SNM147: Should You Sign Up Your Books for Kindle Unlimited?

speaker 0: 0:00 Should you sign up your books for Kendall Unlimited, find out on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Social Pilot. The social media and marketing tool for bloggers and small businesses joined over 20,000 social media pros at serve. No master dot com Backslash social pilot today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated?

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Amazon is a very tricky kettle of fish because they're constantly changing the rules, constantly changing how things work and they're constantly changing the names of things was my least favorite part. When you sign up for kin unlimited as ah author, you have to sign up for Katie P. Select. So doesn't have the same name Katie be select. Does a couple of things number one people could read your book. I, as consumers a customer paid 9 99 months, $10 a month to be a candle unlimited customer.

That means I can read any book that's in the Kendall Unlimited category for free. I paid $10 a month for all you can read. It's like a buffet of books, and I read far more than $10. Once I was paying about $300 a month for books until can limit, it started. So for me, it's a massive savings is probably the best thing have ever since sliced bread. I wish every book was on kill Limited as a reader, as an author, there are a couple of benefits.

Number one. You get access to that pool of people, so you get paid on books that people don't buy. It's pretty good Number two you could have out of every 90 days. Five days. We run a promotion. There's two types of motion. You have to choose which one you want to run. You could do a Kindle countdown deal, which I've never done, or you could do a Kindle free. So that's where you take your book. It's normally $3. $10 whatever.

And it's free for 1 to 5 days whenever you send it for Can we select you sign up for a 90 day period of time, and in that each time you re sign up for you get those five days now I only ever use one day, and I don't even use them every three months. Reacher book. Maybe do one or two days a year, but it's good to have it there.

So when your book dips, you could run over those promotions, and you can push traffic and rebuild the ranking. Now, when you sign up for can you be Selectric? In a limited its author, you agree not to sell the digital version of your book anywhere other than Amazon. That means you can't sell your book on iTunes. You can't sell your book on Kobol. You can't say book on any other platform. Amazon is rewarding you for exclusivity. This is similar to what Pepsi and Coke do.

You may have noticed that you probably never been in a restaurant without both available for sale. Where Pepsi and Coke do is they say, Hey, if you have Pepsi products, you can't sell Coke products here and vice versa. This is my restaurants have one of the other because they have this agreement that says you carry us, but not the competition. That's why we give you such a good deal. If you carry only us, we'll give you the soda machine for free. You carry only us.

We'll do this in that free. It's a form of market manipulation. That means if you have, ah, slight dominance in the market. And this is why Coke started this in America, least in taste tests, I think people prefer Coke 60 40 60%. People want Coke, 40% what Pepsi. But if you notice go to restaurants, it's really not that split. It's way more restaurants have Coke because they go. Most of our customers want coke. We have to choose between the two products there for a while.

That's how most restaurants do their decision calculus, and it's something coked out of that was pretty ingenious and its way to increase their market share. So even though only 60% of people like them, they're in around 90% of restaurants now. I don't know if those numbers are still the same. This is when I studied in college about 10 years ago. So if numbers have changed, feel free to leave a comment below. But at the time, this is what they were doing. That's pretty brilliant.

So Kill limit is the same thing. It's a way of getting you to say, Hey, we're the top market. Don't put your books anywhere else. We'll give you some cool rewards. What I've been looking at lately is, how much money do I make from can A limited? At first it was 40%. So 60% of my money is from sales. 40% can limit. Now those numbers have changed. Kendall emitters about 10% and at 10% goes. Hey, maybe you know what?

I should put some stuff in some other platforms. So what I'm doing right now and until I have the final numbers, this is just a test. I want to give you cutting edge of data. I've taken a couple of my books that have slowed down recently on Amazon, and I'm putting them on iTunes as my first test.

I want to see how I could do in the eye books store, having a book in the Eye bookstore will be interesting, because if it could generate Maur than can unlimited if you generate just 10% of the sales that I was getting from Amazon thin, it's more profitable there. A couple of rules about iTunes. ITunes is a different world. It's very easy to get traffic if you especially nonfiction iTunes. I'm really testing nonfiction stuff because there's a lot of competition.

So when you have a key word matchbook, when you have a really well written description stuff, you can get your book there quickly. And also they're not a strict about reviews and all those other things about all the things that make Amazon really tough because so many people are trying to game the system because so few people using iBooks it's not that much competition.

So when I upload a book instead of competing with 100 similar books might be competing with five or 10 and I like that. It's a new opportunity in the World West, and as I continues extreme, it'll give you more data. But I want you to think about this. A couple of the authors that I follow, a couple of the authors who teach about riding teacher but offering they've also begun to shift.

