Entrepreneur, Speaker & Finance Content Creator, 500K+ on IG | Building Finlight | NIT Jalandhar |
🥹We lost our first revenue of ₹70,000 from the E-book that we published on Kindle. Back in 2020, when brand collaborations weren’t that popular, we didn’t know how to generate revenue from Instagram and other social media accounts. Hence Aashutosh Singla and I thought of generating revenue using Amazon Kindle. That’s when we published our very first E-book, The Stock Market Starter Kit, in September 2020. Through promotion of this e-book, by stories and carousels, on existing social media platforms, we made some decent sales and were about to receive ₹50,000 as royalty from Amazon after 3 months.🥹💰 Amazon Kindle had a policy of paying the royalty amount to the customers after 3 months. So we naturally waited for our first revenue. But here's the catch. Even after watching almost every e-book publishing YouTube video and reading every article about Kindle policies, there was one crucial detail that no one ever mentioned: the book size rule.🚨 Our E-book contained a lot of images and graphics. Thus, our E-book's size was around 291MB.😲 After not receiving the money for 4 months, we finally contacted Amazon Customer Care and the news hit us like a stock market crash. Amazon Kindle has a policy of charging money for data storage if your E-book exceeds a certain size and the free book size limit was only 8 mb at that time.‼️ By that time, we had lost ₹70,000 Rupees.‼️🥹💰 The royalty from each sale of our E-book went back to Amazon to cover the excessive storage fees. Even though we fixed the issue in December, the damage was already done. As a third year college students coming from a middle class background, losing an amount so big was very disheartening.🥹 However, we proved our commitment to our parents. Even though, we lost our first big account, we came with more confidence by knowing that we “can” generate income through social media and we have never looked back since. Fellow e-book publishers, let this be your cautionary tale, and may your royalties never get stolen. P.S: This picture is from the little room that we from where we started our company during COVID days. #amazonkindle #financebyanmol #lifelessons #entrepreneurialjourney #entrepreneurship #collegelifelessons
I am not trying to be mean with my comment, ya? Always read the fine print. If it is free, either you are the product or there are hidden costs. I am so sorry this happened to you. I think I should make a detailed video about hidden KDP costs and sneaky rules that nobody talks about in those YouTube videos (those videos are mostly about low value KDP - minimal effort, small sized books designed for mass market distribution). When we format books professionally, this is the type of stuff we are careful about for the clients. 🥲 They get so annoyed sometimes by how long it takes but this type of petty rubbish that platforms pull on books is why book formatting takes as long as it does sometimes.
I still remember this day and although the days when you guys were designing the book with full dedication. You guys never looked back even after facing so many issues. Keep growing:)
Their self publishing systems have always been crazy. Free marketing but with a lot of details to pay attention to. Also do i see a Scarlett solo? 😁 I still use one to record songs
You are a shining example of what can be achieved through intellect, passion, and relentless pursuit of excellence. I've been following your content since 2020, and it's been incredible to witness your growth and evolution over the years. #keepthriving 💫
Damn, didn’t know this and I have also read enough articles on kindle publishing. Thanks for sharing!
That was really tough time
Intresting... Great persistence
Perseverance is truly most important for every founder Anmol Sharma
Damn! That must have hurt.
Product Designer | User Researcher | Webflow & Framer Developer | NIT Jalandhar | Zolve
1wI remember that day 🥲