Today’s post is a comprehensive guide to publishing your own eBook. I’ve been having some fun with the eBook industry lately and wanted to share a few things that I’ve learned.

Without further ado, here’s a complete guide to marketing, writing, formatting, and publishing your own eBook.

Market

The fact that marketing is listed as the first priority isn’t a typo. If you have no market you have no sales. That means writing your book was just a waste of time.

Failing to do the research will cripple your earnings. There are two reasons for this. The first is pretty obvious, dead niches. A dead niche has such a limited appeal that you won’t move a significant amount of product. Secondly, you need to know how the customer will find you. To quote a sage piece of advice from the U.S. Military, “If you can see it, you can hit it. And if you can hit it, you can kill it.” What the customer can’t see he can’t buy.

Rather than talking theory, I’m going to give you a real example of the power behind keyword research.

Last month I released three books. While I had found some profitable niches, I hadn’t done much keyword research. As a result it took quite some time before my sales really took off.

This month I started doing keyword research. I released one book that has sold better than my first two titles combined. My sales have gone up quite a bit and I’ll make about three times as much as I did during the month of January.

Anyone who isn’t researching their market is just wasting their time.

How to perform basic keyword research

In anticipation of someone emailing me “How due i find uh keyword,” I’m going to provide you with a little primer:

1. Download (and read) the two Copyblogger eBooks on keyword research.

Both titles are free if you sign up for their newsletter (plus you get 14 other great books and a 20 part course on persuasive writing and marketing). The entire package won’t cost you a dime and I don’t get any affiliate money from referring you. Copyblogger and its resources will teach you far more than any Internet marketing personality ever will.

2. Find an appropriate keyword tool.

There are roughly ten bazillion keyword tools on the market. Some are great and others suck. Additionally, they very in price, ranging from free to several thousand dollars. I looked at a tool the other day that cost $5,000 a year.

Is $5,000 too much?

That depends.

If I get better at marketing, which I will, I’d have no problem buying that. Good salesmen, such as Eben Pagan, make anywhere between $50,00 and $100,000 a day. Spending five grand for an awesome research tool is like me buying a hamburger.

However, there are also plenty of great tools for people who are just starting out. And many of these are free. While it isn’t as in-depth as some of the better tools, Keyword Eye (not an affiliate link), helped me to find a phrase that was searched 17,000 times more than the term I was going to use.

And that was just from me playing around with some free software.

3. Practice, practice, practice!

Go play with your research tools for 15 minutes a day. Enter 20 different phrases and see which variants are the most popular. Or hunt down a phrase that doesn’t have much competition. It takes all of two seconds to look at a chart or graph, if you aren’t doing this you’re missing out.

Write

Before you start writing take 30 minutes to outline every chapter. Doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction, making an outline will save you a lot of time and effort in the future. In fact I actually measured the difference in writing speed. An outlined book takes me an hour and a half to write (at the length of 3,500 words). A non-outlined book takes about three to six hours.

Without an outline you will lack focus and it will cost you money. Additionally, the quality will be greatly reduced.

You should also set a daily word count goal. I try to pen about 2,000 words a day. That means I write about 730,000 words a year. Whenever I reach my 2,000 word goal, I take an hour-long break to get ice cream and goof around. Since writing can be tedious, I suggest having some kind of similar rewards system.

Format

A lot of people have trouble formatting books. Adding front matter (that’s what an interactive table of contents is called) and back matter (which is usually a series of links that take you to the author’s website or to their other work), can be frustrating. Additionally, Kindle books often format poorly. You get weird glitches and all kinds of errors. Lines don’t space right, indents are too deep, and headers become inconsistent.

There are two ways to fix this. You either hire someone to format the book for you (which is going to cost at least $50 if you want the job done right), or you can buy a better word processor. OpenOffice and Google Drive just won’t cut it.

If you want to format things correctly I’d suggest checking out either Scrivener or the latest version of Microsoft Word. If you’re direct marketing and selling PDF books you’ll be able to get by with OpenOffice or another free tool. But anyone who plans on making Kindle content will want better tools.

Publish

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is pretty much fool-proof.

If you can fill out a form you can publish on Amazon.

To get publish your book you have to visit Kindle Direct Publishing and then sign in with your normal account.

After that you’ll see an area with a button labeled “Add new title.” Click on it and you’ll be taken to the input page.

As you may note, I’ve drawn an arrow to the sidebar. Here you can find all kinds of information on self-publishing. If you have any questions or concerns along the way I’d suggest checking out the various Amazon guides. They’ll help you immensely.

Once you’re done entering all your material, you’ll need to fill out some pricing information so you can get paid. After that click the “publish” button and Amazon will have your book out in about 24 hours. It’s that easy.

