Selling Hundreds of $.99 kindle Books

I have jumped into the $.99 kindle book market and since the beginning of the month I have sold hundreds of $.99 kindle books. I'm a little surprised, but is is different than writing full length works and my $.99 books are designed a certain way, plot, length and themes. I resisted it a long time, but sometimes you have to test a new direction the market seems to be going to see what it is all about.

I've noticed you've been coming out with a bunch of books. What is that "microwave" line about? Who runs it? Looks potentially lucrative for those who crack the formula (which it looks like you're working on).

When I was a kid I loved the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. Talk about formulaic. But they sure worked.

I need to do something like that. Cengage declared bk and is taking a lot of their books down in flames with it. I'm getting tired of the textbook business.

My publisher just closed their doors because of the death of a major partner.  Already the ebooks are not available and the print are still showing for those out long enough to have third party sellers.

 I'm still in shock, first because the publisher was great and then because I am faced with seeking a new publisher or self-publishing.

 Amazon has a program for a while, Amazon Shorts.  They were fun to write and sold quite well though the returns were small.  I wrote more then than now because it was so much fun to get nearly immediate feedback.

Microwave Fiction - Quick Hot Done is something I came up with to tie all of my short books together as a brand/genre with possibly different series under it like the Things You Can't Tell Mama series. I will publish other books outside of a series and if it fits the microwave format I will use that brand. If I do it that way then all of the books tend to show up in a search and people are buying multiple of the series if they like another book in the series. The other thing it does is separates these works from my full length books and the expectation is for a different product at a different price points so readers are not expecting a 70,000 word book for $.99, although I see some authors doing that. I'll see how it works out.

What word count are your Amazon shorts?

7/16/2013

                     Just listed my E Books on Amazon Kindle for .79 cents, should sell
                     millions..........

                                                            Cheers...Joe...

Amazon Shorts no longer exist.  They were 3000-5000 words.

I know Amazon Shorts aren't around anymore. I meant, how long are DTPollard's Amazon short works?

The Zimmerman one is
estimated to be 14 pages.

Fiction books 8,000 to 12,000 words. 35 t0 50 pages.

Nonfiction stuff is different.

That's pretty long DT for a 99 cent book.  I think having a theme is important.  I noticed at All Romance some of the "hot romance" writers write in series.  I saw there was one "set" of books for 99 cents that covered the range of hot men.  For someone reading in that genre (my book Ghost Orchid was listed at the site that's why I was there) once they find a short story they like, they can continue buying in that same vein.

 All my short stories are totally different from each other, with nothing in common.  Putting them out would not lead to reading the next one.

 All that is to say that it seems DT has the right idea.  He has always been a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to new ideas to get books out there.  Creating a publishing company was great because DT is a prolific writer.