James Allwinton

A self-publisher makes $25,680 a month from one book. Here is how you could do the same with 4.4hrs of work and $138:

I made $22,569 from my self-publishing business in July 2026 🎧 Spotify - $8,972 📖 Amazon - $6,917 🎧 Audible - $6,039 🎧 INaudio - $319 📚 Other - $322 Expenses: 📣 Amazon Ads - $4,370 🧑‍💻 Freelancers - $1,786 🛠️ Production & AI tools - $1,282 💻 Subscriptions - $754 🗂️ Admin - $262 🏢 Coworking - $225 🧮 Accountant - $148 Net Profit: $13,742 Just publishing books + audiobooks and reinvesting in ads

How to setup Amazon ads 101: 1. Get a list of 500-1000 broad keywords from Pub Rocket 2. Find 5-10 highly relevant keywords for exact campaign 3. With the exact kws, add words like 'ultimate' and 'book' etc to create a list of 200 phrase keywords 4. Download ASIN grabber extension 5. Search all your exact keywords into Amazon and extract all ASINs of relevant books 6. Use these for expanded product campaigns 7. Find 20 highly relevant books for exact product campaign 8. Setup broad, phrase, exact, expanded, exact category for each format of your book with starting bids of 30-40 cents 9. Repeat step 8. in all English speaking markets 10. Repeat step 8. and 9. with a video ad you get made on fiverr

If I was genuinely trying to get a lot of reviews for a KDP book right now, this is how I'd do it: 1. Create a simple ad on facebook showing your cover 2. Run it to a very broad audience, offering book for free 3. Get people to DM you from the ad 4. When they DM, ask if they'd consider leaving a review after reading it 5. Send them the free PDF of your book 6. Do this hundreds if not thousands of times 7. When your book is live, follow up with every person until either a) they leave review b) they ask you to leave them alone or c) you've followed up 5 times Around 7-10% of people who you give a free copy to will leave a review. So if you want 100 reviews, you need to give out 1.5k copies.

Parts of the publishing process I now use AI for topic selection - no title - yes writing - yes covers - yes editing- yes book description - yes metadata - yes formatting - no narration - yes I use the odd human writer, editor and narrator but every week AI is getting better Some things like descriptions, metadata, titles etc I almost exclusively use AI now

How I got 2 million views for my book on TikTok Found a book topic with good demand Made a book and published it Created a TikTok account Searched for viral slideshows on the topic Replicated similar posts using reelfarm Made the posts in bulk Posted one every 1-2 days for about 3 months It cost me ~$97k to get 90 million impressions on Amazon ads, for comparison

A quick way to lose the trust of your reader: Not using their language. Look on forums, other books and social media. If I heard a publisher talking about "Amazon book sales ranking" instead of "BSR" I would switch off

The 4 BIGGEST factors in book sales: • Good title • Great cover • 30+ reviews • Ad campaigns If your book isn't selling One of these is missing

How to reduce competition for your book: Purchase an ISBN. It will then not appear as 'independently published,' and other self-publishers may skip it when looking for topics

The more covers I make the more I realise how important the size of the title is The bigger I make the title, the better the cover performs People just need to know what your book is about immediately If they can't read it they just don't know

Make one book Translate it into 8 languages Format each into ebook, paper, hardcover Publish on Amazon, D2D, Ingram Get each narrated Publish on Audible, Spotify, Voices This gives you about 40 listings for ebook/physical and 40 for audiobook If you get it written with AI (edited by human), translated by AI and narrated by AI, it doesn't even cost that much Get reviews on the big platforms (Amazon, Audible, Spotify) All you've done is made one book and turned it into all these variations

How to grow your book royalties with zero ad spend: 1. Open a TikTok account 2. Name it something related to your topic 3. Film 60 videos of you flicking through your book (faceless) 4. Post two videos per day for a month 5. Add some trending music and a caption (hook) Do this over and over and let TikTok find your audience Make sure over time you improve your videos Your reach will keep improving

Remember, if your book has 0 reviews... It won't sell. When was the last time you bought a book with 0 reviews?

How to maximize book sales Find ONE topic Create one manuscript Publish physical and ebook on KDP Publish audiobook on Audible Publish ebook and paperback on Ingram Run ads on Amazon in English markets List book on TikTok shop Post one video daily Large tiktok views will make sales on tiktok shop as well as Amazon and Ingram AND your Amazon ads become a lot cheaper Just nail the topic, title and cover Did I miss anything?

How I would get to $10k/mo royalties ASAP: 1. Download Bookbeam 2. Open Amazon best sellers 3. Find a book selling well 4. Create a book cheap using AI 5. Publish on KDP and run ads 6. Making sales? Find a ghostwriter 7. Make 5 more books on the topic 8. Not selling well? Start again from 2. Using AI means you can test a topic very cheaply and quickly.

Someone asked me how I deal with the isolation of working on my own This is what I said: During the week working alone isn't lonely because you know everyone else is working On the weekend, 90% of people are with their friends and family so that's when it can feel lonely But if I'm only working when everyone else is, then I'm not getting ahead So it almost feels like the real progress doesn't start until I'm working alone on the weekends With this in mind, I almost look forward to those times because although it's harder, it feels more like progress I also know that the more success I have the more people and opportunities I will attract so these periods won't last forever

Checklist to cross off before you're allowed to be sad about your book earning <$50 a day: • 3 direct competitors earn $50 per day • Your title contains main keyword • Well-formatted description • Eye-catching cover • 4* average rating • 3 ad campaigns • 15 reviews

No one cares about your book. They care about what your book does for them.