Now available on Amazon … Book of Intuition: Introduction to the Power of Intuition
About a year ago, I got a call from Yama. He wanted to meet to discuss something. That “something” is now available on Amazon. A self-published eBook titled Book of Intuition: Introduction to the Power of Intuition.
I am so thrilled! Doubly so as I am a co-author of the book.
Several years ago I met Yama at a breakfast meetup. We chatted. I began to attend his monthly seminars on intuition. The subject had an “intuitive” (yes, pun intended) appeal to me. I believe that everyone of us is born with intuitive powers. I don’t mean the psychic, the spiritual or even the metaphysical although each is within the broader scope of intuition. I mean the primitive fight or flight mechanism, the gut feel if you will, that is within all of us and that let us live to see another day. It is also that which in my mind contributes to our individualism. In today’s busy and noisy world, that mechanism is being silenced.
What I liked about Yama’s seminars was that he brought a fresh element to the discussion on intuition and showed how the invisible world and science do indeed run on parallel lines and that an invisible world driven by intuition, produces visible results.
At our meeting Yama invited me to be a co-author of a book – one that he’d been thinking about writing for a long time. I was so honoured to have been asked … no, actually I was totally OVER THE MOON!
We set to work. This is the route we took from idea to publication:
- Is there a market for books on intuition?
This was important. If there was no market or interest in intuition then writing a book about it would be relegated to that of a hobby. The world’s biggest online book retailer is Amazon. Checking on Amazon we found that there were close to 2000 results in Amazon Kindle, and over 5000 in books.
There is a market
- Is this a profitable topic?
Looking at the top 10 eBooks, we found that the best selling eBooks on intuition were in that desirable sellers ranking of below 50,000 for all paid kindle books, one even at 18,141 (the lower the number, the higher the ranking, the more sales).
Authors are making money on their books
- Competitor intelligence:
– Length of books: The best sellers had 200 – 300 pages.
– Original publish date: these ranged from years 2007 to 2014
– Number of reviews: from as low as 68 to a high of 951
– The statistics available were only for the eBooks. Each of the top sellers had additional formats, some as many as 10.
– Prices were on average $8 for eBooks and $15 plus for print.
– Top sellers had publishing houses behind them.
- Trends and opportunity
How are we going to compete against books that have the marketing machinery of established publishing houses? Books that have been on the market for as long as 10 years and a review count as high as 951? We were facing a competitive market with some muscle power behind it.How could we counter that? What was our competitive advantage … for that matter did we have one or was that just wishful thinking blowing in the wind? We found that eBooks were trending upwards and overtaking print book sales. In December 2009 Amazon eBook sales overtook print for the first time. That trend has continued unabated.Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon.kdp) has opened the literary floodgates to authors who otherwise would not get the time of day from traditional literary agents, let alone get published. Now independent authors are able to self-publish and get their product to market on the largest online book retailer in the world.Fiction rules. Non-fiction not far behind.Short “how to” and information books sell well.“Indie” authors are swelling the ranks, many with impressive sales results in the mid to high 6- figure income club. Some have even reached the magical 7-figure income. Heady days!Do we sink or do we swim?We decided to swim.
- Our path to publication
We looked at book publishing situation. We looked at our situation. Our category and topic was in the nonfiction genre. We took the following steps
Decision One: Format
Step one was the decision to self-publish an eBook with Amazon. This was a no-brainer. Amazon’s author friendly KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) made total sense. The digital format is easy to publish and allows for quick updates, adding more content and ability to have the edited version republished within 24 hours.
Decision Two: Financial
Amazon not only offers an author-friendly platform, but an attractive royalty plan. We had options of going with other digital production/publishing houses, but none came close to the 70% royalty we could earn with Amazon.
Decision Three: Marketing Support
If your eBook sells well, Amazon will help promote it. A built-in algorithm pushes your books up in the best sellers ranking increasing visibility to its 300 million plus list of buyers. Moreover, when someone purchases an eBook in your genre and category, Amazon puts up a “Customers who bought this item also bought … “If your book is performing well it could be included in the selection of similar books that the customer may decide to purchase.
Amazon knows that the more books its customers have in their hands, the more they are likely to buy. When you publish your book you can choose to participate in the Kindle Select program which allows you to offer free copies of your eBook for up to 5 days within a 90-day period. The results factor in when your best sellers ranking is calculated.
Sponsored (for fee) marketing is available at nominal costs.
Decision Four: Short book. Rather than writing a 300 plus page book on intuition, we decided to go with a series of short books on intuition. Typically between 30 and 50 pages. If the book is well received we can expand. If the feedback is lackluster we can edit and improve.
- Publish Date: Feb 26, 2017Day 4 … results.
We are happy!
Results fluctuate all the time but particularly for the first 30 days. The plan is to improve the day to day results with additional marketing so that the book settles in at less than 50K best sellers rankings or show up on the top 20 page for that category/topic.
