The Amazon Book Blueprint (Mini Course Lesson 2)

Welcome back to the Amazon Book Publishing Blueprint. This is lesson two of the mini course – validating your book idea on Amazon. (Don’t forget to watch Lesson 1 if you haven’t yet.)

This one’s really exciting for me. Todd is back again, and he’s going to roll back the curtain for us. I personally tried to validate before I met Todd, and I really struggled. Today, the puzzle clicked into place.

Today’s lesson is obviously huge if you’re looking to be a writer who is also an entrepreneur. You know, is there an audience for this particular book? What sort of sales can you expect? What category do you put your book in? Todd answers all these questions so when you release your book on Amazon, you can maximize the money and the ROI that you get.

I highly recommend you watch the whole video, but here are the highlights.

The Bonus of Publishing on Amazon

Amazon books give you recurring revenue, but if you get in the right categories, if you get in the right niches, and if you stay there for a long time, you also get the chance to be discovered… which leads to more sales… which leads to more discovery.

Amazon wants to sell what’s selling well. If you get on the right side of their algorithm, it’s a good time.

Todd has new fans every day from people who pick up his books for the first time. Just like Medium, Amazon can help you get discovered. That’s huge if you’re serious about making this a career.

Two big mistakes that tank book sales

There are millions of books on Amazon. I guarantee you nobody wants their book to disappear as soon as it’s released. Sadly, that happens all the time. most books on Amazon and there are millions never sell a single copy. Todd and his clients often sell 6 to15 copies a day and watch the recurring revenue roll in.

Big mistake #1 – Writing a book that won’t be relevant in a year, or even in a few months.

Don’t write books with expiration dates.

If you wrote a book about booting up your Apple II computer that’s not going to be a book that sells well today because it is no longer relevant. Todd had several clients who wanted to write a book about COVID. He talked them all out of it because he knew (fingers crossed) that COVID will soon be a distant memory.

Good for humanity. Bad for the guy who wrote a COVID book for a quick cash grab, even if that guy wrote the most thoroughly researched COVID book of all time.

Think long term with your book.

Big mistake #2 – Writing a “show off” book

Don’t write to show off. Write to solve a problem.

If you were looking for advice on personal finances today, which book would you read?

The Modern Economy and Its Consequences on the Upper Middle Class

OR

How to Master Your Personal Finances in the Age of Cryptocurrency.

Exactly you’d read the second one. People who write about topics are too often trying to prove a point to their peers or trying to show off. Jargon gets you nowhere in life, and it definitely doesn’t sell many books

How Amazon Books Work

Amazon books are driven by categories. When you’re in a certain category, you’re competing with other books in that category. What you’re looking for is a category that seems to be selling pretty well, but not SO well that you won’t be able to compete.

For example, Todd might want to write a book about art. When he starts searching through that category, Amazon shows him over 50,000 results for art. So he starts niching down. He clicks through the top sellers in the art category to look for their categories underneath.

Pretty soon, he finds a category in which he’d only need to sell 1 book per day in order to win that Amazon bestseller stripe. What does it mean when you have a bestseller stripe? Well, first it means you brag to all your friends. Secondly, it means Amazon starts to selling your book for you.

The video is critical at this point as I can’t describe every single thing popping up on the web page. Jump to 10:35 to see how Todd digs for a great niche category.

Whenever you publish a book on Amazon, you want a super niche category so you can grab that bestseller stripe, and you also want to be in a super competitive category to get in front of a massive amount of readers.

Todd also dropped a crazy nugget of information: you can get in 10 categories at one time… Amazon tells you only 2 categories are allowed.

How to calculate the amount of money a book is making

This one will really get your brain spinning.

Thanks to the sheer amount of research that’s been done on Amazon’s algorithm and process, we can make a rough estimate on how much money a book is making on Amazon in any given day.

Step 1: Pick out a book

Step 2: Scroll down to the bottom a look for the books “ASBR” (Amazon Bestseller Ranking)

Step 3: Head over to this book sales calculator

Step 4: Type in the ASBR to see how many copies per day that book is selling.

Step 5: Multiply that number by the list price of the book.

Step 6: Let your jaw hit the floor

Please do yourself a favor and watch this piece of the video live. Todd goes WAY off script and starts running some excel formulas to reverse engineer who is selling what. This data helps him understand how hot the market is for that type of book, and whether it’s worth his time.

Hint: in this case… we figured someone happens to be making roughly $26,000 per month, on only ONE of his two books that are showing up in the bestseller category.

Check that analysis out starting at 24:35 in the video.

Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to email me if you have any questions: tim@timdenning.com

Talk soon,
-Tim