Want to be a Writer ?: Self Publish on Amazon - Step by step guide

Want to be a Writer ?Self Publish on Amazon Step by step guide

By Dante

Copyright 2021 Dante

All Rights Reserved

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Reality Check

Chapter 2 - Three ways to write a book

Chapter 3 - Lets get started

Chapter 4 - Author page, Pen Names, Promotion, Support

Chapter 5 - Interview with Dante

Introduction

OK before I begin, this is a brief introduction but I have included a more in depth interview in the last chapter. This is NOT going to be like your typical How to make $100 an hour on Amazon writing course This is what I call Real Life Writing and in my early days, was influenced by authors like Stephen King who describes himself a panster, but more on that later. I write under the pen name of Dante X and now have over 100 books on Amazon.

Firstly, Id like you understand, that in my opinion, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of writing courses, Apps, mind-maps, grammar and formatting software, plot generators and programs out there to "supposedly" help you create an amazing book...!

However, after spending several months and hundreds of hours checking most of the main ones out, I realised, they are more or less a total waste of time and money.

Either you want to be a writer or you don't.

Writing is not something you wake up one day and decide to learn... It's in your heart... You've most likely been reading or writing things down your whole life.

Maybe it was goal setting or life planning, a diary, blogging... I was a late starter and didn't start writing until I took early retirement and moved to a tropical climate, whereas I found I had too much spare time. But previously, I was always creating websites, power-point presentations, blogs and courses to teach people about specific business opportunities that I'd become involved in and became very successful. The best one by far was a communications company that earned me in just over 240K in the first year, and that 30 years ago back in 1991. And during that time, I met and worked alongside many, very successful individuals, of which, we all attended many trainings in self development, by legend multi millionaires like Jim Rohn, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy and Earl Nightingale to name a few.

I was even told by a palmist in my twenties that I'd be a writer...! but dismissed it as fantasy as I didn't think I had the qualifications or education to be a professional writer. However, I was always interested in books and whenever I was in a shopping center with my wife, I'd usually say, meet me in W.H. Smiths or Waterstones a couple of the major bookshops in the UK at the time.

Then I found myself writing adult stories about my UK clubbing and Far East travelling experiences and posting them on the various adult story websites. And because of all the positive reviews, I kept writing and eventually had about forty short stories of actual experiences uploaded. Then by chance, I came across a website that was offering a course in writing adult erotica.

Please note at this point

This introduction to self publishing and making money on Amazon KDP, paperbacks and Audible is not only about writing erotica. You can choose any subject you like. If fact, I would strongly advise you to choose a subject that is your main interest or passion. (Mine was erotica and I was already uploading stories for free, never thinking in a million years, Id be able to make any money from it). Niche areas and subjects like children's books or cycling or cooking or sailing are brief examples, but anything you love to do are potential subjects.

So when I came across the writing erotic stories for profit course, at first I was intrigued, but still didn't think I had the talent to write erotica books and have people pay to read them. But after looking onto it a little more, I quickly realised, that I was already writing erotica, but my issue was, I didn't know how to make money from my endeavours. The online course was all about self publishing on Amazon KDP and Audible and cost about 180 ($200 USD), claiming that one could make 200 - 1000 pounds + per month.

Well to cut a long story short, I decided to purchase the course and to be honest... I've never looked back. I already had my own style of writing, so that part of the course went over my head, but what really got my interest, was the mechanics of setting up an account on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, how to format and upload the stories, creating an attractive book cover, where to find royalty free images, creating the title, sub titles, keywords and descriptions, creating an Amazon author page, pricing options, offering free books and discount deals, the Amazon dungeon and what is allowed and what is not, I think you get the picture.

So to cut a long story short, I purchased the course and went through it all in a couple of days, then started re-formatting all my stories. The first months income was only 18 pounds (All Amazon payments are two months behind) the next month was 280 pounds, the next was 460! And over the last two years my income has grown to far beyond my expectations and I now get paid from ten countries every month, and all for doing something part time that I absolutely love.

Chapter 1Reality Check

N ow if you've never ever written a book before... and have a wild fantasy in your head that you could easily write a best seller... I am here to burst your bubble and bring you back down to earth.

Unless youve been mega successful in something else in your life and can convey that information to other people in an informative and interesting way... my advice would be to forget it.

Heres a reality check.

How many books do you think are uploaded every day to Amazon from wannabe authors...?

Answer: 1000's per day.

There are currently over 6 million books on Amazon Kindle and over 50,000 new books are uploaded every month. Its quite difficult to find exact numbers but estimates of between 1760 and 7500 PER DAY are what I have found during my own research. And most of these people have spent months... (maybe even years) creating their masterpiece only to finally upload it and get virtually zero sales.

Do you have any idea how many authors earn any money at all on Amazon...?

Answer: Less than 3 % consistently earn $10,000 or more per year.

Now I don't tell you this to put you off writing... But as a reality check.

There are several ways to make money on Amazon but writing just one book (even if it's actually really good) will be lost in the ocean of other new books being uploaded everyday. So one way to succeed as an unknown author is to upload at least one or two books every month. I uploaded three or four and now upload one or two new titles every month. Currently at time of writing in March 2021, I have over one hundred books on Amazon and thirteen compilations of books and stories on Audible and iTunes.

Do I use any other platforms...?

No because Amazon do not allow it and secondly, I'm too busy writing new content.

Have I tried many ways to promote my book...?

Yes absolutely loads, from doing free audio samples on all the various platforms like YouTube, Bitchute, Bitubers, DTube (by the way, if your thinking of getting into erotica, it is banned on most platforms) Facebook groups, Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler, website promotion and my opinion is... they are all expensive, time consuming and a total waste of time and money.

So in a nutshell, I've tried all kinds of things to promote my books and brand or pen name and what works best is, new content uploaded regularly.

Chapter 2Three ways to write a book

Now there are many ways to write a book, depending on the subject matter you choose, but assuming you want to write fiction, there are three main ways.

1. Create a plot, characters and plan it all out using mind maps, notepads or software. By the way, here is a good article I came across if your thinking of getting into writing using this method.

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