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Is It Possible to Make Six Figures by Creating eBooks on Amazon? The Hidden New World of Publishing – with Jim Kukral

 

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by David Garland in Forward-Thinking Author, Interesting Entrepreneur, Interviews & Guests

Today on The Rise To The Top: The #1 Non-Boring Business Show: Is it possible to make a living by selling books without a publisher? Welcome, my friends, to the new era of eBooks – and today’s guest, Jim Kukral, who ditched his traditional publisher to create his own empire on his terms. Today we talk about the new era in publishing, monetizing, and how you might be able to get more than what most “traditionally published” authors get in terms of an advance – before you even release your eBook. Enjoy!

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Jim KukralLinks Mentioned:

Author Marketing Club – The first 3 people to register at AuthorMarketingClub.com and send Jim an email with the secret word “risetothetop” will get a free custom book cover design done for them by his agency.
No Publisher Needed
JimKukral.com
Lightning Source
CreateSpace
Business Around a Lifestyle

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Have You Seen These Episodes?

  • Great interview, David.  Amazon certainly knows what they’re doing with their pricing structure.  Jim has some excellent advice and tips here.  

    • David Siteman Garland

      Definitely a smart guy thanks for tuning in!

  • Anonymous

    I enjoyed this interview. It must have been good because I have the attention span of a 3 year-old, yet I was engaged for the entire time. I do have a topic for a book in my head and now feel very motivated to make it a reality! Thanks Jim!

    • David Siteman Garland

      Lol love the flea comment made my day

    • Awesome! Hope you write that book now!

  • Really great interview! I was going to suggest you have Amanda Hocking (the author you mentioned who writes about vampires etc) and John Locke on as guests, because I’ve been really curious for some time about how people are making it the in digital publishing world, so I was super excited to see this interview posted today. I didn’t know about Jim. I’m so glad to hear about someone doing well with self-publishing and eBooks in non-fiction. 

    • David Siteman Garland

      Good recs Melissa. I’ve got a really good one tomorrow (thurs) 🙂

  • mikky

    Great interview guys! Really useful advice, thanks for all the good tips.

    🙂
    mikky

    • David Siteman Garland

      Thanks M as always!

  • Dale Morgan

    Good grief!   Maybe I’m driftin’ on to the sick side, but about your last 10 0r 12
    interviews have been killer. I say “O.K. I’ll watch a little bit of this one, which I’m
    not too excited about,” and,…..well, another one watched  all the way.
       I guess I like to watch.
     And  this one with Jim Kukral, no exception.  
      Fun and Learning.       Love it!     thanks       -d-

    • David Siteman Garland

      Haha that’s what I love to hear Dale!

    • Jodie Cordell

      Hahahahaha! Yeah, I only planned to watch about ten minutes, too. But after I started watching, I couldn’t stop!

    • Thanks Dale! Glad you enjoyed it. David is a great interviewer.

  • Jodie Cordell

    Wow! I’m so inspired right now! Thanks, Dave!

    • Take that inspiration and use it!

    • David Siteman Garland

       My pleasure, Jodie! It’s all Jim that handsome devil

  • Anonymous

    This was a fantastic interview. I am just finishing up a book and this was so helpful. 
    Thank you 
    Aly 

    • David Siteman Garland

       Awesome Aly!

  • Max Andrew Dubinsky

    Hey man. Thanks for the information and taking the time to do this interview. 

    • David Siteman Garland

       Happy to do it for ya!

  • Anonymous

    I loved, loved, loved this interview! Jim’s ideas are just brilliant, and seem like they just might work. I have already sent this link to around 20 people who I think will like it as much as I did. Thanks guys!

    Bruce

    • David Siteman Garland

      Wow Bruce you made my day! thanks! 

  • This guy is awesome.  I got about a dozen ideas for things from listening to this. Somebody who listens to BlogcastFM told me about this interview. Gonna have to get him our show at some point too. Seriously a kick ass interview

    • David Siteman Garland

       Awesome, definitely gets the wheels spinning and thanks for stopping by my man.

      • I’m putting it on my ipod to give it a second listen and take notes. 

  • Anonymous

    I’ve followed Justin for quite some time and I agree that he’s a source filled killer marketer. He’s also a very REAL and down to earth guy that you’d like to shoot hoops with or grill out in the back yard. He and his wife are are very cool people and he’s worthy of listening to. In the sometimes cold world of IM where you never get to know the marketer, Justin and his wife really stand out…What you see is what you get…refreshing! Craig Wilson

  • P_mondelli

     Great information!  Thanks!!!

  • Great interview David. It’s clear that Jim has got the passion for it, and it shows all over the interview. Also, pretty cool tips I didn’t know about the industry, such as Amazon service CreateSpace that prints your book for 2 bucks! That piece of information alone is worth the time invested in watching the interview 🙂 Keep it up David.

    • David Siteman Garland

      Awesome, that is great to hear. I always love when you get actionable takeaways/a big idea. Thanks so much for tuning.

  • I got 20 minutes into this and had to stop and comment.

    There is some really, really bad advice in this interview so far. There are two big things in just the first part of the interview that made my jaw drop.

    The first -> Only sell on Amazon. Really, really bad advice. You are leaving money on the table by going exclusively with them. While I do agree Amazon kills it, B&N & Kobo have always done well, and matched Amazon pretty much every month. I don’t sell on smashwords because they’re formatting is horrible, which brings me to the next problem.

    Please, please, please DO NOT just upload a word doc to Amazon (or any other platform). The formatting will be horrible. It might pass, but the user experience will be horrible. If you are going to do this, you need to do it right, and that means formatting it properly for all platforms (ePub, Kindle (,mobi or .prz) and I’d even offer a PDF on your website too.

    It’s a bit of a process, but it won’t take you any longer than a weekend to do it once you get the process down (quicker if you know HTML). Everyone who has taken my class (which are mostly technophobes) are able to do this and have beautiful ebooks.

    I don’t mean to bash the guest, and I apologize if I’m coming off as a jerk- that’s not my intention. I’ve been in this game a long time and I work with Independent authors, I myself am an author, and so is my wife. A big part of my life has been teaching people how to do this, and I couldn’t let this go without voicing my experience. I just want to see everybody succeed and in order to do that, it needs to be done right.

    Other than those two things, I agree with most everything Jim said. You absolutely can publish on your own. In fact, I think signing with a publisher is a really bad business decision. You can make a ton of money (even in the non-fiction side – I did) and anybody with writing skills can do this.

    • David Siteman Garland

      Hey Phil – You are more than entitled to your opinion my man! I believe Jim was talking from his own experience, so sometimes that isn’t necessarily applicable to everyone. Thanks for tuning in!

 

GET MY FREE CHEAT SHEET

These are the EXACT same steps I used to go from $0 to over $1,000,000 in online course sales in less than 24 months (and used by over 2,500+ of my students)

it's free!
100% privacy guaranteed, no messin' around!