Mike Fook Books – Ebooks | Fiction Thrillers | WTF

I will sound like the ass if nobody else noticed huge gains during December, but I’m doing reverse flips and gainers as I check my stats for the month. We sold 387 books in December – just on Amazon.

We’d been steadily gaining month over month – and this is a giant leap from November.

I hope it’s not attributable solely to people in the buying mood over the holidays – and being bored… and that the real reason sales jumped is because of the gazillions of Kindles sold recently.

On Jan 1 we’ve sold 27 books already. Hope that trend holds, it would feel really good to sell 600+ books in January.

One of my New Year Resolutions will be to bash Amazon less. Maybe I’ll even buy a Kindle and buy some ebooks – get crazy with it.

Nahhhh….

I’ve been doing research all morning and I just got intrigued about this guy. He’s an author on on Amazon. This guy is writing ultra-short stories and selling them for 89 – 99 cents in most cases. I saw one priced higher at $4.99. Keep in mind I’m seeing these prices in Thailand so I’m not sure if you see them as cheaper in the USA. Those that I see for $2.99 here are listed for $.99 in the USA, I know.

Anyway, this guy who calls himself Carl East from the U.K., is selling the hell out of these short stories.

How well is he selling them? One of his books, “Thai Beauties”, is ranked at 5,058 out of 700,000 books selling at Amazon Kindle. I’m ranked at 15,000 with my best selling book and I sell about 60 per month at that. Let’s say he’s selling 150+ with books with that kind of rank.

How many of these couple page “books” does he have?

82 books!

Look for yourself – Click here to see Carl East’s books on Amazon Kindle.

Here’s the info for one of his books: My Little Girl
These are erotica books – possibly this one must be about incest with his daughter. Though I haven’t bought it to find out. Here is the description:

Sonia has just turned eighteen but has already been suspended from college, because of something she’s ashamed of. When her father finds out just what that something is, he’s in for the shock of his life. The contents of this story is of a graphic nature and is meant for adults only.

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 16 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: www.smashwords.com (May 23, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003NSC55O
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #8,709 Paid in Kindle Store
• #98 in Kindle Store

This one is 16kB, but I saw one that was in total – 9kB, called “Thai Beauties”. I thought it was an error and the guy’s upload failed. Apparently not. That’s the ENTIRE book.

I guess it all comes down to… I’m just jealous. This guy has created 82 ultra short story books over the course of 7.5 months, and they’re selling pretty well. That’s an amazing success.

Uh oh. But wait, there’s more to discover here…

Where in the WORLD did he get the artwork for his covers? Am I missing something? Where can someone get photos of beautiful girls for covers of erotica at a rate that it makes sense for these short books?

He’s either: 1. Killing it. 2. Ripping off someone’s art.  3. He owns a porn company and has signed model releases to use the images for whatever he wants. Or, 4. He knows all these girls and they’re too happy to let him use their image for his books.

Oh look here… on one of his books, “Confessions of a Nymphomaniac” Mr. East left the girl’s name on the left side of the cover. Nice. Her name is Chloe Jones.

Here is the book cover at Amazon that Carl put up:

Notice, lower right - Author Carl is using a new signature style.

Click image to enlarge.

A quick Google search turns up a perfect match – she is a porn star in the USA.

Click image to enlarge and check out the big one on the right there…

Perfect match.

Now, did Carl book an exclusive shoot with this girl for his $1.99 ebook at Amazon Kindle? Or, did she just give him her photo and tell him – “Feel free to use it any way you like Carl!”

Or, did he buy this photo from someone that has the rights? A possibility.

Is it a possibility that all of the incredible covers he uses for his ebooks are rip offs?

To me – oh yeah, that’s a very strong possibility, but of course I don’t know. Could it be that he just doesn’t understand how copyrighted images work? Could be. Maybe? I’m not going to report the image to Amazon because I just don’t know. Could I do it on suspicion? Nah, to me – the guy makes his own bed. If Chloe Jones finds out he’s selling books with her image I’m sure she has lawyers that would love a piece of his newfound success.

If he’s doing it all legit – he is someone we can all learn from. Anyone want to interview him?

Aw man, this guy is really writing some great stuff. Look at this description of his book of short stories:

The tales within this book represent my best sellers and are as follows: “Incest Urges” “My Little Girl” “My Step Father” “My Mothers Secret” “Big Sis” “Fighting the Lust” “My Son’s Slut” “The Mothers Sins” “My Son’s Friends” “A Fantasy Fulfilled” “My Step Mother” and “The thrill of the Chase” I’ve set the price to less than half of what the originals would cost you. The stories are of a graphic nature and are intended for adults only.

