From A Publisher’s Prospective…
Amazon has been remarkably tight-lipped about revealing just how many Kindles have been sold to date as well as what the sales figures are for Kindle books being purchased every month.
As far as the number of actual Kindle units sold, I’ve seen estimates all across the board but most sources seem to place the number of Kindle users somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 and growing.
As far as sales figures for Kindle books, no one but Amazon knows for sure but Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, commented at this year’s BookExpo America annual trade show that Kindle ebook downloads already account for 6% of Amazon’s unit sales of “books that are available in both paper and electronic formats”. (Source: New York Times, June 2, 2008, “Electronic Device Stirs Unease at Book Fair”)
You can bet that 6% of anything at Amazon is a significant amount but until Amazon decides to release the actual sales figures for the Kindle units and Kindle ebooks sold any estimate as to just how big this market actually is would be sheer speculation.
Now, here’s the important part and the whole point of this report – as an information publisher you can gain direct access to this market of Kindle users through a special platform that Amazon has put together called the Kindle Direct Publishing.
The Kindle Direct Publishing is a simple online publishing system designed to allow you to upload your digital content to Amazon for sale in the Kindle store.
It’s free to publish your digital content on Kindle Direct Publishing Platform and offer it for sale to Kindle users so there is no risk on your part. Why not experiment and see what happens? I’ve talked to a handful of Kindle content publishers now who were pleasantly surprised at how well some of their Kindle titles have been selling.
Here’s a few quick facts regarding publishing with the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform and selling in Amazon’s Kindle store…
- Utilizing the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform requires no special skills whatsoever. If you can copy and paste stuff that’s pretty much the only skill you need.
l - You specify the list price of your titles which can be anywhere from $0.99 to $200.00 USD.
l - As outlined in the DTP’s Terms and Conditions you receive a set percentage of your list price when your product sells. At the moment that set percentage is from 35% to 70%.
l - You can upload documents in the following formats: HTML, plain text (.txt), Microsoft Word (.doc), and Adobe Reader (.pdf). When you upload your documents, the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform converts them into Kindle format automatically – Amazon’s KDP support team recommends uploading in HTML format for the best conversion results.
l - Yes, you can include images in your documents. The Kindle handles images extremely well as long as you follow the image guidelines that the Amazon DTP support team suggests. See online help for more info.
l - It probably goes without saying that you can only publish content for which you own the electronic publishing rights. Public Domain and Private Label Rights products are perfect for this as well as your own original content.
l - You get paid automatically as long as your account has a balance of $10.00 or more “approximately sixty days following the end of the calendar month during which applicable sales of your content occur”. Seem like a long time to wait for your money? I agree but shortly, we will discuss some strategies for using this thing that will probably make it to where you don’t even care if you get paid at all!
l - Funds will be distributed to you by Electronic Funds Transfer to a U.S. bank account. Again with that U.S. bank account thing – hang in there, my understanding is that Amazon is looking at their options for opening this program up to the rest of the world.
l - Once “published”, your content will appear for sale in the Kindle store approximately 24-72 hours later but I’ve had reports of it taking much less time than that.
l - An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is not required to publish content with Digital Text Platform
So What Makes The Kindle Store A Worthwhile Place To Market My Digital Products?
4 reasons why Kindle users are a really good group of people to sell information to…
- Already a proven buying market – Kindles are pricey – so these people that are buying these things have disposable income. They buy these and then of course they’re trolling the Kindle store constantly for new books to purchase.
l - Already a market that’s completely comfortable and enthusiastic about digital products – they are already very familiar and comfortable with the concept of “ebooks” and they are comfortable reading things on a digital screen.
l - They are comfortable with technology – Kindle users aren’t afraid of technology or they wouldn’t be such avid fans of these things in the first place.
l - They aren’t afraid to spend money online – this is proven over and over again just by the fact that every product for the Kindle is purchased online.
All four of these factors make Kindle users ideal candidates for selling digital products to especially when using Kindle products as bait to get traffic back to your higher profit websites and products. I cover that subject next in Part 3 of this series.
Consider this – there’s over 85 million books in the public domain. You could very easily use these books to create thousands of books for your Kindle book store. The opportunity is huge so be sure to check out the next part of this series if you’d like to learn more about how to sell public domain books on Amazon for profit.
Please… make sure you check out all the other “parts” to this series… I think you will find a new profit stream to add to your publishing empire!
Amazon Kindle Public Domain Connection Part 1
Amazon Kindle Public Domain Connection Part 3
Amazon Kindle Public Domain Connection Part 4
How To Publish On Kindle – Free Video and Report
I hope you are getting some great ideas already about the potential of publishing Public Domain content on the Amazon Kindle Publishing platform.
p.s. Just so you know… some of the subscribers to the Public Domain Book Club have already used a few of the books for just this purpose! They have made “new” books using of the 5 “Modes” Of Public Domain Publishing.
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