Greg Lim's Amazon Author Webinar

• Consider using a pen name/pseudonym (Greg is a pseudonym) if you have varied interests/want to experiment in different genres
  • Greg has math books and Christian books under another name
• Possible to work at your own pace for these kinds of projects
• Don’t worry about not being the expert: summarize content from existing sources
• Will Greg’s strategy work for other genres? E.g. Hassan Osman and other authors have succeeded in the leadership/productivity category
• Use Kindle Direct Publishing
• Greg started in 2011 (11 years ago!)
• Unlike Gumroad (where you peak on launch and need to constantly maintain), Amazon has a longer tail
• Greg doesn’t have social media and doesn’t rely on audience building strategies outside of Amazon
  • Publish first or build an audience first? Publish first b/c this is not an audience dependent platform (Greg doesn’t even know his readers!)
• Lifetime royalties: $178K
• Be aware of writing about trademarked information
• Greg has 2-3 books written by ghostwriters, but the issue is that when people ask questions you can’t really support them and the quality is not that great, heavy editing work
• Be aware of royalty differences for different pricing ($2.99-$9.99 is what Amazon’s pushing authors towards)

Publishing Tips

Use KDP paperback / hardcover template and cover template (most common is 6” x 9”)

• E.g. the margins are actually uneven on purpose to account for the book spine
• Julian suggests Kindle Create App

Researching Markets

Best Seller Rank: 40K = selling 20 copies

• Ideal BSR - below 200K
• Use JungleScout to research books and markets to estimate sales

Assess competition: can you beat the bestseller in the category?

Use AMZ suggestion expander to see what people are actually searching for

• E.g. for Debug Your Meditation - search Vipassana Meditation instead of just Meditation to reduce competition

Systematize your book publishing content - think of a system for your content and make tweaks to own the category with volume

• Use the same outline

Greg doesn’t depend on ads much (he uses some)

• Automatic ads from Amazon
  • He spent $43.05 in the last30 days and earned $351.74 sales and ACOS was 12.24% (<50% = profit)
  • Free impressions (since it’s cost-per-click only)

How to Get Reviews

• Write useful books
• Have a way for the user to contact you
• EMBED THROUGHOUT THE BOOK: Motivate users to contact you (freebie, etc. - 1:1 support, cheat sheet, etc.)

Greg’s course outline: https://greglim.gumroad.com/l/author

Greg will give you his programming books for free with the course and there’s a royalty guarantee