You might be wondering what are reasonable self publishing Amazon royalties? Check out below to know about the figures and the secrets that might help you in your self-publishing journey.
Today's question has three answers. The third answer is a secret you're going to want to stick around for. Because it will explain how you can drastically increase your self-publishing Amazon royalties.
Now let's get into it. The question that was sent to me today was, what are reasonable self publishing Amazon royalties? This is an excellent question.
If we're going to get into self-publishing and we're going to use Amazon, we want to make sure that the royalties or the money that we're going to be getting back from Amazon make the effort worth our while.
As opposed to maybe trying a different platform or a different way of earning money online. There are lots of different options and reasons we might be asking this question. So that's what we would like to explore today.
But before we proceed, check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist to help you get started on your self-publishing journey. Now, let's get into it.
When I first started self-publishing, I started with Amazon and I started writing my very first book. I was following a formula at that time from a Kindle book that I had read on the subject.
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Going step by step through the different aspects of self-publishing. I put the book onto the market, it took me several months to get the book fully ready. I put it on the market and it's still selling today.
I remember the feeling, that the very first time that the money starts to come from Amazon. You get the money and put it into your bank account.
You then realize, "Oh my goodness! I'm actually making money online". That very first sale there's a little bit of a rush associated with it. I started feeling, wow this feels better than the normal money that I'd be making.
It's a lot less of course when I first started making money. But the idea that I can just sit there and there's somebody in the world reading my ideas and willing to pay me for it, that was just a fantastic feeling.
That was something then that I wanted to say, well, how can I increase it? Is it more books or types of books? What's necessary? So what are reasonable self publishing Amazon royalties?
Let's get into the answers. The first thing is for your Kindle Books on Amazon, as long as you price them between $2.99 and $9.99 you can expect those books will give you a 70% royalty rate which is crazy high.
Considering that if you traditionally publish, you are only making like 11%-12% which is a very very low percentage. And for your KDP Print books assuming we're selling them on the platform, we're going to get a 60% return on those.
That's also incredibly high. Now of course, when we sell these books on the other as they go through extended distribution, then it can get to 30%-40%, somewhere in there.
It depends upon where they sell that the rates can start to drop. That gives us a little bit of an idea of where exactly on the royalty front. What we can expect based on the prices we choose.
Now the second answer is that the average self-publishing author according to The Guardian only makes about a thousand dollars a year which is insanely low.
Target Your Markets
You obviously can't live off of a thousand dollars a year. So this is very very low and it might even discourage you from getting into self-publishing. If it weren't for the fact that the average author is making a lot of mistakes.
That brings us into our secret answer of the day which is, what is reasonable? Well, I don't care about what's really reasonable on self publishing on Amazon.
What I really want to know is how much is possible for your earning potential? The earnings can be greatly increased by targetting underserved markets. That is using a tool like Kindle Spy.
Using that tool to figure out how many books for each for particular niches and topics is currently selling versus how many books exist on those topics.
So if you find a lot of sales going through, let's say Paleo Diet books at the moment which is not the case. But if you found an awful lot of books selling but there are very few books on that market, now we have a magical market.
It's an underserved market. There's just not enough books on that topic. So, if you come out with a book, it's going to do way better. Because there's a lot of people who want to buy that topic as opposed to if I just pick a topic.
Like many underwaters, basket weaving, or something that people are not searching for that I think I'm excited about. I'm going to put a book out. You might find a magical market but the reality is most people fail with this strategy.
You're going to come out with your book. But there's already too many books on that topic or no books on that topic and nobody cares. So even if there are a lot of selling but you're having to compete against major authors, there are just too many books.
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You will be lost and not be found. Targetting these markets is very very important. Then, you're going to be optimizing and this is the secret answer, optimizing your cover or having a good cover.
I use a Fiverr designer to do my covers. The title will be based upon again the keywords that we were looking at using Kindle Spy. The keywords themselves and also the description.
So we will be looking at the top-selling books, the types of descriptions they're using for your genre. We're going to make sure our book linked matches the best-sellers in that genre that we have.
We can even look at the table of contents for other authors in our genre. To make sure that our books are very similar in terms of what the expectation.
Because obviously if people love those books they love the way they look. They love the way they feel. The length of the books and the way the chapters are broken down.
We can have a very similar structure to our books. To ensure we're going to get an equal amount of success. Then using a tool like Publisher Rocket, you can find the keywords that you're going to use to run your Amazon ads to help people find your books.
If you do all of these tricks then we can get a book that's earning a thousand or several thousand dollars a month.
Be A Follower
If you're following all of the tricks. These are possible options for you in terms of what you can expect. I remember when I first started following these tricks, I started seeing a single book earning me a thousand dollars a month.
I could not believe the amount of money that was flowing. I just took the money and reinvest it in other books. It doesn't mean you're going to hit a home run every single time.
But it does mean that you can drastically increase your amount of money that's being made on Amazon. The royalties that you're getting if your pricing is right.
The other thing is as you see sales on a specific book raising the prices so that you're able to make more money off of that title. I usually will look and see every time I see six sales on a given book, I'm going to raise the price a dollar.
If I've got a month without six sales, without any sales of that book, I'm going to drop the price a dollar until I reach a base price. One of the secrets I found is I want to be making on my paperback books, $5 for each manuscript.
If I have 2 books together that are bundled, that's $5 for each. There are 2 manuscripts so I should get $5 for the first then $1 for each additional. That would be $6 in royalties at my lowest price.
Most people who sell their books especially the paperback, sell prices that are too low and it seems crazy. You would be thinking why would somebody sell books for prices that are too low?
I don't even care how long the book is. If it's a single book, you should be making $5 off of that book regardless of everything else. That little secret alone has made me tens of thousands of dollars just understanding how to be getting my pricing right.
My pricing was completely off. I assume if I'm not selling books, it's because the price is too low. That is incorrect.
If you're not selling too many books it's because your cover and your title are terrible. You're getting terrible reviews on the book which means you need a higher quality book.
Maybe investing more in terms of editing. There are several things that we can do. We can change our books to increase the sales that are coming through on those books and increasing our royalties that we're making.
It is the combination of these things. We don't need to do them all at once. But at least focusing on one at a time and slowly increase the quality of the books that we're putting on the market.
Optimizing them for the market. Making sure we're targeting underserved markets. Then running ads against it.
That combination together is going to result in you making a lot of money off of Amazon. So what are reasonable self publishing Amazon royalties?
Why don't you tell me, what have you found? Go ahead and tell me below in the comments. I love to respond to every comment that comes through.
I would really love to hear what exactly you found as being reasonable. Maybe what you've made off of Amazon self-publishing. Check out my other blogs and videos that answer your self-publishing questions.