A note on promotions (and why you shouldn’t do them)

Some time ago I was reading an article on eBooks. The author bragged that he’d given away “over 1,000 copies!” All the readers congratulated him. I just rolled my eyes.

Bragging that you gave away 1,000 books is like bragging that you lost money. It makes no sense whatsoever. If Joe Blow sold one eBook he’d have made more money than the big guru who gave away a thousand. A single sale is far more valuable than a million free units.

Here’s why:

1. Free units don’t mean anything.

I’ve already touched on this, but giving something away isn’t the same as selling it. Giving books away isn’t even a good indicator of demand. A lot of people will simply take something if there’s no price tag attached. This is especially true on Amazon where a large number of users gobble up everything that’s free, whether it interests them or not.

2. Promotions can actually hurt your business.

I just did a quick Google search for “Why you shouldn’t give away Kindle books.” One of the first results was some dorky lifehacker talking about his awesome productivity guide that he gave away. During the promotion he moved 41,000 units. If his book was $2.99 this means that passed up on $85,280. And you’re supposed to take business advice from this guy.

After a quick Amazon search I found this guru’s eBook. It’s current sales ranking is over 100,000. My current best seller has a ranking well below 50,000.

While there are several variables to consider, I’d cite the massive free giveaway as one of the biggest issues with this guru’s book. The 41,000 people aren’t going to buy something they already have.

3. Free is synonymous with “low value.”

When I was a kid I used to collect comic books. Every time I went to the store there were two bins. One was filled with comics that cost a dollar or less and the other was filled with titles that started at about $5.

Do you know which bin I never went to?

The dollar or less one.

While I’m sure there wasn’t a huge difference in quality, the dollar or less bin seemed like a bad deal at the time. My eight year old brain could already connect low cost with low value.

Here’s another example:

Pretend for a minute that we’re in magical wizard land and I’m going to sell you a car. There are two options on my lot, one is worth $500 and the other is worth $500,000. Without even seeing either vehicle you can already visualize which one is more valuable.

Something with a higher value sells itself.

Let’s revisit the same scenario once again. This time I tell you, “Car A is free if you can get it off the lot. Car B is $500,000 and you can cruise out of here right away.”

Car A sounds like a pile of junk, right?

Both vehicles could basically be the same, but some primitive sales techniques and a higher price tag will make one of them seem infinity better.

4. People who take free stuff and paying customers don’t always overlap.

Amazon has a whole section where you can browse for free titles. And there are all kinds of people who hang out here and download anything they come across. Getting 10,000 people to download your book on organic apple pie doesn’t mean that there was a market of 10,000 potential customers. It doesn’t even mean that 10% of the people who downloaded the book would have bought it.

You can look at products all over Amazon that have reviews like this:

“I downloaded Best Organic Apple Pie recipes because it was free, but I don’t even like pie. One star.”

Unless you have a way to gauge interest (which we’re about to get to) you’re collection shoddy data.

5. Anything you give away should still make money.

There’s an exception to the “never give people free stuff” rule: free products that still make you money.

Early on in this article I mentioned my love of Copyblogger. They gave me 16 free eBooks and a 20 part writing course. It was such a good deal that I became a lifelong fan. I buy products that they endorse, such as the theme for my website, and I recently decided to upgrade my membership and take a few seminars (earning them a cool $300).

This was an effective strategy for two reasons:

1. The free content was so good that I assumed the material they were charging for was even better.

The cheapest Copyblogger product is about $100. From there things get more expensive. Licensing the company’s software will cost you over $1,200.

Getting someone to spend $1,200 (or even $100) can be tough. But Copyblogger gives you such great content for free (those eBooks will teach you how to make a small fortune) that it instantly builds trust.

If the stuff they told you for free doubled your income, imagine what their actual products could do?

It’s a very clever tactic and the epitome of good guy marketing.

Which leads to my second point…

2. The free content was not the product.

A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs make the mistake of lumping “content” in with “product.” This blog post was written for fun, it is free to read content. There’s nothing in her that could even make me money since I decided to do away with affiliate links and whatnot.

This post is not a product since it physically cannot make me money. Which is fine here because blogging is my hobby, but it’s a terrible idea for someone trying to develop a business.

An item, be it a blog post or eBook, that does not have a means of being monetized will never be a product.

Writing one eBook and then giving it away for free is stupid, you’ve just sabotaged your own product. Not a bright idea.

Writing three eBooks and giving one away for free, as long as it entices the reader to buy the next two, is a fine strategy. That “free” book is actually bait for someone to buy the rest of your series. It has a means of monetization.

If you’re trying to make money free giveaways have to be strategic.

