- I've got five reasons
you should not be self-publishing on Amazon KDP.
Sounds kind of shocking
considering I just gave you five reasons
you should be self-publishing on Amazon KDP.
So I'm gonna be the devil's advocate in today's video
so stay tuned.
What's happening, it's Dale here,
and hey stick around to the very end
'cause I'm actually gonna show you
how you can publish beyond the Amazon platform
and consider some alternatives.
Here's five reasons you should not be self-publishing
on Amazon KDP.
Number one, it's not passive income.
A lot of people will have you believe
that you're gonna make money when you sleep
when you publish these short books over here.
All you gotta do is X, Y, and Z
and you're gonna become a millionaire overnight.
Well, got news for you,
it doesn't work that way.
Back prior to 2015, it was that simple.
You could just take a dart,
throw it out of the board of ideas,
land on it, publish it, make money, profit hand over fist,
and everybody was happy,
rainbows, sunshine, butterflies, and unicorns
and those days are gone,
because Amazon became very weary of a lot of bad actors
and so they closed that up,
and the Amazon algorithm became much more sophisticated
to where they're rewarding the books and the authors
that perform consistently and perform well.
And those that are just publishing and praying for the best
they're gonna get lost in the whole bin of obscurity
of all the other authors
that are just throwing things on there
expecting passive income to rain down upon them
for publishing on Amazon KDP.
Reason number two, marketing and promotion are essential.
Hey, I already said it.
I said publishing and praying for the best
is the worst idea.
You can't just simply throw your book up there,
have your mom buy it, and say, "Hey, okay, great, all set."
It doesn't work that way.
You have to invite people to the party,
and if you're not inviting people to the party,
Amazon's not gonna send any of their party goers to you,
they're too busy sending all the other party goers
to the people that have a lively party going on.
So if you want your book to be the center of attention,
if you want to be that product that Amazon drives traffic to
you need to start marketing and promoting that book.
And that means getting on social media,
running Amazon advertising campaigns,
making any type of media appearances
on television or a local podcast, it's up to you,
something is better than nothing.
Number three, already have a following?
You've got two options,
You can either use KDP and lose a few royalties
or you can use your own avenues and keep most of your money.
A good friend of mine
and somebody I've followed for a while now, Ashnichrist,
had actually seen Kindle Direct Publishing
and saw that their pricing model of 2.99 to 9.99
and how you get 70%,
but she didn't wanna price her book that cheap.
She had enough great value and information inside her ebook,
she's like, "Well, I wanna price it at $20.
Why do I have to go put it down here?
I'm gonna make the same amount at $20
is what I would make at $10, that makes no sense."
So she made the decision to go ahead
and fulfill it through her own methods.
I think she ended up using Gumroad
and did really quite well.
She had a following.
It did not make sense for her
to go into the Amazon KDP platform
because she already had the audience,
she really didn't feel like leveraging Amazon
she felt the exposure she had was more than sufficient
and she can profit so much better
and reach her audience directly.
Number four, strict and ambiguous guidelines.
They've got a long list of legalees and guidelines and rules
that change without you even knowing.
They will change it, and then they will ban people
and terminate them right off the platform left and right
and they don't have to have a reason,
it is their sandbox, you're just playing in it.
And these strict and ambiguous guidelines
have played a trick on some people,
some people that actually were good authors
and had no ill will.
And when they try to come back and say,
"Okay, hey, look I'll fix these issues,"
Amazon wasn't having it.
So just know this, that if you're okay
with their strict and ambiguous guidelines
and changing the rules on a dime,
then be prepared for potential repercussions
that you can't come back from.
Number five, it's not easy.
It can be simple to publish
through Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing,
but the process isn't easy, okay?
Simple in theory, in practice, not easy, right?
So some people are gonna say, "I can give it to you,
it's so easy, all you gotta do
is write this five page manuscript,
and you're gonna do it every day for the next year,
and you're going to have monkeys
and diapers raining money down upon you."
It does not work out that way folks, it's not easy.
It's gonna take some time, attention, energy,
and sometimes finances
and all of your blood, sweat, and tears go into it,
and sometimes you might get a hit,
and other times, quite a few times,
you're probably gonna get a dud.
And that hurts, that sucks.
That's one of the reasons why I gave you five reasons
you should not be self-publishing on Amazon KDP,
it's not to be disparaging
because believe it or not,
this very next video and the last video I did,
we did five reasons
you should be self-publishing on Amazon KDP.
So I want you to go ahead
and take a look at this very next video.
And if you've already saw that one,
YouTube recommends you go take a look at this one.
It's up to you to choose your own adventure.
What are you gonna choose?