You might be interested in doing self-publishing as a business but you are not sure if it will be worth it. Find out if self published books can really make money as well as some tips that will help you on your self-publishing journey.
Today's question has three answers and the third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because I'm going to tell you a strategy I haven't mentioned before.
It is a secret on how you can get your books to make money. So, let's get into today's question. The question that was sent in is, can self published books make money?
Not So Obvious Strategies
This is an excellent question that many people when they're first getting started with "maybe I'd like to make money online" or "maybe I've got some ideas of books that I've already written or would like to write".
But is it something that's actually going to earn me a profit at the end of the day? Or is it just something that you can do but nobody's going to buy your books. And so it's sort of going to be a waste of time to even bothering.
That is what we're going to answer today. But before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Power Checklist. It will give you the secrets to start earning on your books.
So, can self published books make money? Well, let me tell you a little about my own story. When I first got self-publishing years and years ago, I started and I was working through a specific book that I was reading at the time.
Check out this related article: Can Self Publishing Be Profitable?
It was going step by step on How To Self-Publish. After that, I'd followed all the steps and had released my book. I wasn't seeing very many sales, in fact, I was seeing just a small trickle of sales.
There were a few key strategies that were not mentioned in the book that were completely decisive on whether or not I would be able to make money off of my book. There are some of the very core fundamental issues.
After coming into contact with those strategies, after taking a series of courses, reading other books, being in contact on forums, and watching Youtube videos, I came to the understanding that if you want to sell a lot of books, you cannot ignore these strategies.
They are not obvious strategies so that was a big part of my learning. So, can self published books make money? Yes, I can tell you they definitely can.
In fact, I have made plenty of money off of my books since I figured out those strategies. So, let's get into today's answers. The first is yes, they will make money if your books are optimized.
Find The Magical Markets
There is a whole series of things you're going to need to do and that brings us into the second answer of today. What do you need to do to get your books to make money? That would be the market, it's the most important thing about everything.
If there isn't a lot of hungry readers who are looking for books on your topic and there are not that many books on that topic available, that creates a gap between the high demand and low supply. That is the market we wish to jump in.
I use a tool called Kindle Spy or KDP Kindle Spy or KDP Spy. It is the tool that I use to find where those magical markets exist. Secondly, you need a good sales page.
The sales page you're going to have on Amazon and along all the other sites should have a good description. The description must be built not upon what the book is about but in terms of focusing on the things that make people want to buy that book.
That is a very important thing that a lot of people lose track of. Your book must also have a great cover. And you're going to use keywords in there that's going to trigger people to find your book in the first place if they're searching.
Your title is going to be optimized and when they look in your book, the table of contents must show up so it makes it easy for them to see. Yes, this is a book they want to buy. Then, the content itself is going to be formatted properly.
I use a tool called Jutoh to get the formatting exactly perfect. Then after the book comes out, we're going to need to get reviews on the book. Since that has a huge impact on whether people will buy the book or not.
Then we're going to run ads against the book. Now, even if you just get the market correct and do an okay job on the rest, you can still see sales and profit. If you get a terrible market, it's going to be difficult to recover from that.
So that's by far the absolute most important thing. But today's secret answer of the day and our third answer is that the more books you have, the more money you're going to make. By putting more books out there, you're going to get better at optimizing all across these different things.
Do The Bundling Too
The strategy I haven't mentioned before is the book bundling strategy. The way that it works is if we write 4 books on a topic, let's say Vegan Food, Right Vegan For Beginners, Vegan Food Advance Cooking, and Vegan Raw or something along those lines, we can then combine these books together into bundles.
So we have 4 books and for those 4 books, we're going to create 3 bundles out of it. So, let's say, we have books A, B, C, and D, you're going to have bundle AB, bundle CD, and bundle ABCD. So that means that's 3 bundles from the same books that you already have.
If we think about this clearly here, that means you write 4 manuscripts and we're going to get 7 different books out of this. So, the bundling strategy gives you the ability to make even more money.
Then, we're going to optimize all of these kinds of stuff for those 7 books. But then we're going to push even further and we're going to distribute it as audiobooks, as Kindle books, as KDP Print books, as hardback books through Lulu, and also extended distribution through Ingram Spark.
Check out this related article: Is KDP Self Publishing Right For You?
Then finally, our eBook will also go through Smashwords to come out as an EPUB. So, what we're doing is we are completely flooding the market with those 7 books that we got from the 4 manuscripts that we have across all of the different ways we could do it.
We're optimizing on each of those different areas and in the end, what we're going to see is a lot of sales coming through from these manuscripts. So, this is a little bit of a peek behind the curtain of how exactly you can make as much money as humanly possible off of the books that you're already publishing.
Conclusion
So, can self published books make money? What have you found? Go and let me know below in the comments if you have any questions.
Maybe there is something I left out. Let me know, I really enjoy reading your comments and I'll get back to you immediately.
Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.