[Nick's Writing Blog] Review: The Kindle Cash Machine

[Nick]

The Amazon Kindle is the number one e-book reading device in the US, and this month it launched in the UK.

And for authors, the good news is that anyone, anywhere in the world can now publish an e-book for the Kindle, and keep up to 70% of the revenue generated.

I was therefore very interested to hear about The Kindle Cash Machine, a new, downloadable guide for would-be Kindle authors by Barry D. Martin. I decided to buy a copy myself to see if it met up to the promises on the sales page.

First impressions were good. The sales page (and process) seemed highly professional. I was also impressed to receive an email immediately after purchasing, with step-by-step instructions for downloading the manual and bonus guide and 'unzipping' them.

The Kindle Cash Machine itself is a 68-page PDF. It is well written, and illustrated with a selection of photos, graphics and the occasional screengrab. I wouldn't have minded a few more of the latter, but websites change frequently, so I suppose Mr Martin didn't want his guide to go out of date too quickly.

The Kindle Cash Machine starts off with advice on choosing a suitable subject for a profitable e-book. The emphasis here is very much on non-fiction topics (business, health & fitness, and so on). It's all good stuff but pretty standard (you'll find more detailed advice on choosing profitable niches in my own course, The 10-Day E-Book). If you want to publish your novel on the Kindle, you will probably want to skip this chapter.

Once you have chosen your topic, The Kindle Cash Machine explains how to sign up as a Kindle publisher and how format your e-book for publication. This is clearly important information, and good as far as it goes. I might have liked a little more detail on using the Amazon Digital Text Platform, ideally including a step-by-step guide with screengrabs, but again I assume that Mr Martin has avoided being too specific in order to prevent the information dating too quickly.

The manual goes on to discuss copyright, trademarks and pricing - all important matters, though perhaps less than riveting! The advice given is concise and helpful, though.

The latter part of the guide covers methods of marketing your Kindle e-book and boosting your profits from it. Clearly, you need to do everything you possibly can to make your title stand out from its many competitors in the Kindle store, and there are lots of good ideas and suggestions here. I was, incidentally, interested to see that Mr Martin also recommends simultaneously publishing your Kindle e-book with another well-known self-publishing service.

As well as The Kindle Cash Machine, you get a bonus manual titled 7 Days to Easy Money. This explains how to create a non-fiction book proposal and sell it to a publisher. It doesn't have anything to do with Kindle publishing, as far as I can see, but it's a well-written practical guide that could be helpful to anyone looking for a bit of assistance with this process.

Overall, I thought The Kindle Cash Machine was a useful introduction to publishing for the Amazon Kindle. It takes you through the main steps required to devise and write your e-book, format it for the Kindle, and market it to generate sales.

As mentioned above, I thought the advice was a bit general at times (although as an e-book author myself, I can understand why the author has done it in this way). Also, without wishing to sound immodest, my own 10-Day E-Book has more in-depth information about devising, writing and marketing an e-book - though, admittedly, my course assumes you will be using an online publishing platform such as Clickbank rather than the Kindle.

* Do you have any comments about The Kindle Cash Machine or writing e-books for the Amazon Kindle in general? Please post them below!

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Posted By Nick to Nick's Writing Blog at 8/09/2010 12:58:00 PM