The Future of Self-Publishing - Amazon KDP Live Q and A

About this video

In a weekly live Q&A from his free Facebook group, Sean argues the future of self-publishing is quality over quantity. Drawing on about six years publishing since around age 20-21, he says low-content books have the lowest barrier to entry — anyone can publish one free in minutes — so competition floods in, publishers undercut each other on price, and income is diluted. High-content books require more time, money and energy, which raises the barrier, reduces competition and allows higher royalties from ebooks and audiobooks. He advises not chasing an undiscovered keyword or trying to be first, but entering a known profitable keyword with fairly low competition and being the best book there; Amazon, he speculates, increasingly rewards quality, relevance, reviews, click-through and read-through rather than keyword SEO alone, similar to YouTube watch time. For a fiction question, he says title choice matters less for SEO: use a creative title and put genre/audience keywords in the subtitle, and model competitors. He says a good book creates a loop of more sales and more reviews.

Key takeaways

• Focus on quality over quantity: the publishing trend Sean describes is toward higher-quality books, not spamming titles.
• Low barrier to entry is a disadvantage: low-content books are easy for anyone to copy, leading to saturation, price undercutting and diluted income.
• Be the best in a keyword, not the first: enter a proven profitable keyword and outdo competitors on quality instead of chasing untapped keywords or trends.
• Raise the barrier for competitors by investing more time and money in your book, such as better writing or custom illustrations.
• For fiction, Sean advises a creative title with genre and audience keywords in the subtitle, modelled on successful books in the niche.

Episode details: published September 2, 2022 · 29:28 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.

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