3 Amazon KDP Mistakes You Should AVOID At ALL Costs!

Last Updated on August 10, 2021 by Jordan Alexo

Nobody likes to commit mistakes, especially when it spends your money. I’ve committed more mistakes than I can count throughout my Kindle publishing journey. Today, I want to talk about things you should avoid doing to avoid wasting hundreds of dollars on ineffective strategies.

Let’s Quickly Talk About Them…

Mistake 1) Cheap Ghostwriters: Avoid using the cheapest ghostwriters around the block. You’ll end up with poor quality content and a bunch of mad customers hunting you down until the end of days.

Mistakes 2) Review Swap: There was a time where obtaining fake books reviews was a thing! However, that time is over!

Mistake 3) Focusing on quantity: It is better to publish fewer books with high-quality rather than six or more books per month; that sucks.

If you want to learn each mistake more in detail, then keep reading.

Mistake 1) Don’t Use The Cheapest Ghostwriter Company Or Writer From Upwork

In the beginning, most self-publishers like to keep things as cheap as possible. Possibly, they don’t have much money to invest and are afraid of failing. However, this is one of those things you pay for what you get. If you pay a cheap ghostwriter, then you will get low-quality content.

Although many of these companies or writers claim to be fluent in English, that’s not the case. Often these cheap ghostwriter companies obtain their writers from non-English speaking countries. Or countries where English is only their secondary language. Hiring writers from these countries usually is cheaper, and for this reason, they may provide cheaper services to their customers. However, you end up with content that may have grammatical errors, misspellings, and isn’t the best quality overall.

Once you publish a book with poor content, it doesn’t long until it gets flooded by complaints left by mad customers.

The same thing with ghostwriters you may find on Upwork. Sometimes, these writers deceive people by sending a portfolio with work that they didn’t do. Or you hire them, and they send duplicate content they wrote for another customer, which may result in Amazon blocking your account.

I prefer to spend a bit more and obtain higher-quality content. The ghostwriter company I use is “The Urban Writers.” If you decide to check them out, then use this coupon code JA5 to get a 5% discount on your order.

Mistake 2) Review Swaps

I know, I know it’s my fault too! I used to promote review swaps in the past as a great way to obtain book reviews. However, things have dramatically changed over the past few years. Perhaps, you are wondering what reviews swaps are? Back in the day, we used to hire a virtual assistant from a website called Upwork.

This virtual assistant would exchange fake reviews with another virtual assistant. Essentially, your virtual assistant would leave a review on someone’s else book, and the other one would leave in yours. For this reason, we called this review swap because there was an exchange of reviews.

This used to be highly effective up to 2018. But since then, Amazon has caught up. Usually, it doesn’t take long until they discover these fake reviews and delete them from your book. Thus, you end up wasting money paying your virtual assistant to obtain these reviews for nothing.

The last time I tried, my virtual assistant got forty reviews, and after a week, I had zero. They all got deleted by Amazon. For this reason, I don’t recommend self-publishers to get them. Besides, you also risk your account getting banned by Amazon.

At the moment, you have other ways to obtain legit reviews on your Kindle books. I explain the two most effective strategies in my newest course called “Self-Publishing Money Machine.” If you’d like to obtain more information about my video course, click here.

Mistake 3) Focusing On Quantity

It makes sense to think that you can make more money online if you publish more and more books on Amazon. In a way, it is true! However, the problem is you. See, the more books you publish monthly, the harder it is to keep their top-notch quality. Instead, you stop paying attention to the little details that matter and that all combined make your books great.

The quantity of books you can publish monthly depends on several factors. For instance, how much time you have to focus on your book business. If you only have a few hours per week, perhaps it isn’t a good idea to publish seven or more books. Otherwise, you won’t spend enough time researching for the most profitable keywords out there, obtaining the best cover designs, reviews your book content, etc. See, this is what is needed to guarantee you are publishing high-quality books.

Nowadays, I only publish about two to three books monthly. I try my best to guarantee their highest quality. Yes, you could say I’m a pain the ass because I truly am. I spend hours writing my outlines because I know that’s one of the key factors to have a great book. Furthermore, I push my ghostwriters so they do their best work. If I feel it isn’t good, I also don’t slap the first cover design I obtain from Fiverr.

In the end, I focus on publishing high-quality books rather than quantities of low-quality books. Of course, if you can publish seven high-quality books, then go for it. Personally, I don’t have the time to focus on so many books at once.

The thing I want you to take away from here is to focus on publishing high-quality books. A high-quality book tends to perform better long-term and make more money throughout months and possibly years. I prefer that than to publish a low-quality book that only sells for a month or two at best.

So you need to see what your limit is. How many books are you able to publish per month to guarantee their best quality? One, two, five? It’s really up to you! But quality is king!

Last Thoughts…

Here are the three mistakes you should avoid and will save hundreds of dollars in the long run. I’d love to hear about your self-publishing mistakes. Please leave them right below in the comment section.