Here are a few other examples of a strategic freebie:

• An item that gets people to sign up for your newsletter (so that you can sell to them later).
• A product that sells something else (i.e. giving away a free eBook on construction that contains affiliate links for drills and hand saws. Or a book on blogging with a link to domain hosting packages).
• A “free” product that is unlocked once something else has been purchased (like the infamous “buy two meals get the third one free” deal that you’ll see at many restaurants).

Closing notes

Before I leave you, there are a few additional things that you should know. These don’t require a whole lot of explanation, so I’m going to write them up in a concise list:

1. Always get a professional cover.

You can get a subscription to Dollar Photo Club (not an affiliate link) to get images and then hire someone off Fiverr to actually design the cover. Higher quality works obviously require a higher quality designer.

2. Proofread your work.

A lot of people don’t edit their material. And it hurts their sales greatly. Invest a few hours into looking over your book. Nobody is going to buy from you again if your first title was an unreadable mess.

I’ve read this post four times and have probably missed half a dozen little things. You’ll never catch every mishap, but do your best and correct any errors you stumble across.

3. Ghost writers generally suck.

There’s a reason that ghost writers are making your eBook and not their own, and that reason usually involves a little word called “talent.” Hire any run of the mill “penny a word” ghost writer and you’ll get what you paid for. You’d be better off writing your own book, or collaborating with someone who knows what they’re talking about.

4. Learn to write a descriptive headline and engaging product description.

A lot of self-published authors are terrible at naming their books. Most are too vague. Naming a book IT might work for Stephan King, who is backed by a small army of publicists and marketers, but it probably won’t work well for you.

I frequently stumble on books with vague titles and poor product descriptions. Someone will write a horror novel and call it Terror, then they’ll write a sparse description like “Something horrible is here.”

That doesn’t tell me anything about the characters, plot, or setting.

A good description should be at least 150 words long. It needs to tell the reader what the book is about and entice them into buying it. Go look at all the Amazon bestsellers. Read their descriptions, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. A Tony Robbins book is going to tell you what you’ll learn and who you’ll learn it from. A Stephan King book will introduce both the hero and the monster as well as the setting.

Tease the reader and get their interest.

5. Look at what sells.

eBook gurus will tell you to write how to books. And that’s because eBook gurus don’t know how to actually make money. They earn a living by farming suckers with various get rich quick schemes.

The difference between me and some Internet marketer is that I can write a 3,000 guide to self-publishing without having to sell you anything. Why? Because my money comes from my actual businesses. There are at least 10 points where I could have plugged an affiliate link, but I didn’t because I don’t need the extra cash.

If you listen to the gurus you’ll be writing books like How To Cure Acne or How To Install A New Garage Door. If you use your brain and look at what’s actually selling you’ll be avoiding those cheesy “How To ___” categories. With a few exceptions they’re dead niches.

Final thoughts

While I can’t guarantee that you’ll make a fortune in the eBook industry, I do feel that it is a fairly profitable venture. Making a few hundred dollars off a handful of titles is surprisingly easy. This month alone I’ll make anywhere between $500 and $600. And I’ve only been doing this for two and a half months.

If you’re smart you could easily do just as well if not better.

Last year I had over $1,500 stolen from me. Clients never paid or just disappeared when presented with a bill. Most of it was from freelancing and copywriting, but a fairly significant portion, several hundred dollars, came from bloggers I know.

This made me really mad for quite some time. I didn’t answer emails, write posts, check Twitter, or even log into my site. Every time I thought about writing a new post I’d just get upset.

But my story isn’t unique. Other guys that I’ve talked to have had the exact same problem. Some of them are even out a small fortune.

Eventually I decided to stop being mad. To get over the anger I looked for some kind of lesson in my situation. And I found a crucial piece of information.

The biggest downside to working for someone else: control

Do you know what the worst part of working for someone else is? Lack of control. If your boss says “come in on Saturday,” you have to obey. If you don’t, someone else can easily take your place. There’s nothing you can use as leverage.

Affiliate marketing is basically a fancy term for being a salesman. You go out and sell someone else’s products. Then they pay you.

Except getting paid can be a real b*tch. I’ve read about guys who would make $5,000 in commissions only for the product’s owner to vanish. And it happens in the corporate world too. I remember listening to a Danger & Play podcast where the guest speaker was fired for outselling everyone else.

If you don’t own the product you don’t have control.

Whoever you work for (be that a corporation, private client, or eBook author) still controls how much you make. If they decide not to pay you there isn’t much you can do.

How I made $231.64 in nine hours

My monthly goal was to publish one book a week. Unfortunately, my computer’s graphics card went out and I was unable to see anything. As a result, I only put out three books. Each one took me roughly two hours to write and another hour to design the cover. That’s nine hours in total.

