The reason I read this book is to obtain guidance on self publishing my books. Most people know that I have been in the process of writing a series of books regarding boxing and fitness training. I spent the last year writing 3 book manuscripts that are complete. The first 3 books will be part of a series called Major Moves Philosophies.
Book 1: Major Moves Shadowboxing Philosophies
Book 2: Major Moves Footwork Training Philosophies
Book 3: Major Moves Heavy Bag Training Philosophies
Self publishing has been a tug on my mind. My initial thoughts proved exciting, but then the other side of me thought this would be an arduous task, and a lot to learn. If there was ever a time to learn all I can about self publishing, and then make an educated decision to self publish or not, the time is now.
After completing this self publishing guidebook, my decision was clear that I wanted to proceed with self publishing, and have a successful book launch within the first 60 days of my transition home.
I learned with the self publishing process, a lot the work is front end loaded, but once your book is published on Amazon and other sites, the book sales business is a nice flowing business model. I also learned a ton about the Amazon book selling process. Most people don’t know that Amazon is a print on demand service, and owns its own printing company.
For example, whenever you order a paperback book on Amazon, it’s printer digitizes and prints the book when ordered by the customer. So for the author, our responsibility is to simply create high quality content books, ensure you follow certain parameters, and spend the money on Amazon ads to drive traffic to your books listing. There’s more bolts to the equation, but in a nutshell that’s how it works.
Some valuable tips I learned in this book are as follows:
- Make sure your “keyword” for your book choice is profitable. You want to do your research to ensure the topic you think you want to write your book on is a “profitable” search word that people have been inquiring about. There is a site called KDspy that can help with this process.
- The 4 factors for a successful book are:
a) To have an attractive book cover that grabs the customers attention.
b) Have a creative book topic and subtitle,
c) Engage the reader with a great book description,
d) Create high quality content. - Upwork and Fiverr are great platforms to outsource work for proofreading, book cover creation, and a ton of other services that can assist with the book writing and completion process.
- When launching the books, discount the books during the first 30 days by approximately 25%. Why?
Because Amazon’s algorithm gives every new book listed a slight boost over the competition, and your goal is to have as many purchases and solid reviews during your first 30 days of listing. - Go wide with book distribution outside of Amazon. Majority of book sales (approx… 70%) will come from Amazon, but the other 30% could come from other companies like Ingramspark, Google Books, Draft Digital, and Kobo Books.
Ingramspark has a distributor partnership with Amazon. Ingramspark is a large distributor that sales books to libraries, Walmart, Target, & book stores like Barnes & Nobles, and schools. This is an important service I will utilize for mass book distribution. Most of the time these large organizations work through distribution channels that help them to funnel through what books would likely sale, & fit those companies genre of books.
- Bookbite platform for book reviews. (bookbite.com) Getting solid reviews online is of the utmost importance when launching your book. High star reviews serve as social validation and help on the fence customers decide to buy your book or not. Bookbite is a new platform that encourages readers to request to review books in categories they are interested in.
Bookbite in a nut shell allows the opportunity for the author to connect with the reader anonymously through questions that would facilitate the reader to leave an honest and thorough review of the book. - Use A.I. to influence self publishing. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence platform that is a masterful piece of technology that has revolutionized and will continue to make us more productive, faster, and smarter with the things we are already good at and passionate about. We can use A.I. technology in our book writing process to help us create book outlines, come up with good book titles, assist with book descriptions, and assist you with coming up with good distinctive phrases. I see myself utilizing A.I. as a tool to be a sounding board against my existing ideas, and also to open me up to thoughts I have not yet conjured during the creative writing process.
- Options of selling your publishing account for a large payout. Once you have proven yourself successful by the sales of your book, some people choose to sell the publishing rights to their book for a one time payout. This is something I never knew about. There are 2 main companies (Flipper and Empire Sellers) that are essentially publisher brokers that help facilitate the sale of your publishing rights.
Selling your publishing rights is big business. Selling your publishing rights nets on average 30 – 40X times your annual book sales. Those numbers are unlike any other business I have seen. People have different reasons why they would want to sell their publishing rights. Some people may have had a goal to become a best seller and then move on to another venture. Others may simply sale their publishing rights to make out on a good payday, and then rinse and repeat the process with a different book.
- I learned the steps to prepare for a successful book launch.
- Understanding of how to use Amazon ads to drive traffic to my book.
In closing, I took away valuable nuggets from this book that will help me in my self publishing venture. Hand over my heart, I feel confident in handling this process from start to finish. This journey would not be possible without my wonderful wife and the company she’s partnered with for help in the final stages of this process. Amber has helped me cast this vision into our reality. From proof reading, making copies, constant mailing manuscripts back and forth, endless phone calls, and in- person visits discussing the vision and plan, etc.. These books have her flavor, and creative influence through them from start to finish.
This book taught me the mindset of not just self publishing a book, but operate with the mindset of building a BRAND. I learned to focus on high quality content. I feel I hit the bullseye in this area, but reading this book made me go back and focus on making some adjustments on some core areas to gain much needed momentum within the first 30 days of launching the book.
While I work toward my transition home from federal prison, I make each day count. I know the road I face can be filled with bumps and hard turns. This is why I keep my eyes on the road in front of me. Bumps, large curves, and rough terrain can only effect you if you are not prepared with the correct internal components of the mind.
In life, “A curve in the road is not the end of the road unless you forget to make the turn.”
