Introduction
So, you are getting started with self publishing or you are considering if it is right for you. After years of self publishing I have met two types of people who get into self publishing on Kindle.
- Those who have always wanted to be an author and have a book they have been wanting to write or have written one
- Those people who want to make money online with ghostwriters
Regardless of which group you fall under self publishing to Kindle will be perfect for you. Though, usually, the people in the second group learn the rules of the game much faster than the first group. That is a different story though.
Check out this related article: How To Get Rated By Renowned Authors?
When I first started self-publishing, I realized that there are winning strategies regarding what you should write about and also how you present your book. I considered different publishing options before going with Kindle, but looking back, it was exactly the right decision for me and almost certainly for you as well.
1. It is Free to Self Publish for Kindle (well sort of)
Self publishing for Kindle costs nothing. You can easily set up your account and get started right away. This comes with the advantage for anyone who has no money to spend. Perhaps you have time, but not the money to spend. This option will be perfect for you to start self publishing on Kindle to make money online.
Not quite Free
While you can publish without paying a single penny, this isn’t something I would recommend. Unless you are a graphic designer, you will need to hire someone to make your cover for your book. You will need the right tools to format your book for KDP.
I personally use Jutoh since it gets the job done and the end result is better than anything else on the market. You may wish to hire editors for your book and then comes the marketing. Though, none of these items are required and there are free ways of getting around all of them.
Check out this related article: Can You Edit Your eBook After It Is Published?
I remember when I first started publishing, I had little money to cover the costs. I used the little money I had to pay for one part of the book at a time. I wasted money on things that didn’t matter.
Some months I would have to wait until the following month to have enough money to pay for the cover or editing. I spent money on formatting that had to be redone. However, when the first book was published and I started to see sales, it made everything worth it. After that I was able to increase my budget to pay to get my books published on ACX.
Do you have lots of money to spend on getting your book onto the market? If not, wouldn’t it be nice to get your first book on the market for free or close to free? Doing it for free would be a very good start to self publishing on Kindle to make money.
2. You Can Control How Fast You are Moving
This is one of the best advantages of publishing. You can move as fast or slowly as you would like. With traditional publishing, there are many phases your book will need to go through which will require you to do a lot of waiting. If you are self publishing your book on Kindle, you can literally post it the day you finish writing it.
You can even just post the Word file itself. Though, this isn’t recommended for quality reasons. It is important to still have a plan to keep yourself moving forward daily on writing your book and self publishing on Kindle to make money. However, the stress of having deadlines from a publisher can be too much for some people.
So, you are better off deciding your own deadlines and trying to keep producing content daily. When I first started, I set aside time every day to write 1000 words. Since I didn’t get an advance from a publisher, I was able to decide how fast I would write. This can be a problem if you aren’t setting a daily goal.
Some authors have said that the most important thing is BIS (Butt in seat). If you want to be a writer you will need to write. I found it hard some days and easier others to write. Though, by pressing through the resistance on a daily basis I found that this was doable.
Do you need other people telling you how fast you need to write your book? Wouldn’t you prefer choosing your own pace and working on your book as you see fit?
3. There Are no Gatekeepers
Traditional publishing has plenty of gatekeepers that have one job which is filtering out books. If you decide that self publishing to Kindle is right for you, you can move forward without any gatekeepers at all. Amazon does work as a gatekeeper, but they are just ensuring the formatting is correct and that you aren’t stealing other people’s books.
Just because there are no gatekeepers doesn’t mean you should drop the quality of your books. Rather, it means that you are in charge of how good your books are when pushing them out of the Kindle. In addition, you are free to pull them off the market and improve them as well if that is what it takes to help them sell better.
I immediately could see how easy it was to publish on Kindle and that there was no one in my way telling me whether my books were good enough or not. Amazon Kindle Self Publishing was simple to get started with for me and I never had any rejection from anyone. The closest was in the beginning when Amazon had issues with my manuscript and I had to figure out how to get it correct.
Though, that was more of a challenge than a rejection of my writing itself. Do you really want to have to go through gatekeepers in order to get your book out on the market? Wouldn’t you prefer to decide when and how your book will be published?
