 5y agoA simple line editor shouldn't run you more than $200 for a 30k book.
- stevenhuang 5y agoWhat kind of topics do you write about? Is it programming/reference material like "Mastering framework X in lang Y"?
- impostervt 5y agoI won't say what category I focus on, but I will say that programming books don't sell well, in general. Some do quite well, but most don't.
- stevenhuang 5y agoThanks yea that's what I figured, it's all about finding that niche and going for it.
- atatatat 5y agoDog and bird training, growing plants, etc
- laserdancepony 5y agoYou are a Ferengi, we get it.
- louissm_it 5y ago"They're greedy, misogynistic, untrustworthy little trolls, and I wouldn't turn my back on one of them for a second."
- draw_down 5y agoFlagged
- cjohansson 5y agoThat does not sound passive to me, ideally a passive income should require minimal amount of working hours outside of ones regular job
- vineyardmike 5y agoPassive income is about "do once, profit passively forever after" and this fits that -> write once, revenue forever. No income source is truly "free". Either you pay with time or money.
- Romanulus 5y agoHow did you get into this... I am assuming you didn't come up with the idea/method since there seems to be competition out there already. How long have you been at it and, when you decided to take the plunge, how long did it take you to get everything set up and going before your first publish (as in figuring out the ropes)?
- bennysomething 5y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/celinnedacosta/2021/12/28/pushing-a-new-amazon-business-model-to-the-forefront/?sh=31c614deaaef https://www.forbes.com/sites/celinnedacosta/2021/12/28/pushi... I looked the twins up. Looks like they've figured they can make more selling courses on what you describe. A family member does FBA and does quite well. The book selling thing just sounds grim to me.
- louissm_it 5y agoMaybe I'm being dumb - and there certainly is no rule written in stone about this - but I expect a level of craftsmanship and dedication from published books that only comes from years of research/experience. I would hate to spend my dollars and hours reading a book only to discover it was written by some ghost writer. It's the kind of thing I expect from a Medium article. I can't exactly point out what, but it feels gross.
- foobiter 5y agoI hate everything about this. Every step in this process is about making money and nothing else.
- Justin_K 5y agoThis is not passive advice whatsoever. It all requires regular "maintenance".
- ElectricMind 5y agoFirst of all thanks for sharing "inside" secret. Old me would have judged you but not any more. Man got to do what he need to do. All the best :)
- spaceisballer 5y agoDamn, this is one of the more disappointing things I’ve read on HN. Everyone is just trying to exploit the system for a dollar, I get it that’s capitalism. It’s just kind of saddening to me, it’s like the social media infection spreading. Where you can’t really trust what you read because you have a fake author, hiring a maybe expert to write a book. Hell, that ghost writer may have developed a good algorithm for pulling together information for that book, or just copying and pasting from places. I guess I just have issues with the do whatever I can to earn a buck thing.
- codegeek 5y agoNow you have given Instagramers the secret sauce to "How to Launch a book on Amazon without any work and make a killing". Be ready for the Tsunami of these creators who are charging money to teach others how to do it.
- dariusj18 5y agoWhere do you go to hire the ghostwriters, or did you find one that you go back to each time?
- impostervt 5y agoI tend to use hotghostwriters.com. The output isn't bad, but I still end up paying quite a bit for editing.
- pknerd 5y agoYou should write a book how one can do it:)
- randomopining 5y agoDon't people give it like 1-2 star reviews and it tanks with a few months?
- kwinten 5y agoThis is just so incredibly filthy.
- Bologo 5y agoDo you run the ads on Amazon itself, or on Google Ads, or Reddit ads, or somewhere else?
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y agoWell, he did create "an outline on the subject" and spent a few days on it. It is theoretically possible he is so talented that this creative work alone made it a worthy read.