Chris A. Baird | October 14, 2020
Self Publishing On Amazon In 2020 + What You NEED To Know!

Here are some important points that you need to know if you want to do self-publishing during this year. Find out how you should go about doing self publishing on Amazon in 2020.

In today's article, you are going to learn three keys to what you need to know in 2020 when self-publishing. You're going to want to stick around because the third one is a secret where I'm going to tell you why it doesn't have to be so negative with regards to Amazon.

So, let's get into it. Today we're going to discuss self publishing on Amazon in 2020 + what you need to know! By the end of this article, you're going to know what 2020 means to you.

You are going to have the steps necessary to win in this difficult time that we are all in. And you are going to feel great about making the right choices for you during 2020.

But before we get into the keys, grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist to help you get started on your self-publishing journey. So that you can both make books and get them to sell.

So, self publishing on Amazon in 2020 + what you need to know! Let me tell you a little bit of a story. The thing is that I was walking recently on the island of Bomlo Norway and were going for a hike. Because of an injury in the family, we couldn't do our normal mountain trips.

Or maybe in the middle of the forest and a lot of these sorts of things. So we were staying on a gravel road and as we were walking down the gravel road, I was even commenting upon how often these sorts of trips are a bit boring because there's really nothing.

You're not going to experience new plants or mushrooms or nature or any interesting rock formations like we often see within Norway when we're going in the fjords across the mountain ranges.

But it's just a gravel road in one of the back areas that we've been up many times. But as we were walking down the road, I noticed some small little black dots on the side of the road in the bushes. As I got closer to them, I noticed that they were blackberries which are very rare in Norway.

In fact, I have only seen 2 other places in all of Norway on all of the hundreds of hikes that we've been on across the mountains where we found these exact berries. Blueberries and raspberries are very common but not blackberries.

So, I pulled in closer and I found a nice ripe one and as I reached in to grab it, suddenly something hit me. It was small thorns all over this plant that started sticking into my hands. Some of them even drawing blood and that was the first time I became aware of that.

Blackberries are thorn bush's incense. I didn't know that up until this point. I think perhaps the previous blackberries that I had found which were just very few were not particularly covered in them.

Or I just simply didn't get stuck by them. But as we started to gather, our hands began to get more and more sticks from the thorns that were on those bushes. And they started to bleed but the problem is that the berries are insanely good.

These were the best berries we've ever seen on any bushes in Norway and the deeper we get within to the bushes, the more berries we found. So, they were completely packed with these berries.

That helped me realized that sometimes even in a very difficult period when you're getting your hands and there are lots of bad stuff going on, you can still find opportunities and positive things in the midst of it.

And that brings us right into the key issue with self-publishing on Amazon in 2020. The key issue is that we could be focusing on which I do not wish to hit so much but we'll hit a couple of them. Because you need to know that you will make the right decisions.

Compete But Keep Your Budget Under Control

The first thing is major changes in Amazon ads which have and will continue to be the best place to go about finding new readers and pushing your books. Putting it in front of the eyes of people.

Amazon changed their policy, I think it was maybe at the end of last year where suddenly non-booksellers people could sell their physical products on the book sales pages.

The search results for the books which meant that people who are selling a Kindle book for $3 would be competing against somebody for ad bidding. Somebody who would be selling a product that could be worth $100 or $300.

So they could afford to spend more money to convert people into buying their products. So, your ad cost if you have to spend $5 to get a book to sell on Amazon for your book, then obviously, it's going to be nearly impossible for you to get somebody else's to compete with that.

Check out this related article: How Much Does Self Publishing On Amazon Cost?

The price of the ads started drastically jumping which meant the number of sales that you were going to get through your ads was going to drop. So that's on the one side. The positive side of this one just like the fruit is that it still is a fantastic opportunity.

You are going to want to compete but keep your budget under control. You need a tool for example Publisher Rocket which I use to find those keywords that are low competition for your niche. So that when you're trying to push your books onto the market, you're going to have the right keywords necessary.

