How to Leverage the Power of the Kindle Ecosystem to Build Your Business

How to Leverage the Power of the Kindle Ecosystem to Build Your Business

Reader Comments (37)

  1. hi Henneke

    Kindle book launch model reminds me of the WarriorForum, the most popular discussion board in the marketing industry. There are “product creators” there that have launched a ton of great stuff (based on the feedback received) which increases their “authority” and brand name.

    From your explanation, I see there’s no difference between creating lead generator PDF reports and Kindle books. The same principles apply for getting prospects leave you their email, and following-up with them for mutual growth and benefit.

    If anyone is interested to generate leads and make money online, then tap into this large pool of ready-to-fry fish, called Amazon 🙂

  2. Thanks for the awesome post Henneke! I love your closing “Write something so good that nobody can ignore it”.

    Saving this post for later reference 🙂

  3. Writing an book, digital or print, continues to be a great way to show authority and credibility for business owners. However, I would caution against writing a very short document and calling it a book.

    People still have expectations about what a book is vs. what constitutes a report or white paper, especially in nonfiction. Yes, attention spans are shorter so the 300+ page tome with a huge thud factor aren’t too popular anymore. But in print, the average nonfiction book page is about 300 words give or take. At 10K or less, that’s around 30 pages or less. That is at the lowest end of an amount that could be bound if you wanted to and solid reports are often that long.

    If you’re taking the time and effort to write a book, remember, not everyone wants an ebook. Why not create one you can also print, even if you hand them out for free instead of a brochure?

    Granted, there are people who say they’ll buy a five page “book” if the info is exactly what they want. But in my opinion, that is not the majority yet. As with any other marketing strategy, it comes down to knowing your audience. Will they complain that 20 or 30 pages is not a book, will they feel ripped off?

    Writing a book can be hard work, but it may not be for you. For some the process is quite enjoyable overall. If you’re considering it, I agree with Henneke, go for it!

    • And printing a book has become even easier with print-on-demand services available now!

      A book should be as long as required to tell what you have to say. I find that some traditionally published books are artificially padded with unnecessary or repetitive information to meet a word count. That’s a waste of readers’ time.

  4. Thank you again for all of the information and tips! I love your blog, and how you share things without “fluffing up” material. 🙂 I’d love to turn my posts into a book, but I needed the organization tips. Now I feel a little less nervous to just go for it.

  5. Great post Henneke! I think it’s important to create excitement around your book before you launch it. Waiting until the last minute to market your book could backfire, and you may not see the results you expected. Don’t forget to issue a press release. It’s still a good way to promote your book in addition to your email list and social media networks.

  6. Another point worth noting is that if you’ve published an existing book (in print) and you want to update/reformat/publish it on Kindle, normally you’d have to either rip it all up and scan it page by page or try scanning the whole thing, which usually causes words at the ends of the edges to get cut off.

    If this happens to you, I’d recommend going to bookscanning.com and using their book-to-kindle conversion service. Saves heaps of time and frustration.

  7. I’ve published 7 Kindle books and I work with a lot of new and aspiring authors, but for the most part we’re coming at this publishing from a different perspective. Rather than using the book as a tool to promote another business – our books are our business. That said, I’m also a voracious reader and to the subject of the length of a book. I’ve read books 20 pages that were absolute gems and I’ve read books 300 pages that were boring as dirt. For me – as a reader – it’s all about the content. If I feel the book has value, the length is not an issue.

  8. I’ve published 12 books on Kindle and yes, it’s not easy, but it’s not the most difficult thing either. After the first few things go simply.

    I figured out earlier this year that an eBook would be a great way to draw in more content writing work. I began making blog posts around the idea of writing content pages and when I felt I had enough I put them together, added quite a few new things, got a cover, and Voila! eBook’s out there and people seek me out for content work.

    There are plenty of books selling on Amazon that’ll tell you straight out how to write a non-fiction book in 14 days, and just as many sites that where people will write one for you. I agree that they’re another great tool in a business’ marketing arsenal.

  9. I love the idea of creating bonus content for your website that’s only available to readers. I think it would work well for us fiction authors, too. I have all kinds of ideas floating in my head now: trading cards, illustrations of characters, comics, a character list…

    Thanks for the awesome post! 🙂

    • Yep, I am sure it would work for fiction, too. And having your avid fans on your email list will certainly help you when you launch your next book. You could even think about giving your first chapter of your next book away to readers on your email list to warm them up and get them to buy it!

