Is publishing on Kindle worth it? Or have you missed the boat if you’re just now thinking about doing it and it’s already 2022? Project Life Mastery founder, Stefan James, who’s done quite a bit of self-publishing on Kindle over the years, shares his thoughts. “I’m gonna talk about where I see it going, the opportunity of it, and help you identify: is it really the right fit for you? Is it really worth pursuing for you this year and beyond?” Read on for his hot take on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
“Now, the honest answer that I can give you,” Stefan says, “is that it depends. It depends on you and it also depends on what your goals are. Why do you wanna publish books on Amazon? Why would you want to build an Amazon book publishing business? Maybe you love writing, maybe you’ve always wanted to write your own book, to be a published author. Maybe that’s your dream career. And that’s the vehicle you wanna leverage to share your message with the world.”
“If that’s you, then I think you should pursue it. Book publishing is a huge industry, Amazon is huge, so the opportunity is there. The demand is there. And I have no doubt that if you really love writing and that’s the career that you wanna pursue, fantastic, you’ll probably be successful at that because you have that passion behind it. You’ll do a great job and put in the work and the energy to put yourself out there, go on podcasts, market yourself in the media, et cetera.”
“On the other hand, if your goal is to make a six figure income or maybe a seven figure income, and you wanna become financially free, then maybe it’s not the best opportunity for you. Because, if I were to be honest with you, if your only goal is to make six or seven figures, then I could share four or five other online business models that could get you there faster and easier. The challenge with publishing books on Amazon and trying to make big money is that you’re selling low ticket products.”
Stefan explains how, typically, when you sell an eBook on Kindle, it’ll be priced anywhere from ninety-nine cents to maybe ten bucks, tops. And sure, maybe you make a paperback version as well and you sell that for twenty bucks. Still, to do even a hundred grand a year, you’d need to sell a ton of those, wouldn’t you? Like, you’d need thousands of customers. Or, you’d need thousands of books, all selling a few copies every month, right? And both are incredibly tough to pull off. Put it this way, Stefan doesn’t know a single Kindle publishing millionaire.
Not that publishing on Kindle doesn’t have its advantages. If you write the books yourself, you can get started for almost no money out of pocket. It’s a great way to learn the Amazon and Kindle platforms. You’ll develop a new set of skills, such as the ability to pick winning niches, create catchy titles and cover art, optimize your book listings for search, you’ll learn how to market, how to get reviews, and so on. And if you do publish something and it ends up selling, it is pretty much hands-free after that. So it’s not a bad business model, it’s just that it’s not the best either.
What you could do is use Kindle publishing as a lead magnet, a way to build your email list and ascend people into higher priced products or services. Assuming you have something valuable to sell, that is. But that would be a way you could stretch what you might make publishing on Kindle and turn it into six or seven figures in 2022. Or you could just do a smarter internet business to begin with. Like Stefan said, there are a handful of models he’d recommend over KDP; click the link below for what I believe is best in class.