4. You Can Be First To Get To Market
If you have an amazing idea for a book, you can be the first to market with your idea. Traditional publishers won’t want to sell your book if they haven’t seen other people on the same topic first able to sell the book. They are only interested in returning a profit. Whereas you may be interested in just getting your ideas out.
In addition, there may be a new fad hitting the market and you want to write a book on the topic quickly to make money while it can be made. For example, if you chose to write on fidget spinners or coloring books for adults, you have a short window to write those books. Here we are looking at making a killing in the short term. You can put together a book quickly and start self publishing an ebook with Amazon Kindle right away.
Check out this related article: Can I Reuse The Same Illustration For Multiple Books?
I have published books on topics that were relevant in the news. I was able to get some books out within a week of a topic becoming hot. Those books did amazingly well since there was limited or no competition. If I had done this through traditional publishing, it would have taken forever to get my ideas published.
When you find a great idea for your book, are you ok with waiting months or years to get it to the market? Or, perhaps you would prefer to get it to the market within a few weeks?
5. You Keep Control of Your Project
This is one of the biggest advantages. You will be able to keep 100% control of your project. If you want to update it, just update it and republish it. Self Publishing on Kindle is extremely flexible and each change you make will take Amazon only a day to get your newest version posted.
This is especially important when it comes to books on politics or medicine where the advice may change with time and need to be updated. You simply go into your book and make the changes and publish it again.
I absolutely loved with my books seeing that I could do anything I wanted with them when I wanted. I completely underestimated the importance of control until I heard the nightmares of people trying to get back the rights to their books that were sold through traditional publishers.
The pain of seeing your book not sell and not being able to do anything about it is is extremely painful. That is a pain I have never experienced. Do you really want other people sitting on the rights to your books and all of the hard work you put into them?
6. The Royalties are Much Higher
This is perhaps one of the best reasons. Many people ask:
Is Self Publishing on Kindle Profitable?
Yes, it is very profitable. You can make a 70% profit off of your books when priced correctly. Everything depends upon the quality of your book which includes your cover, description, formatting, reviews, and other important factors.
You may think that since you can make more money on paperback books, the Kindle books will undercut your paperback sales. However, this is a huge mistake. You are not competing for the same customers. Many customers prefer to read on Kindle.
The Royalties on paperbacks are around 40%. However, some people find the Kindle version first and then click to grab the paperback once they see you have that version available.
I was shocked by just how much my earnings were after I learned the different tricks of the trade for sales and marketing and producing high-quality books. The money I made was reinvested in more books. I soon discovered that I couldn’t publish faster unless I hired ghost writers to write books for me.
However, I never put my name on books I didn’t actually write. Though, the royalties build up fast and open many other doors for you in your self-publishing adventure.
What level of royalties are you looking for? Are you OK with the 10% royalties major publishers will give you, or would you prefer to make 70%? Is being published by a major publisher that important that you are willing to work for so much less?
7. You Have the Ability to Move To Traditional Publishing Later
If your self published book sells well and brings in a following, you can easily use that data to get traditional publishers to give your book a chance.
Self Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing
Self publishing used to have a bad name. Though, it is a perfect gateway to move over to traditional publishing since you will have the experience of writing, publishing, and marketing. This gives you the advantage you will need when contacting traditional publishers with your manuscript.
They don’t want to take a risk on your book if it isn’t going to sell. However, if you can show them that it is selling already, the risk is partially removed. Also, if you can build a social media following and have an email list, you can tell them all of these numbers to prove, without a doubt, that your books will sell when they are sold by them.
Check out this related article: Self Publishing VS Traditional Publishing, Who Wins?
When I first started publishing I remember listening to all of the podcasts I could find on self-publishing and learned very quickly that there were tons of publishers out there who regretted publishing with traditional publishing. The main reason was that their books were locked and they weren’t able to fix the issues with the books. So, I immediately knew that self-publishing was the right direction for me.
Is traditional publishing important to you? If so, have you considered that by selling many copies of your self published book, that you can use this to help a major publisher see that they should give your book a chance as well?
8. You Own The Rights to Your Books
Many people don’t realize that with traditional publishing you often lose the rights to your books. So, should you with to make changes to your book or sell it on a different platform, you will have to get permission from the publisher to make these changes. Since they are mostly focused on books that are selling or new books, they have little interest to use any time on helping you with your book.
