Alternatives to Kindle publishing

[Alex Bridges]

I’ve only published on Kindle. How well do people do selling on other platforms? Which ones? 

Thank you ? 

[BabyJune]

I have had a lot of success on Lulu.com. I'm very pleased with their site. As a matter of fact, I have another royalty check coming in the mail this Wednesday.

[BoTox]

On 5/12/2019 at 2:05 PM, Author_Alex said:

I’ve only published on Kindle. How well do people do selling on other platforms? Which ones? 

Thank you ? 

Are you doing paperbacks or ebooks?

Are you doing KDP Select?

I looked into some other avenues to sell books but in the end Amazon was easy and consistent.

I've sold quite a few ebooks and a hand full of paperbacks on Amazon. However, I make more money off of the pages read as part of KDP Select. I'm not the hugest fan of Amazon but they have the deepest market penetration and they pay after 90 days.

I only mention my books here and on another forum I'm on that is a more general kink and I've never made less than $25 a month royalties. I've given a lot of my books away for a weekend here and there. Otherwise, I assume most of it is from folks finding it on Amazon through searches of keywords. I've sold to all the English speaking countries and to a few to non-English speaking countries.

I'm interested in seeing what others say. i'm always looking for a better deal and sometimes the 800 lb gorilla is the winner.

[Alex Bridges]

@BoTox

I’ve been very happy with Amazon. I make about $300 a month on it ($900 this month, since I published a copy of the Mueller report ?), and I spend a little on Amazon and Facebook ads. 

I think you’re probably right. I’m wondering if Barnes & Noble might be worth it, or really anything that’s low maintenance and  worth the effort.

[BoTox]

On 5/14/2019 at 6:12 PM, Author_Alex said:

@BoTox

I’ve been very happy with Amazon. I make about $300 a month on it ($900 this month, since I published a copy of the Mueller report ?), and I spend a little on Amazon and Facebook ads. 

I think you’re probably right. I’m wondering if Barnes & Noble might be worth it, or really anything that’s low maintenance and  worth the effort.

That sounds quite lucrative as a hobby.

[Alex Bridges]

5 minutes ago, BoTox said:

That sounds quite lucrative as a hobby.

It pays for my vacation every year.

It's as close to passive income as you can get, too - I wrote it, I tweak the ads every now and then, but it mostly just does it's thing, and Amazon deposits the money. My next non-fiction book will be coming out in late December most likely and may or may not earn a dime. If not, it was fun writing it.

[BoTox]

18 hours ago, Author_Alex said:

It pays for my vacation every year.

It's as close to passive income as you can get, too - I wrote it, I tweak the ads every now and then, but it mostly just does it's thing, and Amazon deposits the money. My next non-fiction book will be coming out in late December most likely and may or may not earn a dime. If not, it was fun writing it.

That's pretty much why I do it. I think I have a compelling story to tell and the chips fall where they may.

[Cute_Kitten]

On 5/18/2019 at 5:03 PM, BoTox said:

That's pretty much why I do it. I think I have a compelling story to tell and the chips fall where they may.

I'm a little late to the party, but this was my thinking as well.  I just threw a couple of completed stories up on amazon because I figured why the heck not.  

[BoTox]

17 hours ago, Cute_Kitten said:

I'm a little late to the party, but this was my thinking as well.  I just threw a couple of completed stories up on amazon because I figured why the heck not.  

What's the worst that can happen? It costs you nothing but your time. I've made a few $100 so far and I've given away about half of my books for free at one time or another to the folks here that want a copy.

[Cute_Kitten]

6 hours ago, BoTox said:

What's the worst that can happen? It costs you nothing but your time. I've made a few $100 so far and I've given away about half of my books for free at one time or another to the folks here that want a copy.

Exactly. I figured, worse comes to worse and I sell 0, no skin off my nose.  Plus, I'm thinking it's a good excuse to indulge in a picture commission of a favorite character or scene (something I've always wanted to do, but always found excuses not to lol).  Congrats on your sales so far. It never hurts to try something, you never know how things will work out until you...well, try lol!

[NateSean]

I'm chiming in here in case there others who are following the discussion and would like to continue it. As you started this thread in May, you may already have come to your own conclusion so this is just a general reply.

If you're making actual money on Amazon, then stick with it. I can say from my own experiences with Smashwords and Lulu that you are 99% on your own anywhere else. 

That said, self promotion is key. Maybe business cards with a coupon code to hand out at the next ABDL convention, or you could launch a Fund Anything campaign for your latest book and offer a signed hard copy as a reward. Then include a coupon code for your backlist.

[BoTox]

I only promote my works here and zity.biz for the most part. I also try to give a book away periodically to reward the readers here for supporting my efforts for the last decade plus.

Amazon is probably not the greatest place but it is global and I'm getting sales from most of the English speaking world and a few non-primary English places like Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Spain. It is amazing to me, a small town smut writer.

[Cute_Kitten]

Amazon is the biggest online book retailer; it goes up against the Big 5 traditional publishing houses, so I like it for the scope of it's reach. Other sites can be good too, I'm not knocking them. I went with Amazon because it is the largest. 