Since I’m still pretty new to the publishing game, I didn’t sell as many books as I was hoping (also, January is one of the slowest months for book sales) and my monetary goal of $400 was not met.

However, between Kindle borrows (which are calculated separately but generally pay out at $1.43 a pop) and sales, I still made $231.64. Not bad for a venture that I’m just getting into. That buys me about 231 servings of phat si-io, or a month’s worth of groceries. And since I only made $100 the month before, my income doubled. If I can keep increasing my earnings at the same rate, which would be fairly easy, I’ll be in the four figure club by April.

Making $200 means that you moved roughly six titles a day. And to sell those I didn’t have to do a thing. Once my books were up the money started trickling in.

While $231.64 might not sound like a lot, it’s almost enough to cover the mean student loan payment. In other words you could write some 11 page short stories and use the profits to pay off tuition. Additionally, my income averaged out to be $25 an hour. Since there were no input costs, sans a $10 monthly subscription to a stock photo site, everything was profit.

Lastly, my titles will generate money forever. Today is February 1st and I’ve already made five dollars. That’s like having someone slip you a couple bucks every few hours. It adds up over time.

How to scale a business

In my first month of writing eBooks I was unfocused. Each title had a different pen name and my content was all over the map. Some books sold well, others sold nothing.

For my second month I looked at the material that sold well and then built off it. I went from having a couple of pen names to just one, allowing me to build up a small following. If you look at my sales charts you’ll notice some pretty big spikes. These usually occurred when someone downloaded one of my books, liked it, and then downloaded the rest of my pen name’s catalog.

By having multiple products within the same niche I was able to go from selling one item to selling three or four.

The key improving sales is to create more content. That might mean a new eBook if you’re in the publishing business, or a new blog post if you’re affiliate marketing.

If you want to see a great example of more content, go to the grocery store and walk down the soda aisle. You’ll see 20 different flavors of Mountain Dew or Coke. They’re all in the same niche, but they give the buyer more options.

Selling eBooks is no different. Book #1 sells book #2 which sells book #3. While there is some variety, every product can’t be identical after all, everything falls under a certain category or niche. This way you can build up a consistent fan base.

Why blogging is not a good source of passive income

My family owns a large woodland area that can be logged for furniture and building materials. Every 30 or so years a logging company will come, chop down the trees and write a decent sized check. The last time they did this it paid for two more properties. This time it’s estimated that the trees will be worth $500,000.

Half a million dollars for doing nothing is true passive income.

Blogging is a people business. And people suck. If you don’t believe me, go talk to someone who owns a restaurant or other venture where they’re in direct contact with customers. Clients will try to get as much free stuff as possible without having to pay.

This problem only becomes worse with something like blogging, where you give away content for free. Without an entrance fee of some kind you attract a certain percentage of tire kickers and trolls. These people are usually in the minority of your readership, but they are incredibly annoying and will try to take up as much time as they possibly can.

These folks will literally copy your brand (something that’s happened to several people I know), harass you (happened to me on multiple occasions), hit you up for money (happened to me and several other people), or spam you with stupid questions.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who are more successful than me and most of them have mentioned that the best businesses require the least amount of human interaction. Dealing with people requires you to divert time and energy towards answering questions, explaining concepts, and defending yourself from complainers.

The three best forms of passive income

In the coming weeks I’ll be dropping data sheets on all kinds of revenue streams that I’ve fooled around with, from bonds to the stock market. However, right now I’m going to outline a few quality forms of passive income. I’ve either worked on these directly, or know someone who has. All three of these have far bigger pay outs than an affiliate website about coffee makers or whatever else wantrepreneurs are into.

1. Books

A lot of old school authors chose writing as a career path so that they could travel and see the world. Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint, wrote so that he could explore the globe.

What separates books from other forms of entertainment, like film or television, is the low production value. One man can write a novel, there’s no need for special equipment or an army of actors and editors.

On top of this, books are superior to blogging thanks to their guaranteed income. Someone has to purchase a book for it to be read. That means you’re making money at some point (even pirated books had to be bought before getting redistributed). A blog can be read for free and about 90% of the people who visit it will never spend a dime. There are mediocre books that do better than several huge blogs. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs was once an enormous blog, bringing in over half a million daily readers, but the owner made less than $1,100 a month off of it.

In my first 60 days of Kindle book publishing I made about a quarter as much as a popular blog that took years to grow.

Lastly, if you take a look at the blogs making money, you’ll notice that all of them have a product. There’s something that they’re selling to turn a profit.

2. Property

I personally don’t own any property, but I’ve learned quite a bit about its value from talking with my dad. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with land, and most of it goes beyond building rental properties.

