These are the things I love most about this blog…

Now if only I knew what to write a book about….

However, you can’t just fall into a successful blog.. you have to basically treat it as a job.. you have to consider your content.. I’m talking about putting real thought into it and ask yourself: “What will interest my readers?” Now that’s hard…

@AC: A legal disclaimer and privacy policy will shield you from liability. It also helps SEO when you do it right. Google has a policy to follow that will help. Just search it.

I’m not 100% convinced it’s a good idea though. (See comment #27 for more info on that.)

I started looking at CreateSpace and Blurb last year, both are legitimate ways to self-publish. To those who are interested, I recommend a lot of research – meaning, run searches for already-published work in the topic area of interest to you. Look for what is missing in the marketplace.

As to Adsense, you may want to look in to the “category filter” accessible from your Adsense account by clicking the “Adsense Setup” tab, then “Ad Review Center.” It gives you at least a little control over what does and doesn’t show up.

As to publishing a book both as an e-book and as a physical product, see comment #27 for the reason I have yet to do it myself.

Thanks for this article. I too found it very helpful. In fact, until this article, I was reluctant to use Google Adsense because I figured that it would overwhelm my blog – one that I want to keep relatively simple. However, I dediced to add it and it looks fine. I just have to watch for ads for payday loans, which I will promptly try to remove.

I am also working on my book and it appears that selling it both as an e-Book and through self-publishing is the way to go. Any thoughts?

Now I consistently bring home enough each month from the site to essentially make a car payment. My format might not have the ceiling that JD’s/others might, but it’s a lot less maintenance.

Its nice to see someone write about this topic in an encouraging way. I read very few blogs, and the blogs that I do read its because the people writing those blogs take the time to be good writers.

To be good at anything you have to take the time to get good at those things.

I mean what if someone had told Heather from Dooce to not bother with a blog because it wouldn’t take off and not make her money, she would have missed out on an amazing experience.

Sometimes to be successful, you have to ignore advice from “experts” who tell you that it can’t be done. I like that the GRS articles are realistic yet encouraging.

With Amazon, there is no non-compete at all. You can certainly sell both physical books and e-books if you choose to do so.

That said, if you do decide to publish physical books, I might recommend sticking with them exclusively. The reason is that every sale of a book that occurs on Amazon helps to drive that book higher on various “also bought” and “ultimately bought” lists on Amazon. Rate of sales also appears to play a role in how well the book ranks for related searches on Amazon.

In other words, every sale that occurs on Amazon plays a (very minor) role in creating more sales. So splitting sales between two formats is likely to impede the ability of a book to really “take off” on Amazon.

The publisher (that’s you!) gets to set the price.

Good luck!

Very timely article for me, by the way! I have a book I’ve been working on, and I was originally planning to publish it as an e-book, but this might work much better. Thanks for the info!

Ennis: Lightning Source is the printing company I use.

Would you be kind enough to tell us which printing company you used?

Congratulations on your success and thanks for sharing, Mike.

Rob

The method of printing I use (as well as almost all self-publishers these days) is called “Print on Demand.” That is, the books aren’t even printed until somebody orders a copy from Amazon. (The printing company can print a book, slap an Amazon package around it, and mail it out within the same day.)

So, there’s an initial investment, which as I mentioned, will vary. And from there you pay printing costs as each book is ordered and printed. (The printing costs were already factored in when I mentioned my profit margin of roughly $8 per copy of a $12.55 book.)

There are several ways to estimate demand for a topic, for example:

-You can look at the sales ranks of competing books on Amazon. The lower the rank, the more it’s selling. The chart on this page gives a rough idea of what level of sales a given sales rank translates into.
-You can use the Google Keywords tool to estimate search traffic for various topics.
-If you already have a blog, you can check your analytics to see what topics you’re already getting a significant amount of traffic for, and create a book relating to that toic.

or–do you start with a small order, gauge demand, then print more based on demand….and if you do it that way, how long does it take to print more copies?

For me, the initial investment of my first book was approximately $600. Since then, the initial investment has ranged from as low as $400 up to about $1,000.

Of course, only you can decide whether or not that risk is worth it.