I see this question get asked a lot in Facebook groups, YouTube, and Forums. Should you write your own Kindle books or should you outsource them to a writer on a website such as Upwork.com? The problem with this question is it is impossible to give a standard answer (like I do for topics such as Should I Post To Facebook Groups?). It really depends on your situation and a number of factors. So below I’m going to break it down to give you a better understanding of what you should do:
You should write your own Kindle books if
Here are the only times you should write your own Kindle books.
You do not have any money to spare
I’ve found 90% of the people who use this excuse could find the money if they cut back on their living expenses. I find when people tell me that they can’t afford something you talk to them for a while and find out that they go to Starbucks every day for coffee, eat out 3 times a week and then go out every Saturday night to bars and clubs and drop $100+ on alcohol. If you cut back to only going out twice a month and only ate out once a week you’ve saved enough money to pay for 2 Kindle books. I’m not saying you have to live like a monk, because none of us wants to do that, but everyone can cut back to some degree. I did it, it sucked, but I did it. Remember it doesn’t have to be forever, just a few months until you start making money that you can then reinvest back into the business.
You are a good writer
If you are a good writer you can maybe consider writing your books yourself. But it will be difficult to scale up if you are doing all the writing. This is because writing is the most time-consuming part of Kindle Publishing, that is why most Kindle Publishers outsource it.
You really enjoy the process of writing
Some people really love the process of writing. I’m not going to lie I wish I was one of them, unfortunately, I’m not. But if you really love writing and get a lot of pleasure out of the process you definitely should think of writing your own books (at least in the beginning).
When your business takes off you may want to consider outsourcing the writing of 90% of your books so you can focus on the higher-level tasks like niche and keyword selection.
You should not write your own Kindle books if
Here are the times when you should definitely not write your own books.
You are a bad writer
If you cannot write to save your life I would strongly suggest not writing your own books. I’ve seen people who barely speak English trying to write their own books. Then they wonder why they get hammered with bad reviews. Then their books stop selling completely. It’s because they cut corners to save money even though they had no place trying to do it in the first place. If you get a water leak in your house most sane people do not go buy a welding torch and try to fix it themselves. You hire a plumber to come and fix it for you. This is the same thing. Have some common sense.
You have money to invest in your business
If you have money to invest in your business you would stupid to even consider writing your own books. If you have a decent amount of money to invest you can scale up really quickly. In this case, you should be focusing on the higher level tasks such as hiring writers, ordering covers and managing VAs.
You do not have a lot of free time
If you only have a small amount of time to devote to this business every week then writing your own books would be madness. I only had 5 hours a week that I could devote to this business in the beginning so I had to be smart about how I used my time. This did not include writing my own Kindle books. If I had written my own books it would have taken me 2 months to put out just one book. So I’d only have about 8 books published instead or around 50.
If your time is limited you need to spend it doing the higher level tasks such as keyword research, niche research and managing writers, VAs and Cover Designers.
So should you write your own Kindle Books?
I think you can tell by reading above that I strongly suggest not writing your own Kindle Books. Writing the books yourself will slow down the entire process and make it almost impossible to scale up your business when the time comes. Believe me, you will make more money in the long run by paying someone else to do it for you and the quality will almost certainly be better.
If you take nothing else away from the post then at least take this. In Kindle Publishing like all forms of business…
You must spend money to make money.
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions please leave me a comment below and I will do my best to answer them.