Don’t Let Your Self-Published Book Rust Away on Amazon

I won’t keep you today, but I want to share this short message.

Most Self-Published authors publish a book, do a happy dance, and then let it rust away on Amazon, never to be seen or heard from again.

That’s because most Indie Authors are still waiting to be Amazon Best Sellers, rack up on thousands of reviews, and wait for Amazon to send them royalties.

And there is nothing wrong with any of this.

Except, sometimes those royalties don’t be royal if you know what I mean.

And getting new reviews can be like pulling teeth.

Both are important, but I want you to know you don’t have to pull your hair out waiting. There are people who have few reviews on Amazon and still do very well and it’s because they stepped outside the box. They did something different.

And so can you.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is that the book is only the beginning. It is a foundation, an open door, a ticket…

But into what??

Whatever you want.

Your Self-Published book is the beginning of a fresh course, community, even a movement for political and social change.

Writing a book sets you apart as an expert in your field. You are now equipped to speak on the topic of your book (yes, fiction writers, you too), teach the themes of your book, or advocate for the message of your book.

You can sell signed paperback copies of this book from your own website, sell them in bulk at schools, libraries, and bookstores.

You can build an entire course and online school from your book, or vend at large events, conferences, and workshops.

Strategic Self-Published authors see the book, not as the end, but the beginning of a journey into more.

And why is this important?

Because a Self-Published book lost in the sea of Amazon does not produce more fruit.

Think about it.


I hope this helps someone. Stay safe folks!

Need more Indie Author Tips?

Check out the IAB archive here.

Need more in-depth guidance? Book a consult with me.

If We Were Having Coffee Right Now

Photo by Chevanon Photography from Pexels

Hey, ya’ll, hey!

It’s been a lil minute since we had a lil chat. This year I decided I would not rush back to this blog after the New Year.

If you are one of those extra woke people who need to remind me it is not technically a “New Year” until spring, don’t. I know, and we not talking about that right now.

Anyway, come on in!

Please remove your shoes. House policy.

Go ahead and grab some coffee. The Kerug is self-serving, so help yourself. There is also tea on the counter if that’s your thing. Sugar is in the pantry, and cream is in the fridge. I hope International Delight’s Sweet Cream is okay?

Pineapple, mango, Bananas, Strawberry, Carrots, and Ginger. I thought this was gonna be nasty, but it was good!
  • If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you I am on a month-long fast from alcohol. I have started drinking more fruit and vegetable-infused smoothies instead. It hasn’t been long enough for me to really notice any changes, but I’ll keep you updated on that. I am not much of a drinker (I tend to stick with wine), but I wanted to start the year with a fresh flush of my system. No alcohol and fast foods and processed stuff and all that junk. If you take care of your body now, it will take care of you later!

2021 Me: “Look at us tryna be all healthy and stuff!”

2022 Me: “Girlll. I know right?!

  • Speaking of body, if we were having coffee right now, I would tell you about this dope essay contest that the Navigating the Life blog is hosting on body positivity. “Body positivity refers to the assertion that all people deserve to have a positive body image, regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, and appearance.” Click here to learn more.
  • If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you my main priority is finishing the black history book. If you are new to this blog, click here to check out my Black History Fun Fact series. It was something I started to honor Black History Month that turned into a weekly feature when I realized Black history is too powerful to limit to 28 days. Long story short, I am turning the series into a book. My goal is to finish the rough draft by the end of February, if not the start. I am about 32K words in now on the road to 50K.

By the looks of it, this will be a thick book, so 50K is not necessarily the end word count, but it is what I am striving for now. I am noticing how easily distracting it can be to finish a book and keep up with social media simultaneously. Suffice to say, I have severely limited my time on this blog and my socials. I pop in to see what ya’ll are up to, but I gotta be focused this month if I am going to reach my goal. You’ll see me around, though.

Photo by Jack Sparrow from Pexels
  • If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you I am preparing to present at my first conference this March. I am teaching a class on the importance of faith in business. My specific topic is “Overcoming Fear in Business.” We will discuss and identify the symptoms of fear and learn practical methods of overcoming the barriers in business caused by fear.

Suppose you’ve ever had anxiety about showing up to promote your brand or company (especially if you are Introverted). In that case, you want to be in the building. It’s going down on March 11th in Gulfport, MS. Be sure you follow my social media for more updates as the date approaches.

Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels
  • If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you I have not published much poetry to this blog because I am working on another book. When I published My Soul is a Witness, I ran into issues with publishing poems featured on this blog. I had to verify they belonged to me before Amazon could approve it. I am not sharing many of them with this blog this time to overcome that hurdle. I already have the name of the collection and will reveal it with the cover. For now, you should know it will follow in the same vibe as I am Soul and My Soul is a Witness.
Photo by Jack Sparrow from Pexels

If we were having coffee right now, I would also tell you I am thinking of turning Indie Author Basics with EC into a Podcast. Part of the reason is I have felt a strong sense that I should speak more. Now, most people don’t believe me when I say I am shy, but I really am. If you notice, I don’t go live a lot. I am not a fan of being out front. For you 90s fans, I’m not tryna be “all in the videos.” Only the real one’s will get this reference. Tee hee.

Suffice it to say, I feel a need to push myself more, step out from behind the keyboard and speak. Allowing you to hear me discuss the Indie Author Basic topics and maybe even interview authors would help. Whatcha think? Should we give it a go?

If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you the Book Review Registry is still closed. I cannot possibly read any more books and finish mine at the same time. I hope to reopen as early as March. Be sure to check out this page for details on how to apply. Keep in mind you are not booked, and your space is not reserved until payment is received.

If we were having coffee right now, I would tell you your cup is empty. Your coffee/tea is gone, and so is my time. Now, you don’t have to go home but…

…I’ll be seeing you.

Lol

The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen is LIVE

The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen is live!

About.

When Tina’s nephew, Ronnie is killed, she is left to care for his siblings and to solve a series of mysterious murders involving only black men. Investigating each murder thrusts her and her team into a world of deities, demons, and fallen angels, leading Tina to battle a serial killer beyond this realm.


“Paschar walked with confidence and held her head high as she moved her hips from side to side. Red was her most favorite color to wear with this skin. Something about the hue against this dark body is so different from her true form and more comfortable to navigate the Earth. Who wanted to be invisible to humans when it was easier to seduce them in the skin of a beautiful black woman? Passersby, men and women alike, looked, and Paschar smiled. They always stared. Humans were fascinated by blue, crystal pupils against such brown, creamy skin. In real life, Pas thought human bodies were disgusting. She hated the soft, gooeyness of the flesh, how it bruised and bled so quickly, how it fell apart and crumbled with each passing day. She hated the rotting meat on the bone, but she did come to love dark skin tones. Other pigments didn’t make her heart beat like melanin.”

– From Chapter 7, The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen

“Tina walked out of the door as her body trembled. She knew Big Sam had blue eyes, and Ronnie’s death was no accident. They had murdered her nephew, were back, and killing again.”

– From Chapter 3, The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen

We sold out of signed paperbacks on the site, but no worries! You can still order a paperback from Amazon. The next round of signed copies will be restocked soon! Be sure to bookmark my website below so you don’t miss it!

One Way Indie Authors Leave Money On the Table

Due to how the royalties are structured, an author with a 99cent ebook on Amazon will only get about 35 cents per sale. For books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, there is a delivery cost for the ebook file (based on the size) for each book sold.

You also pay Amazon a sales commission based on your royalty rate.

  • 35% royalty: the Amazon sales commission is 65% for books priced below $2.99 and above $9.99

  • 70% royalty: the Amazon sales commission is 30% for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99

What about taxes? 

You pay that too. 

These are just a few reasons why it can benefit you to sell your book directly to readers from your website.

While I have only made a few dollars in ebook sales from my new book, my print book preorder sales from my website are doing far better, and I am close to making money back from the cover art. By the time the book releases next month, I expect to make back what I paid for editing.

I am going to make this post real short because it’s real simple.

The hard truth is that if you are not selling books through your website or worse, you don’t have an author website, you are leaving money on the table.

While some authors have chosen not to deal with Amazon at all, it’s smart to make sure your book is on Amazon for a few reasons.

To start, Amazon is a giant. To have your book available there is just good sense. People trust Amazon, so some people will look for your book there before they look anywhere else. And with the pandemic, people use Amazon regularly. It’s all about making it easy for your readers, and being able to tell them to go to Amazon isn’t only super cool, but it’s also super easy.

