Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 25

Patience

“Patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.” ― Joyce Meyer You need enormous patience when you want to turn your life around. Each success seems so far away that it’s almost unattainable. Each milestone gives you joy for just a brief moment, because you realize […]

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Living The Slight Edge

Exactly three years ago I read Jeff Olson’s book, “ The Slight Edge.” It transformed my life. Last year I summarized progress I made in the first two years. It’s time to tell the story of the last year. Finances It was the area I had the least hopes that it would ever improve. I […]

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Sixteenth Income Report – July 2014 (-$222.33)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report. I mentioned a couple of failures in the last report; well, July was a streak of failures. My sales were steadily going down. Thanks to the release of ‘From Shy to Hi’, another $3 book in my catalogue, revenues were […]

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Keep Going

If you know me just a little bit, you know I’m a big advocate of perseverance. Of course, in order to persevere in something you need first to get started. Starting is hard, but unavoidable. Brian Tracy in his book “Earn What You Are Really Worth” illustrates the laborsaving trait of perseverance: When you look […]

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Start Right Now

Babson College’s performed an extensive research on their graduates. This longitudinal study went for 13 years to determine how many of college graduates launch a business and what differentiates them from their peers who didn’t. The study concluded that success in business comes down to just two essential things: get going and keep going. That’s […]

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Fifteenth Income Report – June 2014

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report. June was quite dramatic, not in the sense of results achieved, but there were events. Failures I was hit hard twice that month and both times involved outsourcing. First, I got the book content from Elance and it was a […]

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Book Review: You Are a Writer

I don’t have the words to properly describe awesomeness of this book. I don’t read much about writing. As a proper published author I think I’m perfect and nobody will tell me how should I write. Or do my business. It’s not their business to poke their noses into my business. I’m so glad I […]

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Book Review: How to Work a Room

This is a great textbook on working a room. On this particular subject it may be even THE ultimate textbook. Susan RoAne covered everything from exhibits via high school reunions to funeral services. Wow, what a tremendous experience! Susan was on schedule for more meetings than I changed diapers (and changed a lot of them). […]

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Fourteenth Income Report – May 2014

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

May 2014 was quite uneventful.



Well, there were some fireworks. On 9th of May my post about a rock star from UK was noticed on Twitter by one of his fans and then retweeted. I got several retweets by people with followings that numbered in thousands. I got the surge of visits on my blog… and then my website provider encountered some technical problems. The site went down.

But it’s not the end of the story. The next day I found this in my Twitter feed:

That made my day too.

James had over 2 millions followers on Twitter at that time. Within 2 hours I had a surge of visitors on my site; which was more than during the whole previous month. Quite a bunch of people praised my article.

James’ tweet got 162 retweets and 310 favs.

But it didn’t do much more for me than feeling better about myself. The surge disappeared two days later and everything was back to normal.

Lesson:

I helped this random chance. My friend Naomi from Start Biz Quit Job taught me how to retweet my old blog posts using Buffer. It was a bit of a hassle to set the things up, but it did pay off big.

Don’t let your old content just sit there and do nothing. You never know what will happen if you put yourself out there.

Free promo

The adventure with Twitter was nice, but in my business it was business as usual.

I organized a free promo of “Release Your Kid’s Dormant Genius.” This book was selling pretty badly. It has never reached the level of one sale per day. I invested $20 in marketing services. I wanted to make a bigger impact, but most of all I wanted to check the websites which I paid.

I got almost 1900 downloads. Not bad at all. The sales afterwards unfortunately didn’t reflect that. I sold 24 copies in May and 28 in the following month. I should sell about 180 to get my investment back. It seems that this book is just not marketable.

Lesson:

I don’t regret writing this book. Writing makes you internalize what you know. Maybe I didn’t help many parents with their struggles, but I definitely helped my son. I transformed him from a layabout into a decent student. He finished two school years in the row with honors.

When we moved this year, he changed the school. This one is more demanding, but he is managing just fine. My supervision is now minimal; it’s not even 10 minutes a day but a couple. How much would I pay for that? Easily a thousand bucks. Sometimes you just need to write for yourself.