When you're self publishing on Kindle, you can make changes whenever you want with your ebook. You own 100% of the rights to the book. This is a huge advantage when you have written a book that will change with time.
A huge advantage I discovered with owning the rights to your books is that you can publish them across multiple platforms without having to ask for permission. In my case, I was looking at not just kindle, but audiobooks on ACX, soft cover books on CreateSpace (Kindle Print) and even hard cover books on Lulu.
The options of what you can do with your books are not limited and you never have to ask for permission. A wide distribution means a bigger audience of customers who will buy from you.
Do you think you can manage to get your book perfect your first try? Do you want to have to go through other companies and wait for months or years to make small changes that are needed to improve the quality of your book?
9. You Control The Marketing and Distribution
When you self publish Kindle digital books, you have complete control over the marketing and distribution of your ebook. This means that you don’t have to ask for permission to do a tour or post portions of your book on your website. When a traditional publisher owns the rights to your book, they also may have tighter controls over marketing.
Most people think that publishers will pay for them to make a book tour and signings to help get their book selling. The problem is that the traditional publishers aren’t interested in paying money unless they are sure your book will earn money for them. So, they do most of their marketing for books that would sell anyway.
For me, this reason alone makes it easy to see the advantages of self publishing on Kindle. I want my books on all markets and want to control the price they are selling at as well as the ads that are driving customers to buy my books. This is never something you want to leave up to other people who don’t have an interest in whether your books sell or not. I also found the importance of finding a community of self-publishers.
Read more about this at 3 Steps To Winning With Self-Publishing Signs.
How many different stores and formats would you like to publish your books? Have you considered that the more places you publish it, the more money you will end up making and the more people you will reach?
10. Improve Your CV/Resume
By self publishing with Amazon Kindle, you will establish yourself as an authority and as an author. It doesn’t matter whether you feel like an author. The second you have the book on the market, the perception will be that you are an author.
After selling thousands of books myself, I’m not sure there is ever a point where you feel like an author. While thousands of self-published books hit the market daily, that doesn’t pull away from this powerful line on your CV/Resume that you have published a book.
In what ways would self-publishing on Kindle improve your image regarding your CV? Does your image as an authority in your field matter to you?
11. Because You Can!
While self publishing for kindle doesn’t guarantee you will become a self published kindle millionaire, it does mean that you will be able to earn money if you follow the best practices for Kindle books and you will see your books sell. I have never met anyone who followed the best strategies that haven’t been able to earn their money back for the expenses they have taken.
The Kindle revolution opens plenty of doors to learn how online businesses run and also to express yourself and your ideas to the world. Sometimes, just being able to do something amazing is reason enough to do it. There has never been such an opportunity to get your ideas out into the world than right this moment.
Being able to do it should be reason enough if you have something worth telling. The feeling of putting my first book on the market was amazing. You have all of these ideas in your head and cannot just tell people about them, but make money telling thousands of people about your ideas.
Right now there are hundreds of people reading and listening to the ideas that I have used years coming up with. Just imagine how many people would love and even pay to hear what you have to say on different subjects. Self-publishing on Kindle is a way of serving the wider community of readers in telling them what is on your heart whether a story or non-fiction.
12. Because Not All Readers Like Paper Books
Many people have a preferred way of reading and won’t buy an ebook if it isn’t in the format that they like. For some, it may be that they like audio books and for others they prefer paper. Though, Kindle books are in high demand and not having a Kindle book on the market for your book is just giving away money that would otherwise be yours.
I started right away with Kindle publishing since it was the easiest way to publish before I moved onto paperbacks, hardbacks, and audiobooks. My paperbacks have made me much more money than the Kindle versions. Though, there have been plenty of Kindle sales that helped me see they shouldn’t be underestimated.
Do you think people would like to read your book if it is in Kindle format? Can you afford to not make money from a Kindle version of your book?
Conclusion
I hope you now better understand the 11 top reasons you should be self publishing on Kindle. Prior that, please understand the steps to write and publish an ebook.
Please share in the comments if you have any reasons that I may have missed. Are there other advantages to self publishing on Kindle that I have missed? Is there any advantage to not publishing on Kindle?