But while Amazon is easily accessible to your readers, the relationship between Amazon and you as the author is a bit different.

There are tons of authors making good money from Amazon, but they are not the majority.

Here is an example from an author about his Amazon royalties:

“One month, I sold 5 paperbacks at a list of 13.99 each. The report stated the manufacturing cost was 5.33 (I assume each), and I’m on the 70% royalty. I got a total of 1.30 cents. That’s 26 cents a book. The next month I sold 1 paperback at 13.99, and I got a 3.13 royalty on it.”

The 2021 Guide to Amazon Fees and Royalties for Kindle eBooks and KDP Print, 2019, Comment Section

This is where your author website comes in to pick up the slack.

What if he had sold five paperback copies of this book from his author website? Since he would have to calculate shipping, let’s just round it up to a cool fifteen dollars per book. That’s $75 in his pocket. If he sells 20 books, that’s $300.

It might not sound like much, but it adds up if he sells books at this rate daily.

Even with website transaction fees, authors can still add more to their bank accounts by having their books on their websites alongside Amazon.

In closing, if you are a Self-Publisher, you can buy your books in bulk and sell them in bulk to companies and corporations like schools and independent bookstores.

Heck, you can sell the books out of the trunk of your car if you want.

The sky is not the limit of what you can do when you control the distribution of your own work.

Considering you are not signed to a publisher or are not restricted to any outside contracts that may otherwise prohibit you, you don’t have to be exclusive to Amazon. Instead, you use Amazon as one of many options.

For digital, you can set your book up on Draft2Digital to distribute it to several digital platforms outside of Amazon. For print, you can set your book up on Amazon KDP but also Ingram Spark for distribution to bookstores and libraries.


Ready to publish that book? I can assist with that. Click here.

Enjoyed this post? Check out more Indie Author Basics Here but hurry. I am changing things up soon. Details to come.


Don’t Forget to Preorder Your Copy of The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen! June is right around the corner.

About.

When Tina’s nephew, Ronnie is killed, she is left to care for his siblings and to solve a series of mysterious murders involving only black men. Investigating each murder thrusts her and her team into a world of deities, demons, and fallen angels, leading Tina to battle a serial killer beyond this realm.

Preorder Now

Preorder: The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen

Without further ado, I hope you will enjoy my introduction to Urban / Contemporary / Black AFAM Fantasy Fiction.

About.

When Tina’s nephew, Ronnie is killed, she is left to care for his siblings and to solve a series of mysterious murders involving only black men. Investigating each murder thrusts her and her team into a world of deities, demons, and fallen angels, leading Tina to battle a serial killer beyond this realm.

Title: The Women with Blue Eyes: Rise of the Fallen

Author: Yecheilyah Ysrayl

Editor: Dr. KE Garland

Publisher: Literary Korner Publishing/Yecheilyah Books LLC

Genre: Urban Fantasy / Contemporary Fantasy / Black & African American Fantasy Fiction

Release Date: June, 8, 2021

TWWBE: PreOrder a Signed Paperback

TWWBE: PreOrder Ebook From Amazon

Mark as Want to Read on Goodreads

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews – Immersed in West Africa by Terry Lister

Title: Immersed in West Africa: My Solo Journey Across Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia, Guinea and Guinea Bissau
Author: Terry Lister
Print Length: 159 Pages
Publisher: Book Power Publishing
Publication Date:  August 29, 2019


Immersed in West Africa details the thrilling trip of one man’s travels through Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau. I love to travel, as anyone who knows me or has read this blog for any length of time will attest. We were unable to travel because of the pandemic, so it was enjoyable to learn about some less-traveled regions of West Africa from the author’s viewpoint.

We learn about Goree, the infamous island in Senegal with roots in the history of the slave trade. The island had twenty-eight slave houses and transported nearly two million people. We learn that the Maison des Esclaves (The House of Slaves) and its Door of No Return are museums and memorial to the Atlantic slave trade on the Gorée Island that they renovated in 1990.

I appreciated how honest the author was about his experiences as he traveled from one location to another. His accounts were complete, truthful, and thought-provoking in my opinion. Lister is honest about the aspects of his tour that did not go well for him, such as the native community on Lake Retba in Senegal’s Pink Lake (where the residents were pleading with him for money) and the difficulties he encountered entering Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. The abuse Terry experienced from the police is a story that black men and law enforcement hear all too often. It was unnecessary to make him wait, force him to the station, and inquire about his finances.