Countdown Deal

I also did my first Countdown Deal on “Master Your Time. “ In promoting this deal I invested $40. I paid one company to submit the info about the promo to 30 sites. The efficiency of their effort was mediocre at best. Only 5 or 6 sites published the blurb. But I broke even with this promo.

Beta Readers

I was working on my 6th book, “From Shy to Hi.” I managed to finish editing in May, create the Advance Reading Copy and share it with my subscribers. Four of them volunteered to read the book and provide their feedback.

It was first time I did it and I recommend this course of action to every author out there, especially a one who is new to the publishing world and who has little time and resources. I mean, the most important thing is a quality of your book. The feedback from actual readers is priceless for improving this quality. I don’t have time to go back to my past book and craft them into something 1% better. I’m busy writing new books.

Sharing your book with readers in advance is a shortcut to the normal process of releasing a product and waiting for the market feedback. It allows you to publish a better book upfront.

Writing, Sales and Results

I started writing another book, “Trickle Down Mindset.” I wrote over 16k words of it. Apart from this book I was writing blog posts and how-to articles for Kindle beginners.

I got the idea of publishing my income reports. I didn’t want to start from the point I was in, I received 700 euros in May. I wanted to demonstrate that hard work and consistency pays off. So I decided to publish those reports with one year delay.

As an experiment I outsourced book content writing on Elance. I finished hiring a young gal from the Philippines.

The sales were still dwindling. I sold 543 copies. I hoped that the release of “From Shy to Hi” would compensate for it.

I gave away for free over 3,500 copies that month.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income: €952.82 (about $1238.66; February royalties, plus €80 of backlog from various markets, plus €20 from March royalties from 3 smaller markets which were registered at the end of May)

Cost: $19, Aweber services.

$20, freebie sites paid submissions.

$40, Countdown Deal promotion of “Master Your Time”.

Net result: $1159,66

GREEN! My first 4 figure month ever!!

61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books

To me, this book is worth a thousand times more than its price

It’s not some figurative price. For every dollar I spent on “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books,” I earned at least $1,000 back.

I bought this book on the 4th of May 2013. On 4th, I had been polishing the final version and had wondered how the heck I should proceed from that point on. 22 more days passed before I published my first book on Kindle.

This purchase was the best thing that happened to me in 2013.

A few details about me, so you get the full picture:

English is not my first language.
I had no prior experience in writing and publishing (other than my masters thesis).
I had no online presence and following whatsoever.
I had no authority at all.

Then I got my hands on “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books” and the universe became crazy.

Lame Down to Earth Advice

I love everything about this book. The first advice is so lame: Write Good Books. Pshaw! Yet, 95% of content producers on Amazon avoid the #1 pillar of success and end up scratching their heads asking why their book didn’t sell. Scott started from strategies, not tactics. Tactics change, but strategy should always be constant.

So, his strategies regard timeless principles, not the latest tricks on Amazon. That’s why his book is as useful as it was 2 years ago. It hasn’t expired a bit. Almost a year after I read “61 Ways,” I read “Write. Publish. Repeat.” by Johnny Truant and Sean Platt. Reading the section considering timeless strategy, I was like: “It’s obvious, Scott said that long ago.”

“61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books” is full of substance

You won’t find an ounce of fluff, hype, or exaggeration in it. And he set my moral compass to very high standards when it comes to publishing books. He shines among content producers on Kindle, especially among those who try to give you advice on how to proceed. Scott wrote a whole chapter on following “white-hat” practices, one of them is “Write BOOKS, not lead generators.” I wish more authors can be like that.

Comparison

There is quite a lot of “How to sell more books” out there. The most recent and successful I remember is “Book Launch” by Chandler Bolt and James Roper. While it’s not a bad book, it’s not even close to the quality of “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books” and it IS a lead generator. The scope of both books differs a bit; Chandler and James focus more on why you should publish and how to do it well while Scott focuses on applicable pieces of advice and making a business out of your writing. “Book Launch” can make you excited about writing and publishing. “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books” will make you do the necessary steps to create your own Kindle business from scratch. That’s the difference between a good book and an excellent book.