That is to ensure that you aren't going to pay a fortune or lose money on the ads that you are running. Secondly, you are going to want to turn those ads off as they start to lose money. Breaking even in my opinion is a completely acceptable sense.

I'm not just selling eBooks, I'm also selling paper books and audiobooks. Through these books, people may even come back and buy. So if I can break even, I consider it completely acceptable on this.

Now, that's controversial. Some people would try to disagree with that but they are mistaken because they do not understand the power that sometimes somebody needs to see the books many times. Eventually, they come back and buy that book.

When they do, they won't see it went through those ads but actually it did. So, this is something you are going to want to consider. Next is that there's an increase in the total number of books on the market and increased competition.

With those additional books, it gets harder and harder for the average self-publisher to get your books to be found among the piles of books that are being produced.

So, there are your thorns but the fruit that you would find there is the fact that even with all of those books if you choose the right niche it will be profitable.

I use a tool called KDSpy to figure out which niches are the profitable ones. It will show you the sales rank based on searches for certain keywords. Then I would just take the total number of the books available for that keyword and divide by the number of them that are in the top 100K on the first 20 results.

That gives me a ratio or what I call The Power Ratio. We can then decide which keywords are going to be very profitable and that also comes back to the ads because there will be less competition there.

These 2 combined together to make a very powerful way for you to make money. To make sure you are not writing books or publishing books in areas for which you are going to lose money and setting yourself up for an issue right from the start.

It's A Win-Win-Win Situation

The third issue and this is the secret answer of the day and the most positive, this is the blackberry of the blackberries in the story of today. It is that profits are still fantastic in eBooks. With everyone stuck in lockdown, people need something to do.

Boredom is kicking in and Netflix can only go so far. A lot of people with their phones and more and more people around the world having more and more phones mean they can read your eBooks. So the sales in eBooks start to rise.

I've been seeing a drastic rise in them assuming you're in the correct niches which as we've discussed earlier is an incredibly important thing. Nowadays, you cannot just write any book about any subject and hope to get sales.

You have to take advantage of the environment that you have and also, keep in mind that many of your readers are at home. They are looking for something to do with all of this time on their hand.

You can play a very important role in that. You can bring your books which are very helpful and high-quality to somebody's life and make a difference. So it's a win-win-win situation.

Everybody wins Amazon because you're selling. You win because you're making sales to help you produce more books. Your readers are winning because you're being very helpful if you are doing non-fiction or entertaining.

If you are doing fiction for them, so this is a very important role as a self-publisher that you are playing during this time of crisis that we're in. Also, it's a perfect time to go wide as we mentioned Amazon is getting more difficult.

Amazon can change the rates that you are earning on your books. They can do all sorts of stuff to decrease your profitability for the books that you are publishing so you may want to go.

Why during this time? That is to set, take your eBooks, and don't keep them on Amazon. Exit KDP Select and move them into Smashwords or Draft2Digital or maybe another platform.

But Smashwords is the one I would recommend because you're going to get your biggest return on investment if you go this route. It is because Smashwords will distribute it through all of the different channels and you're going to get the highest royalty rates that you are going to find anywhere.

You don't have to pay an additional fee and you'll just get your books out on there. Then we can start making sales that aren't dependent upon Amazon. So, if they decide to drop the rates or if they decide to make the ads even more competitive, no problem you'll get it out there.

The same goes for the paperbacks. Do not just do KDP Print, you are going to want to put your hardbacks on Lulu. You are going to want to put your other paperbacks through Ingram Spark.

We want to maximize the amount of money that we're making off of our books. That's the key to doing it, distributing wide. This is another sense again during this difficult time that we're all in.

This is another way that we can find that fruit that's hidden in there that is delicious. It is absolutely delicious to eat but it's going to be in the thorns. So you are going to have to get in there to pull it out.

What have you found? Have you found 2020 to have something else that I have missed in this story? Have you found the key points in self publishing on Amazon in 2020 + What you need to know!

I would be very interested in hearing it below in the comments section. Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.

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