  10. Kindle ebooks are certainly an excellent promotional tool, and a nice way to earn a bit of passive income.

    Don’t forget to hire a professional editor. Beta-readers can help you so far, but a professional will give you that extra quality assurance.

    If your ebook is about the writing industry, think how terrible it would be to publish a book with less than perfect spelling, format, grammar and clarity. No matter how good a (copy)writer you are, no one can proofread their own work!

    P.S. Slightly shameless self promotion: I offer a professional editing service, so if you’ve written an ebook, feel free to check out my website or get in touch for a no obligation quote. (www.playle-editorial-services.com)

    • I fully agree. I didn’t want to suggest that beta readers replace an editor. I highly recommend using an editor.

  11. I once tried to do kindle ebook business but i failed…never tried again.

    hoping to get in touch again and try me luck this time with these content marketing ideas.
    Thanks a tons

  12. Good stuff. I have a Kindle book written for a topic that strays from my area of expertise, but still something that I know a great deal about. It is currently in the edit stage, and really, has been neglected over the past few weeks. Time to get crackin’ on it.

    I like what you said about your outline. I never thought about using those old fashioned cards before. I tend to outline with my old fashioned spiral notebook. I then keep it in front of me, like on my cork board in front of my desk.

    This keeps it on my mind so that it gets done. I actually do all of my writing like this–blog posts and everything.

    Have a great day!

    Josh

  13. Hi Henneke! How nice is to “read” you here 😉

    Your advice looks so simple and easy! I read this post on Saturday afternoon, but I couldn’t write until now. Let me tell you what I remember “making an e-book is like writing several post together”. Again it looks so simple!

    This is a terrific advice, I guess many of us didn’t think about amazon to promote. Hopefully we’ll write an excellent book like yours (yes I read it 🙂

    • Thank you, Julieta 🙂

      Keeping things simple is important to get a book written. It’s too easy to over-complicate things and never finish!

  14. Henneke, My first ebook on kindle was an audio interview I had transcribed. Turned out pretty good, but I would like to start from scratch on a new one without any help from a transcriptionist.

    Thanks for sharing

    Latesha 🙂

  15. Hi Jarrod, My friend here in Indiana has written several books for kindle. He’s not real good about laying out the necessary steps, but since I have read this I think I can hack it. Thanks for the guidance!

    Liana :))))

  16. Never thought of using kindle as a publishing platform. Do you think the conversion rates for opt in forms would be as high as a standard PDF eBook? Maybe offer both options.

    • It’s hard to say, it depends on the book and the audience.

      It’s also difficult to measure the conversion from book readers to email subscribers as my book was only launched three months ago. In the first month the number of conversions was relatively low – about one in seven. I assume many like a freebie, but never get around to reading the book, so never get prompted to download the bonus worksheets. In the second and third month, however, I estimate that one in two book buyers has subscribed to my email list.

      I considering offering both options (Kindle & PDF), but the free giveaway through Amazon was too tempting – so I gave them the distribution exclusively (at least for the first 90 days).

  17. Hello Henneke, Thanks for this post outlinging Kindle. We live in NZ and there are many people here that have a few book up on the net selling pretty well. It’s all pretty strange to me and sometimes hard to understand. Your article made it easy and cleared some things up for me. Thanks again and take care.

    Young

  18. Hi Henneke, Good content here for kindle. It can be a confusing process for many people. Nice to be able to put your advice into motion. I will be telling my friends about this site for sure!

  19. Thanks Henneke, The information on how-when-what-where to publish kindle it’s overwhelming. This article was easy to understand and provided a solid foundation on everything to get started. Thank you for putting this together for me!

    Denisse :)))))))))))

    • I was completely overwhelmed by Kindle, too. And it took me quite some time to get my head around how I could really use it for business.

      I highly recommend Cathy Presland’s course (linked in the article above) if you’re looking for more in-depth information and support.

      Good luck with your book! 🙂

  20. Hi Henneke,
    Ran across your wonderful post shared in the BizSugar community. Ebook marketing may not be new, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a comprehensive approach. My question: how widespread is Kindle marketing at this point? Are there a lot of people already on the scene, or is it still a relatively new frontier in terms of adoption for marketing purposes?

    • Thank you, Heather. 🙂

      I ‘d say using a Kindle book for marketing purposes is still a relatively new frontier. It may get more difficult to achieve good Amazon rankings in the future when more people start trying this approach.

      The idea of launching a book to promote a consultancy business or speaking career has existed for a long time of course, but the Kindle makes this achievable for a lot of small business owners / solo entrepreneurs. Even printing your own book has become a lot easier, but I’ve not tried that yet.

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