Digital publishing ebooks on kindle - Sophie Howard on Facebook

[millymog11]

I've just watched this intro webinar on facebook. Apart from the outlay (about USD$ 2K so far as I can see) this is a pyramid/scam isn't it?
Anyone doing this and if yes, what are your thoughts? I work full time (employed) so not sure having sat through a whole hour how viable doing this as a side income would be (that is if it is credible). I am assuming that Sophie Howard is being paid £££ to recruit by Amazon?

She doesn't need to be paid £££ by Amazon, she's paid by all the people who pay for her course!

You can absolutely make money publishing ebooks on Amazon, but most don't. What kind of book are you thinking of? Low content, fiction, curated? There are loads of free resources to explore on Amazon KDP - type it into youtube and watch a few videos to get a good idea. Low content books in particular used to make money, but Amazon are adjusting their algorythms now to stop people's feeds being swamped by 1000s of notebooks when they want a real book on a topic.

Thanks Vikiings. That is really helpful, I thought I wouldn't get any replies. Sophie Howard's videos are odd. On a logical level the business model feels like it ought to add up (complete novice here, just first impressions) but the fact it is clearly pre recorded with no back office support (at least at initial recruitment stage) and that the vast majority of her video seems to concentrate on the hard sell (poor me working all hours in employed employment previously, and by the way, here are some of the holiday resorts I have been to in the last year you could be doing this too etc etc) just made me think it is a massive scam. If nothing else it feels like the vast majority of her business is taking money off other people to train them in the business model rather than publishing herself.

I wonder whether the materials/training you get for your £2,500 odd outlay are actually worth it in terms o ftime saved compared with trying to watch youtube videos to understand the how to yourself.

She also has the usual suspect post webinar email bombardment of offering you the same outlay package but at smaller and smaller instalments over a longer timeframe adding up to much more than the £2,500. With the usual now-or-never hard sell message. hmmmmm.

does feel like a scam to me, if not in terms of the business model, but at least in terms of her target market being the (very) vulnerable and the desperate. She does caveat it at the start saying others wont make as much money as she has but that bit is very very short.....

I don't know Sophie Howard or this course, but I work in self-publishing.

The people who make money are the ones with services to assist self-publishers. Some self-publishers do make money. Most are lucky to recoup their costs.

There is very good money to be made in selling courses to do something, especially if that something is promising to change your life or make you money, or even better make you a life changing amount of money.

I don't know what kind of books she's promoting, but I can tell you I have a few books on Amazon KDP, the semi-autobigraphical diary style book that I spent 2 years writing has been out 6 years and hasn't made £200 yet despite having only 5* reviews. I put zero work into promoting it though.

The low content books I've done of colouring pages, puzzles, notebooks etc do sell, but you need some sort of graphics knowledge and it's a very flooded market now, but those take me less than a day per book to produce, again no promotion at all and from the 12 of them I make about £40-50 a month so again not a millionare but a nice bonus in the background.

If you do have graphics ability (to use canva, I'm not talking advanced photoshop) I would recommend the PoD route instead. I make around £100 a day from Amazon Merch, £20 from Redbubble (pm me if you want to sign up here as there are referal offers), a little less from some other PoD sites I'm on. Again zero promotions apart from I put pins on pinterest, I consider this my hobby alongside my main business, I enjoy design and that it makes me money is a bonus not something I rely on, but I tend to do a few designs when I have some down time just because I enjoy it. I can recommend Shimmy Morris, Ryan Hogue, Wholesale Ted, Thomas Garetz and Detour Shirts videos for learning how to do this, but I'm sure there are lots of other excellent youtubers out there. Most of them will also cover other ways of making money such as no show youtube videos, course creation, printables or templates are a big one at the moment or even just getting money from making posts on Pinterest.

You can also read more about a variety of extra income earners on makemoneywithoutajob.com if you'd like a general overview. There certainly are plenty of legit ways to make money on the side or to replace a traditional income, but you don't need to pay £2500 to do it.

thanks Dragons this is a very useful post, reading now, grateful for your insight