I learned from this that it is an excellent idea to guard against those who see you as a new face and try to take advantage of you. I commend the author’s courage because I would not want to travel from country to country alone, precisely because of situations like this.

Also, about the Pink Lake, the author explains it is pink because of its high salinity, second only to the Dead Sea.

We discover few people visit Mauritania because of its strict policy against alcohol and how Mauritanians love mint tea. I loved reading about making it as performed by a woman in Chinguetti. We learn desert homes use propane gas units that they carry from room to room. In Mauritania, we also discover that they use the sun to power their street lights and have installed solar panels to light up the streets.

If you are already intrigued, you will love this book as I have only scratched the surface of the author’s adventures. There is a lot to learn from someone’s personal experience that adds a seasoning that far outweighs looking it up on Google.

I love learning about how things are different in other countries, like the communal way of eating meals, sitting around a table or on the floor in a circle, and eating with your right hand, no utensils. I also did not know polygamy was legal in Senegal.

I cannot wait until it is safe again, and we can do some international travel. I might consider some places this author visited.  I would love to taste the cold water he got to drink from The Terjit Oasis, where the water fell from the rocks!

Strong Introduction: 5/5

Authenticity / Believable: 5/5

Organization: 4/5

Thought Provoking: 5/5

Solid Conclusion: 5/5

Immersed in West Africa is Available on Amazon and Free with KU!


To have your book reviewed on this blog apply here. The registry is open for a limited time!

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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews is a reputable review service that features writers from all over the world, both traditionally and independently published. We are listed on Kindlepreneur as a top-tier book review blog and Reedsy as one of their vetted active book blogs that provide insightful, excellent book reviews.

Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews – Daisy by Pat Backley

Title: Daisy
Author: Pat Backley
Print Length: 190 Pages
Publisher: Pat Backley
Publication Date: October 8, 2020


I have not read a book I could not wait to get back to in a while. Daisy is one of those books.

Daisy is a historical fiction novel set between 1887 and 1974. Despite being brief, the prologue skillfully unites the entire narrative. In a flower field, a white hand is on top of a tiny black hand. Daisy chains are being made by the woman and the young child.

“Mum, why am I called Daisy?”

The author transports us back in time to that field of, Daisy’s with the same query from the little Black girl, starting in 1887 and finishing in 1974. It is set in Alabama, Harlem, and London. We will soon understand why she is named Daisy and why the hand on top is white.

The author’s strength here is her character development. Although there were many sudden tragedies, the author did such an excellent job with their backgrounds and personalities that the reader is genuinely interested in them and grieves their loss.

This is a family story, and I loved how the author tied everyone together with the historical backdrop. There are descendants of the enslaved whose lives weave with descendants of slaveowners and poor white Londoners the author interweaves with poor Black Americans’ lives. Witnessing the tension and wondering when everyone would meet was exciting. It was like reading about a generation of people all connected in a six-degrees of separation kind of way – that all people on average are six or fewer, social connections away from each other.

An example is when Samuel, Winifred, and Jeremey Davis, the Black family from Harlem, moved to London in 1952. Leading up to this, we have already met the white family in London (because the author starts in 1887 and moves time forward). Thus, the anticipation is already there as to which of Polly’s descendants will meet one of the Davis. Little Jeremy is five years old in 1952, but by the time he is an adult, he meets one of the great-great-great granddaughters of the London family, and they marry, giving birth to the little girl from the prologue.

It’s juicy ya’ll!

The reader is constantly reminded of the family’s history and how everyone is connected since the author recounts it throughout the story. The book’s main takeaway seems to be that whether you are rich, poor, free, slave, Black, or white, everyone is a member of the human family, which would function much more harmoniously if prejudices like racism, sexism, and classism were nonexistent.

“Being born poor was a scar that never faded.”

“She had never experienced racial hatred first hand, so had no real idea of how it could erode a person’s whole life.”

Plot Movement / Strength: 5/5
Entertainment Factor: 4/5
Characterization: 5/5
Authenticity / Believable: 5/5
Thought Provoking: 5/5

Daisy is Available Now on Amazon


Be sure to visit the Blog Book Review Policy page here to learn how to apply for a review.