A lot of fiction authors I know have actually moved from Kendall Limited so they can start selling books on kobo. That's the next platform. I'm going to experiment with the having experiment with it yet, but I have two or three books, just two or three books, not under my own name. I'm not gonna mess with anything under the servant master brand. That's always gonna be an Amazon. Always could kindle limited.

I have a really good relationship with Amazon, but with some of my pen name books that have kind of dried up or wound down, I'm gonna test them on other platforms because from what I've seen from some of the people I've talked to are you have books on iTunes you don't have to do is much maintenance. Whereas my books and Amazon, I'm constantly having to do a little bit to make it a little bit of pushing traffic.

A little bit of running, brushing it somewhere reviews a little bit of this little bit of that track everything. So I'm interested to see how this plays out, and I'm gonna share with you. It used to be an easy decision to do Ken Unlimited, but they've changed the program so much. That decision is as easy as it used to be. There's a lot of benefits to it, but there's also a lot of challenge.

I want you to look at other platforms as you're deciding what you're going to dio. Even if you decide you want to put a book on Cobo, I think that you should do at least one Kendall Limited Run Do 90 day one so you can run a free promotion. Follow the breaking over Lodge Tragedy, Kiddo. Sniper lunch strategy.

And then you can take it off kind of limited because you've launched it once in nine years to a maintenance and whatever your book needs, a little bit of push you could drop tonight and it sent to do a promo. This is what I've been thinking about. This is the strategy that I've been thinking about adding in, So I'm sharing it with you because I'm thinking about growing my business in a new direction, kind of diversifying.

I always say that it's dangerous to have any single point of failure in your business, because Amazon is my primary source of revenue and traffic for serve no master. Almost every single person who e mails me or find him. He finds me through Amazon. I'm taking a couple of actions. Number one I've begun running Facebook at, So it's possible that you actually found me through Facebook. Now I've started working with the best guy for Facebook ads for authors in the world.

It took me six months to get him to work with me. I'm now working with the best Facebook ads for authors guy in the world to me six months to get him to work with me. But now we're working together. And so it's possible you found me that way. What I'm doing there is called diversification of traffic. I want a second traffic source. I want people to find me another way. Amazon is one of the businesses, the world. But that doesn't mean anything.

Big businesses fail all the time. Look what happened at Enron. Those guys had the audacity to call themselves the biggest business in the world on the smartest guys in the room. And then they all went to jail. What? Some movement it but the whole business is gone. I've seen massive companies disappear. It doesn't matter how big companies have. Amazon runs into a problem, and they certainly could. Every company does here, in there, they might have to break up.

What happens if the federal government decides that Amazon has a monopoly? We'll break him apart, just like they did to the telephone company's 100 years ago. Or some of the oil companies. They broke up standard oil. They broke up Ma Bell Pacific, you know. Then they became Pacific Bell Atlantic Bell because the federal government said, You're too big, People can't get fair prices. You have to break up into pieces that could have an Amazon or many other things.

So for that reason, I wanna have a diversification. So diversification. Traffic is the first step getting travel somewhere else, but also diversification of revenue. Because Emily pays me when they sell those books. So I'm looking at opening up every time I see a single point of failure. In my business, I look for a way to adapt and overcome it, and, of course, I've already overcome the single point of revenue. That's why I take short term project in ghost writing projects.

So all of these things together at up Thio protecting my business, so right now is you're starting out. You are thinking about these things about I've got a single point of failure thinking I just wanna get a single point of success. So as you're starting, it can absolutely, totally make sense to put your book on Amazon. Put your books on Kendall Limit. I've been using Killing Limited as an author since the day it started. I was signed up immediately as both an author and a consumer.

But as you build your business, you'll start to think about Do I want to stay with it? We don't want to diversify in other directions, and the best way to make that decision is to look at your data. If Kendall Limited is generating 40% of your revenue than it makes sense to stay there. But if you see a certain book and some of my books can unlimited is generating like one or 2% of the overall across all my books, it's around 10%.

Right now, more people are buying my books that can limiting them, which is interesting. Additionally, some of my books. My shorter books. Ken Unlimited doesn't generate that much money can eliminate haze You about half a penny, some people say. 0.56 sometimes 8.55 if you just round it down to half a penny could be roughly accurate for selling a book for 2 99 Amazon says This book is 100 pages.

When someone buys your book to make a little over $2 when someone rents your book, you're making around 50 cents. So it's a pretty big difference is that I can Unlimited is worth 1/4 now for some of my books can. The limit is worth more if the book is longer than they can, unlimited actually would generate more money. For example, whenever any. My books on 99 cent problem. Sometimes you ago I took two can eliminate says. In that sense, I hope it's okay.