In Iowa a lot of landowners make their money off logging trees, renting ground to hunters, and joining special conservation programs that pay for people to leave their land unmodified. These don’t require any extensive human interaction, and they still pay pretty well. You don’t have to deal with tenants, building maintenance, or anything else.

Whenever I’m outside the country, most of the young guys I meet who aren’t enjoying their gap year are making their money from properties they own back in the States. It’s far more common to run into a guy who enjoys passive income from five rental properties in Oklahoma than it is to meet someone who’s making all their off a website.

3. Anything with royalties

Over the summer I listened to an interview with a comedian who had appeared on several episodes of Seinfeld. He’d been a minor character for a season or two and had made enough money that he was set for life. Every single day one of the episodes he was in would play somewhere in the world, and he’d get a royalty check from it.

While I’m not an expert on royalties, I do know that they extend beyond the entertainment industry. An acquaintance designed some software and gets royalty checks from it. And an old classmate of mine’s dad came up with an industrial safety device, earning him money from various licensing fees.

After I get my Kindle business up to $1,000+ a month I plan on dabbling in software. Once I start on that I’ll be better suited to discuss licensing. But until then I’d highly encourage you to do some independent reading on the subject.

The biggest problem with most passive income goals

Before leaving you I want to discuss a serious issue that I see all the time. Most material that advocate making money set the bar way too low. You see this all the time with books and blogs advocating things like “make an extra $400 a month” or “earn $100 per day online!”

These metrics sound nice, until you do some basic math.  $100 a day is $36,500 a year. You aren’t going to start making $100 a day right off the bat either. Building a website takes time. When all is said and done you’d probably make more, and have to work less, at one of those “soul crushing 9-to-5 jobs” that gurus always complain about.

A lot of “easy money” comes with a high price tag.

In a little bit I’m going to write about bonds and why they’re terrible investments. I recently cashed in a 20 year bond. Over two decades it doubled in value, which sounds impressive, but was actually fairly worthless. Thanks to inflation my money had only gone up about 40%,

Waiting 20 years for that increase was stupid. Yet many people will gladly trade away two decades of their life for the promise of guaranteed returns.

So why do most people stick with low paying investments?

Because the average person never realizes that they can channel their skills into a lucrative side business. Warren Buffett famously said, “stick with businesses you understand.” And he’s right.

I like writing and work as a copywriter. It’s easy for me to come up with catchy titles and persuasive product descriptions. Since I like writing and can catch a reader’s interest making eBooks are a logical business for me. I didn’t have to learn anything new or master a different skill set. In fact, my entire research consisted of two articles and a 30 page book. After that I dove right in.

If you aren’t good at writing stay out of eBooks. I’m terrible at math and would struggle to do anything involving numbers. But if you’re good at that, go for it. I’m also horrible at science and have no clue how anything in the human body works. Creating products about the science behind exercise or fitness wouldn’t make much sense. But other guys are wizards at this stuff and can do well for themselves.

If you try and “follow the money” (be that eBooks, stocks, or affiliate marketing) as opposed to monetizing a skill you’re already good at, you are going to have some problems. It’s easier to launch a venture you know something about than it is to try and get into a field just because there’s “big money” there.

I just cracked the Amazon’s top 100. Right now I’ve got a book sitting at #85 in the Kindle Short Reads section.

In honor of this historic event, I’m going to tell you why eBook sales and rankings are bullsh*t. Strap yourselves in for a wild ride.

Dead niches mean nothing

So I cracked the top 100, pretty cool right?

Well it would be, if I actually made any money from my efforts.

As an experiment I decided to take my post on earning 5 star oDesk feedback and turn it into a little eBook. I used the pseudonym “Chet Huxable” and quickly whipped up a title. The results were exactly what you’d have expected.

(That’s me!)

(I pulled the book before publishing this)

As you can see from this screen shot, I moved two units all month.

Two units!

And it was still enough to get me ranked in the top 100.

If I were a jerk I’d withhold the sales figures and boast about my publishing skills. “Buy my $9 eBook about cracking Amazon’s Top 100,” I’d say. But I’m not a jerk. And because of that I’ll give you some very serious advice:

Writing “How To” and self-help books is generally a huge waste of time.

Case Study: Gary and Larry

Gary and Larry are both young men with an interest in making money online. Each of them decides to write an eBook for fun and profit.

Gary follows the Tim Ferriss method. He chooses a “How To” subject, does his research, finds some articles to plagiarise, and spends six hours cobbling together his book. It’s titled How To Become More Confident and clocks in at 5,000 words, or 25 pages.

Gary publishes his book for $0.99 and waits for people to flock in and buy a copy. No one does. In fact, his book sells three units in the first month. The third buyer feels ripped-off and leaves a two-star review calling Gary’s book “unoriginal.” No more copies are sold.

