Review of John Locke’s ‘How I Sold One Million EBooks’ On Kindle

Well I was whizzing through my latest edition of ‘writing magazine’ and the article about John Locke’s success with selling his eBooks on Kindle leapt out at me.

Being the dedicated student that I am it took me about two seconds to decide to buy it.

Of course the price is so low at $4.99, especially compared to the other info and courses I invest in, that I had absolutely nothing to lose. But I’d pay more if he was charging more because expert information distilled into a system is priceless.

A lot of the stuff in the book wasn’t knew to me but then I’m pretty advanced with online marketing. I’d guess that for most authors it would be a revelation on every page.

There’s nothing in it that’s difficult to do but there’s lots in it that is easy not to do!

I bought the book primarily because my new book, The Niche Expert, is about to be published in paperback and kindle so I figure I can learn a thing or two from someone who sold more than 1,100,000 eBooks in just 5 months, using free methods.

Yes it’s just my cup of tea. I really don’t enjoy being billed by Facebook for adverts every 5 days so I tend to work that bit harder and generate my own leads and sales.

So I settled down to scan the contents on my beloved friend, the kindle, and wasn’t disappointed.

The book turned out to be more relevant for my studies than I could have guessed because John is definitely a niche expert. He knows his niche (target market & what they want to buy) inside out and these days he only begins to write a book when he knows in advance exactly what niche it will appeal to.

There are some very valuable tips in it for writers of fiction as his biggest success has come through the Donovan Creed series.

This review is about his ‘how to’ book so we’ll focus on that instead. John’s target market in this case is ‘self published authors.’ He writes of ‘The Revenge of the Nerds,’ and appeals to the underdog who in this scenario is the self published author up against the big dogs of the traditional publishing world.

He has some great points that really make you think out of the box for instance;

‘The phrase “vanity publishing” was almost certainly invented by traditional publishers years ago in order to squash the competition from entrepreneurial authors.

It worked.

By ridiculing and publicly shaming self-published authors for daring to invest in their own talents and abilities, publishing houses were able to elevate themselves to god-like status.’

For more of this intriguing stuff you’ll need to click the Amazon button at his site and get his book but that gives you a taste of where he’s heading. Very sharp.

I began my writing career as a self-published author but have had the good fortune to attract a publishing contract with BookShaker as a result of my online platform & Facebook friends.

Vanity publishing has acquired a bad name because often the companies that publish these books are mostly focused on selling books to the authors as opposed to helping them to market their book to the reader.

Self-publishing is a different game altogether as you’re not paying a company to do your book but publishing it yourself. (You may of course pay for services to help you improve your book)

Joe Gregory, co-founder of BookShaker shares some very enlightening information on self publishing versus vanity and traditional publishing in his book ‘The Wealthy Author.’

Anyway I just wanted to make sure you understand there is a big difference between vanity and self publishing even though it can seem quite subtle.

John Locke sells his fiction books on kindle for just .99 cents so he can compete against the big name authors on Amazon Kindle in a way that isn’t possible in shops without the backing of a publisher with a hefty marketing budget.

By doing so he also retains complete control over the types of books he writes and how he markets them.

Here are some key tips from the book that are relevant for both experts in their niche & fiction authors:

John says “every success story in the world happened because someone found a niche.’

“The more you can narrow your audience the more success you’re likely to find in marketing.’

Any down side to the book?

I loved the book but the one thing that I thought wasn’t laid out as clearly as it might have been was how to actually build a mailing list. As a marketer who teaches this in detail I had a feeling that an author with no marketing knowledge may trip up here and think it’s enough to just have a contact button on their website.

The strategy outlined for mailing the list to notify them of a new book was also a little hazy as I wasn’t sure if John emails only 250 people a day for a specific reason, and an author with minimal online marketing know-how may think you can just email from your personal email account as there was no mention of an email marketing service to use. (Unless I missed it of course!)

The great danger here as your list builds is that you’ll be flagged as a spammer so it’s essential to use a professional service as your readership develops.

Overall it was a very inspiring read with practical information that provides a great starting point and encouragement for the new self published author or indeed any author who wants to use Amazon Kindle to get their book out their far and wide.

I’m definitely going to give one of John’s fiction books a try so be sure to check out his website and have a good look around. http://donovancreed.com/