Yeah, The Kid Unlimited paid me four times more money. If you take, for example, if you grab serve no master when it's 99 cents, Amazon pays me 33 to 35 cents. If you grab the Kindle limited, I make closer $5 Because that book is quite long. There's a lot more value for me when it's on sale for someone, Grab the count. Limited as a consumer, you don't think that you think I'm getting it for free person, but I can't pay that much.

It used to be that you got paid per read like a better fi, but now it's You get paid per page with a little bit of a different monetization. It's more fair. But if not great for the authors, you know you gotta forget someone. Read the whole book if you want to get paid. This lesson. This episode isn't just about kind of limited. It's about how we make decisions.

It's about decision calculus and looking at something and saying isn't worth the cost to get this benefit Now. For me, having a strong relationship with Amazon has a great benefit. So for my servant master books, those are Amazon only, and they probably will be for a while because I really value my relationship.

But for my pen names, that air slowing down and they've been around for a while, or that their books that I think to better another platform I'm gonna experiment a little bit and as experimental, come back you with other numbers. As an author, as a business owner, you're gonna have to make a lot of these decisions over time. And you have to say, Is this benefit worth?

This cost is the additional 10% of money I make a month worth nothing allowed to sell it anywhere else is worth getting these five days promotions that I barely use. I never use all five days, so that's not the big benefits. If they only gave me one day and every night, he would be fine. That's all I use. There are a lot of places in business.

We have to make decisions, and it's the same type of thing when someone says, Hey, I want you to write this for me and I'll pay you a flat fee or I'll pay you a percentage. There's pluses and minuses to both. When you take the flat fee, you know you're getting paid. When you do the percentage, you could make a lot more money overturned, but there's more risk.

Ritz becomes part of the ratio if you watch investment shows, and you know that's all I watch greater risk means greater reward. When I wrote a book and they said, We'll give you either $1000 or we'll give you 10% of that demon that 10% I ended up making 100 times more money over the next several years. Turned out the percentage right thing. Sometimes you do that deal that they never released the book where they never sell it, that you end up making nothing that happens.

That's happening. A few projects. I have a few projects that I made several years ago that I've never sold because every place I tried to sell them and never doing anything with it. And that's just the nature of the beast. That's why that's a big believer in quantity. I have enough projects, enough markets that I'm always protected via diversification. This is why I run pen names is why have separate projects going on. So what you two think about all of these things?

I want you to think about your business and think with the decisions. You're making each little decision as much as Kim Unlimited decision. Also, the other decisions that here's the benefits, here's the cost. I'm in the middle right now, possibly changing my Webinar software. The weapon our software is right now go to weaponize pay $200 a month, the competitors for their lives and automated Webinar software, which allows me to send replace so you can see an older weapon or, if you want, really easily.

It's $700 a year, so the trade off is good. Financially, it's 1/3 the price per year, saving a lot of money. But the downside is that it runs everything through YouTube live. It runs everything through YouTube. Streaming runs everything through Google's platforms, which means it's not fully under their control. If something goes wrong, they could lose control of their platform. If you two goes, you know what? We don't want you using us anymore. You're out of business. This whole company would go out of business.

Probably they would start building their own software, but maybe they were just shut down. So that's part of the decision Calculus. Every time you look at something, it's not just the money you save, it's the risk. Now if I close my go to open our account, it's no big deal. I can reopen the same size account for the same price. Used to be. Go back to what? I was really expensive for a while.

They lower their prices in the last six months to a little bit more reasonable Again, My size account for a while was $1000 a month. So when I got a $200 a month, that was a great deal. I bought it through a corporate thing. But now I could buy another way and will be similar price, No problem. So take a look at every decision you make say how much that's gonna cost. How much is this gonna save me? Is it's going to save me more money.

Just gonna save me more time than it's worth the cost. When I pay $1000 a month for something, save me $10 a month. Wait, right. $1000 is definitely more than 10 minutes of my time. So you look at these ratios whenever you're making decisions, it's easy to jump and chase the next offer the next up for the next software. But you end up having all this overhead.

So as you are building your business as you're building your empire as you're deciding howto invest your time had invest your money. Keep track of these principles. We don't wanna have single points failure in our business. Is this gonna save me more money than it costs me? Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Does Kendall limited the value of can unlimited the promotion, the extra money, the access to that audience worth losing access on other platforms?

And as I run my tests, I'll have more data for you, and I'll do a follow up episode. But I just love to share with you my experiences so you can see what I'm doing in the moment. Instead of assuming I'm at the top of the mountain, I just want you to see that further ahead of you on the mountain and that I still have challenges and struggles, and I'm still learning things.

There's no point at which you should stop learning and growing, so continue building your business. Continue growing. Make these decisions, take a look at Kendall Limited and decide if it's the right decision for you and always be conscious of how you're building your business. That's how you can make the right decisions, and that's how you can really achieve that freedom. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode.

We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve. No master podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode.