Kindle Update--- and Kindle tips

I'm now averaging selling a little over a book a day---roughly 40 or so a month on Kindle.
I've gotten more reviews--most of them favorable, though I always appreciate a dose of constructive criticism.

For those of you new to my blog, I've been trying to follow JA Konrath's example to see if putting my books on Kindle can be a profitable venture---though please note that Konrath (and many of the other writers making mucho dinero on Kindle) are very prolific, and I only have three books up right now.

Something I've noticed:

---Cover art truly does make a big difference. You can look up my covers for my print titles and compare the two. My two novels were traditionally published by small presses, and the publishers supplied the cover art. I'm not dissing the cover art---I like them a lot and I think they were very well done. Of course, since the publisher supplied the cover art, the copyright for that remains with the publisher, so I had to devise new covers. "Saint Jude" was done by a designer I worked with named Paul Krause, and I actually did the "Cafe" and "Shangri-La" covers myself.  I'd like to note that I had several "misses" with the "Shangri-La" cover before I came up with the rooster. One was a driver's side mirror, one was a big informational highway sign---things that were okay, but not quite as "crisp" as the redesign.

I'll note here that I did have some training in graphic design as a part of my visual arts/ journalism bachelor's degree. Of course, this was when digital cameras were still a novelty and they cost around $3,000 each.

Dang, did I just show my age?

I didn't use digital cameras in journalism school---we were afraid the dinosaurs might eat them.

I also think that the more type you have on the cover [blurbs, etc] the simpler your cover should be. I go by the old adage that "less is more."

I firmly believe the best way to learn good design is to look at bad design. For this, I always suggest checking out Web Pages that Suck.

It's good for a laugh as well.

Any successful Kindle authors want to share something they've found useful? Feel free to post it.