As for self-promotion, no matter what site you go on, that's the name of the game. Even for non-fetish, mainstream authors who go with traditional publishing. Publishing houses have a limited budget for promotion, and throw most of that money at promoting the books of the big name authors.  This is where the whole "building your author platform/ finding your audience" kicks in. 

The only promotion I did was one tweet on twitter, and putting up a link in my signature.  I just tossed my books up on amazon and left the rest to the wind. I mostly did it out of curiosity, to see how they'd do. I enrolled them in Kindle Unlimited just to see how they'd do. I won't know until Oct-Nov how they did royalty wise, but I figure even a few bucks beats $0 LOL! 

[BoTox]

2 hours ago, Cute_Kitten said:

I just tossed my books up on amazon and left the rest to the wind. I mostly did it out of curiosity, to see how they'd do. I enrolled them in Kindle Unlimited just to see how they'd do. I won't know until Oct-Nov how they did royalty wise, but I figure even a few bucks beats $0 LOL! 

Actually, you should be able to see now if you have sales or pages read. Look at Reports then select month to date. You won't get paid for 90 days but you'll see the stats.

Try this link if you haven't seen beta reports: https://kdpreports.amazon.com/dashboard

[Cute_Kitten]

On 8/23/2019 at 8:47 PM, BoTox said:

Actually, you should be able to see now if you have sales or pages read. Look at Reports then select month to date. You won't get paid for 90 days but you'll see the stats.

Try this link if you haven't seen beta reports: https://kdpreports.amazon.com/dashboard

 

Ah, thankies! (Somehow I completely managed to miss it that lol! Derpy moment on my part, still getting used to the lay of the land).  It's very useful! :3 

[BoTox]

Reviving this topic. Amazon just blocked my latest book and I'm contemplating a new home.

Has anyone had long-term luck with any other self-publishing system

[BoTox]

So I've published the blocked one on Amazon book to Smashwords. We shall see how that goes.

It was a bit more work but it was not terrible. Took me about 4 hours for the first one and half of that was reworking a cover because it has to be much larger with Smashwords than Amazon.

[Cute_Kitten]

4 hours ago, BoTox said:

So I've published the blocked on Amazon book to Smashwords. We shall see how that goes.

It was a bit more work but it was not terrible. Took me about 4 hours for the first one and half of that was reworking a cover because it has to be much larger with Smashwords than Amazon.

Good luck! Is smashwords similar to amazon, or do you have to pay money up front to publish with them? I'm just curious, amazon is the only place I've used. 

[BoTox]

53 minutes ago, Cute_Kitten said:

Good luck! Is smashwords similar to amazon, or do you have to pay money up front to publish with them? I'm just curious, amazon is the only place I've used. 

Smashwords is similar to Amazon in that you pay nothing and they pay you when you sell books. They also distribute your book to other sellers like B&N and Apple. I'm not sure if they distribute through Amazon but I'm going to skip them with this book and see what happens.

I would never publish through someone that charges a fee to the author/publisher for ebooks. I seriously doubt I would deal with anyone that charges for a paperback upfront.

Another thing with Smashwords is they have an audiobook hook with a partner. It is an extra expense but I've not investigated it yet. I don't know if there is a market for diaper fetish adult audiobooks

Interestingly enough, the book sold two copies in the first 12 hours. I've made more in 1/2 a day than I did in two days on Amazon. I'm sure it is just a fluke. Long term results make a trend, not a one day surge.

[Cute_Kitten]

20 hours ago, BoTox said:

Smashwords is similar to Amazon in that you pay nothing and they pay you when you sell books. They also distribute your book to other sellers like B&N and Apple. I'm not sure if they distribute through Amazon but I'm going to skip them with this book and see what happens.

I would never publish through someone that charges a fee to the author/publisher for ebooks. I seriously doubt I would deal with anyone that charges for a paperback upfront.

Another thing with Smashwords is they have an audiobook hook with a partner. It is an extra expense but I've not investigated it yet. I don't know if there is a market for diaper fetish adult audiobooks

Interestingly enough, the book sold two copies in the first 12 hours. I've made more in 1/2 a day than I did in two days on Amazon. I'm sure it is just a fluke. Long term results make a trend, not a one day surge.

it sounds like a good start. Hopefully it will stay that way for you. I'd be leery of any site wanting up front payment from authors, but I was just curious how the new site was working out. 

[BoTox]

I've sold five books in the last 5 days. Pretty good so far. As soon as the Amazon exclusive deal expires, I'll move a few more over and see what happens.

[BoTox]

I've been scouting around and several folks in the erotic author realm had good things to say about Draft 2 Digital.

I'm going to check them out and see if they look like anything worthy trying.

I'm definitely not leaving all of my eggs at Amazon after my experience.

[BoTox]

By way of update, I'm posting my books on both Amazon and Smashwords. Without the Kindle Unlimited I'm still selling more books on Amazon than on Smashwords by about 5 to 1 but I don't have my back catalog on Smashwords. There is nothing like market penetration.