Self-Publishing Fiction on Amazon (5 Tools to Success)

I have been studying the fiction world for a decade. In fact, my degree from Columbia College Chicago is actually in fiction writing. That's what it says on my diploma. And I've already built a nonfiction writing empire that has generated more than $10 million in lifetime revenue. So now what I want to do is I want to do the same exact thing in the world of fiction. And you're going to watch me do it publicly here on YouTube, and I'm going to do it by myself using these five secret tools that I find the vast majority of fiction writers don't know exist. These tools are going to help you surve the market, find niche opportunities, and build a library of profitable self published books. First is a niche website called K Lytics. Now don't judge the website by its landing page, because even though this site looks like it was made in 1999, it provides an insane amount of Amazon data for authors. K Lytics is basically an evergreen library of Amazon data, and it digs deep into every possible niche and subcategory on Amazon, both fiction and nonfiction. There is so much information here, but I use K Lytics for two things. First, I use it to look for fast growing categories. So inside K Lytics There are these PDFs called strategy maps. And inside you can see which categories are growing in popularity the fastest. So this helps you find niche opportunities before everyone else, almost like finding stocks early before they go mainstream. Second, I use it for detailed information inside specific categories. So there are hundreds of deep dives into individual fiction niches on Amazon. And for example, example, if you're interested in writing science fiction or fantasy, you should probably be as educated as possible on that category. And so what you can do is go into these deep dives on those categories and see all sorts of data. Popularity, trending, keywords, most popular price points, literally everything. So especially if you're a data nerd like I am, I think K Lytics is one of the best kept secrets for fiction writers online. Second, if you don't know who John Truby is, well you should. And now you do. So in terms of pure storytelling, there are two books you should absolutely read as an aspiring fiction writer. The first is the Anatomy of Story and the second is the Anatomy of genres. So John Truby, otherwise known as the Script Doctor because he has helped improve so many popular screenplays in Hollywood, is probably the best resource I've found when it comes to storytelling and structure. If you're trying to play the fiction game and you haven't read these books. That's sort of like trying to make it into the NBA and not knowing the rules of basketball. So buy these books, study them, because this is the whole game. On top of that, John was clearly ahead of his time because he also has a handful of different education products on his website. Now his website is pretty outdated, but again, don't judge the website by its landing page. Okay, the information here is insane. For example, he has audio classes for every different story genre as well as a very outdated piece of software that helps you actually outline your stories. Now ideally he would update these assets for the modern digital world, but the truth is the information is timeless and in the nonfiction world, the equivalent here would be studying old recordings from copywriters like Gary Halbert or Gary Bensivenga. Like I've also done a few years ago. I even spent $3,000 buying two massive three ring binders of all of Gary Halpert's old newsletter issues originally sent via paper mail. There's a lot of them in here. Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked here. The point is there is a lot of value in studying these old school legends because most of their insights are timeless and still highly, highly applic applicable today. Third is Publisher Rocket. So this is a tool I talk a lot about because I've been using it to help me self publish books for almost a decade at this point. This is a tool made by kindlepreneur.com, which you should also know about. Kindlepreneur is a website completely dedicated to self publishing on Amazon. Tons of really great resources here, but in my opinion Publisher Rocket takes the cake. It's a SaaS tool that basically gives you real time data for books on Amazon, including how much money a book is generating, which categories have the lowest competition or are growing the fastest, which categories have the highest search volume but the lowest competition, and if you want to run Amazon ads, which authors or other books are most relevant to your book so you can pay to get in front of their readers. It is such a cool tool and something every single aspiring fiction writer should be using. Fourth is Reedsy, which is another tool I talk about a lot. I should have affiliate codes for these things. I use Reedsy to format all of my ebooks okay for print books. What I typically do is hire a graphic designer to create the interior just so it's formatted really professionally and that my self published physical books have a similar quality to traditionally published books. But ebooks are all kind of the same and you can just use a tool like Readsy to quickly and easily format your ebooks by yourself. All you have to do is load in the content, organize the sections, add your book's metadata, ISBN, number, title, subtitle all that stuff, edit and then hit export. And when you export you'll receive an epub file which is the file type Amazon prefers for ebook files. Super easy free tool and I find a lot of writers have never heard of it. So again now you have. Fifth is a newer website called I needabookcover.com so this is a directory of book cover designers who either currently work or have worked at major publishing houses. Which means yes, you can hire the exact same designer or art director who created the book cover of your favorite author. Literally the same person who designed Stephen King's book covers you can hire and they are not as expensive as you think. For example, I have invested anywhere from 2,000 to $5,000 for each of the covers of my self published books. Most break even, some lose money, but a few have been massive outliers like my art and business of online writing. I spent five grand on this cover and to date this book has generated over a quarter million dollars in Roya. So nothing will have a bigger impact than your cover. And I promise this is true for both nonfiction and fiction. So if you want to find an all star designer then you should use I need a Book cover dot com. The last thing I want to share is the overarching strategy for using these tools and building your one person fiction empire. Because I have spent literally thousands of hours reading every book and listening to every podcast I could find on the topic of fiction writing, self publishing versus traditional publishing, storytelling, book marketing, you name it and let me tell you, the recipe for for success is actually very simple. The problem is it's so simple that fiction writers, myself included, want to believe it's more complicated than it really is. So we do everything else except the one thing that matters, which is to write and to write a lot. So again, here's the recipe for success and it's so simple, it's complicated. Step one is you write and publish as many quality books as you can. One book every couple years is not enough. All of the top self published authors are writing multiple books per year. So that should be your goal. Step two, invest as much as you possibly can in the success of your books. So that means prioritizing having a great cover and then reinvesting as much as possible into your next book. So if you only have $500 or $1000 to invest on your first book launch, I would recommend spending the entire thousand dollars on your book's cover. Then as you start to generate a little bit of revenue, reinvest all of it into the next book. And step three, do this over and over and over again. Four decades. I self published my first book, a memoir called Confessions of a Teenage gamer, back in 2016. I had no money. I was broke, living in a rundown studio apartment, and I had to save up for an entire year just to scrounge together $1,000 to get the COVID designed, the interior formatted, and I even had to pay someone to teach me how to publish it on Amazon. That book has only made me $3,000 in royalties, so it made a little money, little positive return. But I was hardly rolling in the dough. But I reinvested all the money I made as well as money I started making, getting into ghostwriting into my next book and the book after that, and the book after that. And Now I've written 10 books and my library has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's not counting the millions of dollars I've generated as a result of being a ghostwriter or launching writing related products or even just consulting for companies because of my credibility in the which means now I have resources to play the fiction game. And I'm going to keep reinvesting in my fiction library and my nonfiction library until my library of books are making millions and millions of dollars. And like I said, you're going to watch me do it. I am documenting the entire process here on YouTube for you. So that is the game. I've studied this space for a decade. I've tried to learn from every possible successful writer, even writers in genres I have no interest in, like romance. And I've spent a lot of money paying very smart people to tell me what the strategy should be. And the strateg I outlined for you is everything that I've learned and everything that people have told me. And it's not complicated, it's actually really simple. It's just boring. Write a lot. Publish as often as you can. Reinvest in your library. Repeat forever, do that for the rest of your life and it will be very, very hard for you to not become a successful author.