Larry doesn’t know what he wants to write. Copying articles to make a rudimentary “book” is boring. He doesn’t want to do that.

Rather than following the advice of an eBook guru Larry click’s on Amazon’s Top 100 Kindle Books. There he sees that the number 24 book on all of Amazon is Alpha Owned, a 60-some page story about a fat chick getting banged by a werewolf.

Curious, Larry looks at the book and realizes that it’s pretty terrible. He also decides to look up the number of units that a top 25 book moves. Larry’s eye almost pop out of his head when he discovers the amount: 1,200 units per day!

Looking through the rest of the Top 100 Larry notices that there are all kinds of self-published romance and erotica novels. And some of them are only 11 pages. Yet nowhere is there a Tim Ferriss style “How To” book. Larry decides that eBook gurus are a bunch of frauds and chumps.

Larry decides to write a short erotica book, but he wants to make it funny. After a few minutes of thinking he comes up with Porked By A Rabbi. It takes him two hours to write the whole thing, clocking in at 11 pages.

Larry’s book isn’t a chart topper, but it does okay. In his first month he makes $50. Every month after that he earns $15. By the end of the year his silly book has netted him an extra $215, inspiring him to write some more silly stories. The new titles do better and Larry is soon clearing $12,000 a year.

This story might sound like fiction, but it’s not. I’ve been in the shoes of both characters. Last year I tried to write a bunch of junk eBooks about various “How To” subjects. None of them did well. In fact, many of them never sold a single copy.

Then, on a dare, I wrote a stupid story that was basically a novelization of the Robot Chicken sketch “Hump Lightning.” I never made a killing off it, but that title alone made me roughly $17 every month. More than all my “How To” guides combined.

Why nonfiction fails

Before I was self-employed I’d sometimes stop at a nearby convenience store after work. I’d usually see some of my coworkers there and they were almost always buying beer, pizza, or cigarettes. Folks making $100 a day were spending $30 on alcohol and snacks.

Stupid investments.

Yet these same people would throw a tantrum about wasting money if you suggested that they buy a $6 paperback on budgeting or personal finance. $6 for a book was too much money, but $30 for a case of beer was just fine.

Most folks don’t want to spend money on anything that isn’t a luxury item. If it’s related to education or work, people won’t buy it.

How To Become More Confident, How To Pick Up Girls At Chili Cook-Offs, How To Change A Tire, and How To Bench Press One Million Pounds all sound like work. Taken By The Billionaire Werewolf Who Is Pregnant And Also My Step-Brother sounds like entertainment. People will buy that.

Secondly, nonfiction requires expertise. Why would I buy some random guy’s book on confidence when I could get something better from a trusted name like Tony Robbins? Certain fictional genres also require a degree of credibility (science fiction readers tend to enjoy realistic explanations for space travel, alien cultures, and talking robots) but the two most popular fields, erotica and romance, don’t.

As long as you can write at a sixth grade level you’re good to go.

Lastly, romance and erotica are both genres that constantly retell the exact same story. Two people meet, they have sex, they enjoy it, and they fall in love (usually). You don’t have to rack your brain in search of new ideas. Even the characters are pretty well mapped out. Cowboys, football players, billionaires, army guys, and other masculine archetypes. Sticking to the formula is actually beneficial to you when writing in these genres.

Nonfiction, on the other hand, is all about presenting new information. “This exercise book has tips you won’t find anywhere else.” “My tax guide is more in-depth than all the rest.” The books have to be unique or, at the very least, find a new spin on an old topic.

Lastly, nonfiction doesn’t have the same level of demand. Not everything needs an accompanying eBook. At some point you’re just creating products that have no demand. For example, I once ghostwrote a book that’s premise was “How To Select The Best Paint Brush.” That’s a tiny niche with very few potential customers.

In contrast, there are people who will literally buy every single story in a particular niche or category. Personally, I have purchased almost every Weird Tales book on Amazon. I also have a huge collection of Algernon Blackwood stories, Guy N. Smith novels, and E. Hoffman Price omnibuses. Plus, I have a giant collection of Cthulhu Mythos stories.

I’m one guy and I’ll buy an author’s entire catalog if I like them. But when it comes to “How To” style books, I rarely own more than one title per author.

If I will personally buy up hundreds of pulp horror novels, it isn’t a stretch for me to imagine that others do the same with their favorite tales. A woman who likes cowboy romances is going to buy up every title she can find. A guy who likes military science fiction will buy dozens of books. But a man looking for books on becoming more confident or starting a business is only going to purchase the one that fits his needs.

What are some lucrative fiction fields?