My Son’s Slut huh? Come on man… I might have to buy that just to study his book and see – how many pages IS that? LOL.

A number of his digital books were published at Smashwords.com. He probably has them other places too.

Just for shits and giggles I Googled him and found that he was kicked out of the APPLE store for his books!

Link to story

Nobody says anything about the cover image being a rip-off. Hmm.

I’m going to guess that if he had the money to pay legitimately for the covers of his books he also could hire a graphics person to make a nice title and signature for him on the books – what he has looks like it was made with Microsoft Paint – or worse.

Well, good luck to you Carl…

You have to opt-in, but still – it’s a meaningful change to a system that I was convinced, sucked through and through.

As near as I can figure they are now charging authors, publishers for the distribution digitally of their books. My books are all well compressed using MS Word’s image compression function so most of my books are in the 1-3MB range. This costs only about 40 cents to send to buyers that want to view the ebooks on their Kindle ebook readers.

When you opt-in into the program you have to go through the waiting process AGAIN to have your book clear. Even if you make no other edits to your books.

Maybe I’m missing something, but, when it asks if you want to make 35% commission or 70% – and it shows you a calculator below the price you chose for your book – and you can see exactly the difference… is that a no-brainer?

There is a chance I’m missing something here… please, someone enlighten me if you “get it” and I don’t.

Cheers…

Pros and cons of using Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) to sell your ebooks.

Pros

Joining is free. They take care of all payment processing. You need not reside in the USA and can have checks sent to wherever you are in the world. Their market is massive. Even if your book is completely unknown – like most of mine are, you will sell some books. There’s SOMEONE out there looking for a book like yours.

Cons of using Amazon to sell your digital books

The first major con is that you don’t even get to set your own price for your book. They give you the illusion of setting your own price, but then they change it at will. I chose $9.99 for some of my books. They jacked it up to $11.99. What this means is that my books are not as attractive as all the $9.99 books. WTF? The percentage I make is 35%. Not of the actual price of the book though! I make 35% of the price I chose for the book! I make $3.50 per book that sells for $11.99.

WHAT THE F?

Oh wait, I almost forgot the best part… they make you promise in the terms and conditions that you cannot sell your book for LESS THAN WHAT THEY ARE SELLING IT FOR! Ha! So- if you tell them to sell your book at $9.99. They ignore you and sell it at $11.99. YOU CANNOT SELL YOUR BOOK FOR LESS THAN THAT ON YOUR OWN SITE!

The second major con is that Amazon keeps all the buyer data. You sell a book for $3.50 and don’t get any of the data about the buyer. You don’t know what site they came from. You don’t know what else they bought. You don’t know their age, sex, location in the world, nothing. You don’t know their email address. In short you DON’T KNOW JACK about the buyer of your book. You don’t even know – was it bought at Amazon or an Amazon partner site? WTF?

At the beginning of your professional writing career you may choose to list your books at Amazon – like I have. The owner of my books makes a pittance from it – but, it takes just about that much to live in Thailand.

Here are some problems with selling your digital ebooks on Amazon (dtp.amazon.com):

1. You don’t know who bought your book. You won’t have the slightest idea, they don’t pass that information on to you.

2. You don’t know who sold your books. Amazon works with some partners that, when they sell a book – take a cut off the proceeds too. So, with a $10 ebook you might make $3.xx or $5.xx if Amazon sells it themselves. You’ll never know for sure who sold it though – they don’t pass that information to you.

3. Very high return rate. In the last week I’ve sold 9 ebooks through the DTP Amazon program. 2 books were returned. That’s significantly higher than any other channel I sell my ebooks at. I might get one return out of 70 books, not 1 out of 4.5.

March 2010 – 1/6 refunded.
February 2010 – 1/4 refunded.
January 2010 – 1/4 refunded.

Those are some horrible stats.

What’s wrong? You’ll never know because you get squat for information. Did the customer not know how to read a PDF? Did they order the wrong format and didn’t know how to read it? Or, did they buy it, rename it and are reselling it through other channels?

It seems, upon first glance that selling your book on Amazon is really cool – and you’ll make much more money… it’s also taking the ball out of your court and giving someone control of a lot more than selling. They keep the leads… What are you building with a process like that? Not an email list. Not a customer list at all…

What to do?