Author

Scott writes from his personal experience, describing what worked for him and explaining why he thinks it did. He didn’t follow any guru’s “make money on Kindle” program, he figured it out himself. The tone of his book is far from an “I think I know it all” attitude.

He flawlessly goes from the high level principles into nitty-gritty details. It was the step-by-step information from this book that helped me create my author’s profile and maximize its potential. Thanks to his advice, a greenhorn like me was able to confidently contact KDP support and change his books’ categories. And there are many more precious knowledge gems in this little book. What is more, as far as I know, not a bit of it has expired.

BTW, this is a review of the book, not of the man. I write so much about him only because he is so “blended” with his work. You cannot mention one and forget about the other. I’ll try to keep on the book’s subject as I proceed (but he is a genius of making a business out of the “mystery” industry and you should definitely listen to him!).

Everything about this book just has more substance; it is solid and down-to-earth. Its advice is applicable and my story proves it.

My story

22 days after buying “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books,” I published my first book. I remember that on the day of launch, I had Kindle PC opened on one screen and the browser on another and I was creating an author’s profile according to the steps enumerated in Scott’s book.

Remember those “encouraging” points about me? Despite all of that, in the last 5 days of May, I sold 7 copies and gave away 487 during the free KDP Select promo (also described in detail in this guide).

In the first full month, I sold 29 copies of “A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness.”

I swear that every time I applied something from this manual, I sold more of my books.

Strategy #5

Up to November 2013, I published 3 titles and sold 145 copies of them. By no means, I was getting richer. But in “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books,” there is Strategy #5: Always Be Creating. I was.

Strategy #38

At the end of October 2013, I started my blog: “ExpandBeyondYourself.com” (Strategy #38).

In November, I published the 4th book. It was the first time I invested in my book; I spent $40 on marketing services. This was my first free promo which received over 1000 downloads and that was the first month I sold over 100 copies of my books (my sales never went back to 2 digits again).

See the connection? I did what was advised and I got results.

Strategy #6: Design a Killer Cover

My covers were horrible. I have an aesthetic sense of a brick. To me, everything looks alright.

Luckily, a fellow author from a FB group took mercy on me and produced some decent covers for my existing books. That was another reason behind the better performance of the 4th book.

Strategy #8: Build an Email List

I started building an email list back in July, but it did not do much good for me. At the beginning of January, I had exactly 27 people on my list. I doubled that in January while preparing for the launch of the next book. I also used a list of a few friends I managed to make connections with since May. I believe that made all the difference. “Master Your Time” became a bestseller, the first in my writing career. Frankly, I wasn’t prepared for that at all. I just did what was recommended in “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books.” I had a platform, I had an email list, this book was professionally edited and got a decent cover right at the start.

I sold 996 copies of my books in February 2014 and made half of my salary that month.

The Rest of My Story

I was ready to take my publishing to another level―I was willing to invest money into it, a great feat for someone as cheap as I was. I spent about $350 on the sixth book, but it wasn’t a hit like the previous one. Nonetheless, I made back my investment within a few months.

In 2015, I published two more books and both of them made it to #1 in their categories.

At the time of writing this review, I have eight books on Amazon and an unfortunate public domain work. I’ve already sold over 11,500 copies of my books.

I identify myself as a writer. In 2014, I made a few extra grand to my salary and it was just enough to contribute to the mortgage of our first house ever.

All these things happened because I bought the right book and (admittedly, after hitting a wall a few times following my ideas) I had enough common sense to follow the advice provided in this book.

Up to You

You probably have had a much better start than I had. You’ve spoken English since you were a 1-year-old, you’ve written a bit here and there, your blog have been up and running a few years, or you have had an outstanding career in your field and accumulated a lot of experience. Now just buy “61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Kindle Books” and you should beat my results straight off.

Which I wish you from the bottom of my heart.

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