Before I leave you, I want to share some of my observations on various genres and your likelihood of succeeding in them.

• Science fiction – I’ve published two science fiction/comedy hybrids. Neither did very well. In fact, one of them didn’t sell a single unit. I had a couple people read these books without knowing that I wrote them, and they found them enjoyable. However, I had a really hard time cracking into this niche.

• Horror – I have half a dozen unpublished horror stories sitting on my laptop. While I can’t comment for sure, I have heard that it’s a tough market to break into.

• Erotica – Easiest genre to profit from. If you don’t believe me, take the idea for Porked By A Rabbi and turn it into a 3,000 word story. I’ll even buy a copy.

• Romance – This is a little harder than erotica because you generally have to write something of novella length. However, there has been a recent trend of sex heavy short stories turning up under the romance tag.

• Alternate History – Currently I’m writing a story in which European powers box Admiral Dewey’s fleet into Manila Bay right after he defeats the Spanish navy (The Battle of Manila Bay is one of my favorite historical subjects). Writing in this genre takes an awful lot of time and research.

• Historical Fiction – Like alternate history, this takes a lot of work. Exceptions are period piece hybrids. Like Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula or something of that sort.

• Westerns – These are formulaic. I think they’re stupid, but I actually have a relative who made quite a bit off this genre.

• Military Stories – When Tom Clancy wasn’t dodging the draft he was writing books about how awesome war is. If you like researching guns and tanks you’d probably do fine. If you don’t, stick to something else.

• Thrillers – Detective yarns, like romances, erotica, and westerns, are formula based. But people eat these up. Additionally, certain characters, like Sherlock Holmes, are in the public domain.

• Comedies – Self-published comedies are a weird subject. A lot of them are based in a different genre but catch fire thanks to mass media attention. Recently there was a book about an NFL player hooking up with a New England housewife. It sold over 500 copies daily.

• Dramas – I actually wrote a drama while living in Peru. I thought it was good, but the publisher (I tried to go the traditional route on this one) didn’t. They explained that: “This piece is well written. The style of the prose, though, is very slow and a little bit boring. There is little tension and nothing much happens. The ending is disappointing as it seems vague and underdeveloped.” Additionally, writing an actual drama is really hard.

• How To Guides – Probably the worst return you can get. Unless you have a massive brand or experience as a publisher, avoid writing these.

The French has a phrase called “L’appel du Vide,” or “Call of the Void.” Roughly translated, it’s the urge to jump from high places. Mountaintops and such. depending on who you ask L’appel du Vide is either a form of self-destruction or self-expression. Suicide or adventure.

That’s sort of the feeling that everyone who is starting down a new path experiences. It’s exhilarating and scary at the same time. You’re crossing the threshold and leaving your comfort zone. Diving into the abyss.

For most people, risk taking is accompanied by a sense of dread. They all ask, “What if I fail?” And rightly so. Everything is new and foreign. Small tasks are difficult and sorting through misinformation is like a full-time job.

Truthfully, your first victories will probably look like failures. When you’re getting established there are no epic power moves or dramatic events. Most of what you do would seem pretty boring to the causal observer.

Real life isn’t some silly movie. You aren’t going to have to make a million to one gamble that pays off, or invent a creative new way to keep customers from leaving. Instead you’re going to take baby steps and master the basics. It might not sound exciting, but it will take you farther than any crackpot scheme ever could.

In fact, I have an actual example of some “dull” steps I took to make a business that pays my rent.

How increasing your income 1,000% can look mundane

In November of 2014, I sold, or lent, 20 Kindle books for the entire month. This earned me less than $50. It is now 9 am on January first as I type these words. So far I’ve made between $5 and $8 off my eBook business this morning. And by the end of the day I’ll have a few more units sold.

If things keep going this way I’ll have netted $400 in passive income this month. That’s my rent in Vietnam, all paid for with eBooks.

While running an automated business is cool, my initial goals would probably sound laughable. I wanted to take my project, which was initially earning between $3 and $6 a month at the start of 2014, and turn it into something that pulled $100 every 30 days. To do this I had to sell about 50 books each month, or about two books a day. Starting out things were pretty inconsistent. There was a single day where I moved over 10 books, the next day I sold nothing.

Yet I stuck with it and learned what worked. Reading about keywords, studying blurbs, and analyzing best sellers allowed me to raise my monthly earnings 1,000% in a single month. Figuring out the process took most of that time, the actual book production was done in about three hours.

Why this should matter to you

Discovering a long-term process is infinitely more valuable than setting an unrealistic, but impressive, goal. “I’m going to make one billion dollars this week” is a statement that would grab anyone’s attention. But it’s impossible to achieve unless you’ve already mastered the boring fundamentals. Learn to make a dollar from your business first. Once you’ve done that, set a goal of making $10. Then $100. Take everything one step at a time.

