You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 14

Three Ways to Die1  Joe Konrath recently changed the covers for some of his weaker-selling Kindle books and saw his sales shoot up overnight. He suggested that I do the same thing for some of my books and I am following his advice. I just changed the covers for my short story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE and DIE, MR. JURY, my compilation of the four .357 VIGILANTE novels. I'm very curious to see if he's right.

I've also updated THE WALK to include the first three chapters ofDie Mr Jury1l   Joe's novel THE LIST… and MY GUN HAS BULLETS to include a chapter of his book SUCKERS.  He's done the same for me. It will be interesting to see if this cross promotion boosts both of our sales. It could be a month or two, though, before we see a spike, if there is even going to be one, since lot of folks download books as impulse buys and then don't get around to reading them for quite a while.

I have to hand it to Joe, he has been the trailblazer when it comes to exploiting all the possible potential out of selling books on the Kindle. And he's been right more than he's been wrong…and has had the success to prove it. He's on track to earn more than $40K this year in Kindle royalties from stuff that was in a drawer. 

But he's also realistic. He offers some very sobering advice on his blog this week to aspiring authors who think they can follow in his footsteps and by-pass entirely the struggle to get an agent and have your book bought by publisher. Bottom line: you probably can't.

7 thoughts on “You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 14”

  1. The cover issue is important, but where does a financially strapped author get new hot covers?
    I increased the price on Capture the Saint. Sales have not declined. Have not shot up either. I post a link on Twitter or Facebook and four people purchase it each time. I can’t do that every five minutes, of course. There must be a better way!

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  2. Burl, a great way to get good covers on the cheap is to use iStockphoto.com. For 2 or 3 bucks, you can download a dramatic stock photo, then put your name & title on it in a nice font using a basic photo-editing program like Photoshop Elements.

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  3. Ooh – nice covers, esp. Three Ways to Die.
    I continue to marvel at Joe’s success. I’m making no where near that much money, but books I loved and labored over are being read again.

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  4. I’ve bought both books already but I don’t think you should change the old .357 Vigilante cover. Wasn’t that the illustration for the unpublished fourth installment? I’d much rather have that than the new picture.

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  5. Joe,
    It’s too soon for me to tell yet if the sales are up or not for the two books with new covers…I’ll know for sure at the end of the month.
    The covers for MY GUN HAS BULLETS and BEYOND THE BEYOND aren’t new. I switched to the “old” covers just to see if it makes a difference sales-wise over the terrific “new” ones my sister designed for them. I liked the new covers better but maybe readers didn’t.
    Lee

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