Is Kindle Publishing Dead in 2020??? My Honest Opinion...

About this video

Sean answers the title question directly: Kindle publishing is not dead, but it is getting harder every year. Using a hypothetical illustration starting around 2012, which he calls the Kindle gold rush, he explains that early publishers could put a short book on almost any topic and land on page one because there was little competition. Each new year adds more books, and crucially a new publisher competes not just with books published that year but with every book ever published on Amazon. Books that sell well gather reviews, reviews drive more sales, and that loop solidifies rankings for older titles. Amazon partly offsets this by giving new books a roughly 30-day visibility boost, he says. He offers two responses. Option one is hunting untapped niches and keywords, which still works when a genuine opportunity appears and new keywords emerge from changing times, but gets harder as everyone else hunts too and is not, in his view, a sustainable shotgun strategy across many niches. Option two, which he recommends combined with the first, is to enter existing niches with simply better books — better quality, cover, reviews and angle — under the same pen name or brand, building repeat customers and an email list whose reviews and purchases make later books harder to compete with. He says he is doing this himself, slowing his output, focusing on one to two niches, and notes the ACX code-redemption loophole that fuelled low-quality audiobooks has closed. He argues every online business faces the same compounding saturation — affiliate marketing, YouTube and blogging also rank against all past content — so switching businesses does not escape it; standing out with quality and a brand is the durable answer.

Key takeaways

• Kindle publishing is not dead in his view, but it gets harder yearly because new books compete with all books ever published, not just new ones
• Sales and reviews form a reinforcing loop that solidifies older books’ rankings; Amazon’s roughly 30-day new-book boost is only a partial offset
• Hunting untapped keywords still has a place but is increasingly hard and unsustainable as a shotgun, multi-niche strategy
• His recommended approach is better books in proven niches — quality, cover, reviews and angle — built into a pen-name brand with repeat customers
• Saturation is common to affiliate marketing, YouTube and blogging too, so he argues quality and brand-building beat switching businesses

Episode details: published June 1, 2020 · 14:03 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Sean Dollwet’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: Attention All Kindle Publishers - Stop Doing This ASAP · Next: How to Make Self-Publishing ACTUALLY Passive Income By Creating Systems - Juan Born Interview →

All Sean Dollwet videos · Sean Dollwet profile · Sean Dollwet on YouTube