Developing a way to make three bucks a day off a passive income steam probably sounds stupid. Most people would roll their eyes. But once that same venture starts earning a thousand dollars a month, people will have all kinds of questions. Your venture goes from “stupid” to “cool” once the zeros pile up.

January is the month when most people are starting out on a journey into the unknown. They’re going to the gym for the first time, fiddling with a business idea, or taking on a new skill. And all of these will seem futile and pathetic when they start out. Struggling to bench press 95 pounds is embarrassing and makes you feel horrible (I know from personal experience), but you’ll be moving bigger weights in no time.

Fighting to make your first dollar off affiliate marketing is horrible too. But sticking with yields huge rewards.

Sitting down, learning the basics, and hanging in there will easily lead to a 2,000% increase in profits. In my first month of blogging I made $1.63. Two months later I was earning a dollar a day. Seven months later and I was making a couple thousand a month. In the span of a year you can increase your earnings by 100,000%.

If things look grim, keep going. A futile little project that you’re struggling with today could be your personal goldmine next year. You just have to continue developing it.

During my Kindle book publishing experiment, I stumbled upon something quite interesting. Price really doesn’t matter! Playing with one of my titles, I adjusted it from $0.99 to $2.99. The sales remained the same and no one complained. It went against all conventional eBook wisdom.

In fact, I actually made more money and sold more copies by raising all of my titles. Here are just a few of my observations and speculations as to why this happened:

Entertainment isn’t something people worry about

Earlier today I was browsing for a quick fiction read to plow through this afternoon. I ended up stumbling on An Occurrence in Crazy Bear Valley. It’s a 108 page story filled with cowboys fighting zombie dinosaurs and crazed Sasquatches. That’s something light and fun that I’d love to kill an afternoon with.

The book cost $4.95, a little steep for a short read but I figured it was worth it. Five bucks for a few hours of fun is a tiny investment.

When most people buy a book about finance, taxes, weight lifting, or home repair, they want the best book at the cheapest price. But when those same people are looking for something fun they’ll pay less attention to the cost. There are millions of crummy detective novels, billionaire romances, and ghost stories. And they usually cost more than “serious”material that’s meant to educate you about something.

Comic books are about five bucks a piece. Buying an issue of Captain America will cost you more than a used copy of How To Argue And Win Every Time. One is a 20 page story where a man in tights punches Nazis and the other is a powerful book on negotiation that was written by an expert lawyer. The average person is willing to pay more for entertainment than they are on education. Keep that in mind when you’re pricing books.

A higher price tag indicates more value

The last $0.99 book I bought was written by James Altucher. Other than that, I can’t remember ever picking up a Kindle book that cost less than three dollars.

Dollar books carry a stigma of being poorly written and cheap. You can thank guys like Tim Ferriss for that. People see a generic title with that dollar price tag and they keep on walking.

Additionally, Amazon royalties are really screwy. Selling 100 copies of a $0.99 book would only earn you $35. Selling that same number of copies for a $2.99 read would net roughly $280. That’s a big difference!

Go a little higher on your price. It will make your book look better and will create bigger profit margins.

Kindle Unlimited users “save” money

If you sign up for Kindle Unlimited you can borrow certain books for free. Amazon then pays these authors between $1.33 and $2.50 per copy. If 10 people use this service to get your book, you make $13 to $25. With a $0.99 book that sells 10 copies, you’d only make $3.50.

By pricing these books higher, you can provide shoppers with an incentive to borrow rather than buy. While I’m not an expert on this, I have seen better lending rates once my books were repriced in the three dollar range. This ends up costing the customer nothing and you still get paid.

Frugal people are kept at bay

Every month my $0.99 books would get bought up and then returned. People would keep them for a day and then hand them back over, getting a full refund. It really made me mad.

Since I changed strategies this hasn’t happened. In fact, I haven’t had a single return all month.

If you cater to tight-wads, don’t be surprised when they’re too cheap to pay you.

Taking action is more valuable than money

While reading Tony Robbins’ book, Money, I learned something interesting. Most people will avoid taking action at any cost. There’s a story in the book about how the number organ donors in Scandinavia is significantly higher than it is anywhere else. And that’s due to the fact that Scandinavia countries ask citizens to “check the organ donor box if they do not want to be part of the program.” People are too lazy to make a simple pen stroke and, as a result, they end up getting enrolled as organ donors.

This story might not sound applicable to eBooks, but it is. Getting the client to click “Buy” is more important than the dollar amount. The same people who will buy a story at $0.99 are probably willing to spend $2.99. As long as you aren’t gouging the client, you’ll still make sales.