6 Easy Steps To Create & Publish eBook in Amazon Kindle Store
What would it be like to be the next sought-after best selling author? With the advent of the internet and online publishing tools, you can be just that. It is easier than ever to tell your story to the world.
Well, have your heard of the giant retailer, Amazon? It recently announced that it sells more digital books than it does printed books. So, if you are thinking about selling digital books now is the time. And the best part, it’s free to self-publish through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Service.
So, why create and publish an eBook? As an author, being published enhances your reputation and instantly makes you more credible. It establishes you an authority in your industry sector given your knowledge and expertise. With this comes more opportunities to market yourself, which in turn leads to more income. With Amazon, even a novice writer can publish his digital work overnight.
And better yet, how do you self-publish your eBook on Amazon? This issue outlines 6 easy and simple steps you can follow to get your digital work published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Service?
Step 1: Create Your Digital Work (Your eBook)
To begin with, you need to create the eBook so it can be listed in the Amazon’s Kindle Store.
You will need to write or change your eBook into a format that Kindle Direct Publishing Service recognizes. The good news is that you can upload your eBook in a number of formats using KDP. These formats can consist of a zipped HTML file, a Word document, Adobe PDF, Plain text, or ePub or MobiPocket reader file.
From personal experience though, I have found that uploading a Word document is far easier than any other format. I tried uploading a PDF file into the Kindle format and found that there were several formatting issues that I had to correct in order for it to display correctly. But it is possible your PDF file may convert just fine. Mine didn’t.
If you have a Microsoft Word document as the source file for your book, I recommend you use that file first as the source file for your Kindle book. If that doesn’t work well for you, then try the PDF format next.
I’ll cover uploading your book in Step 5, but for now, it’s important that you have your book in one of the supported formats that I mentioned above.
Step 2: Set Up Your Account
Next, go to the Kindle Direct Publishing site in your web browser and sign in using your Amazon account email and password. If you don’t have an account, you can quickly create one. Then login and set up your personal information. Your book won’t be available for sale and you won’t get paid for any sales until this setup step is complete.
Of course, the basic information is pretty standard. You need to provide your company or publisher name, address, telephone number, as well as your Employer Identification Number or Social Security Number for tax purposes. Since Amazon pays you a royalty on every book sold, which I will discuss later in this article, you will need to select how you want to get paid and in which currency. Amazon pays you by a check or an electronic funds transfer to your bank account and in U.S. dollars, British pounds or Euros. So, don’t forget this very important step.
Once your account is set up, you are now ready to start the process.
Step 3: Add Your Title
To publish a book, you need to add what Amazon calls “a title.” You simply click the tab called “Bookshelf” at the top of the page. A dashboard screen will appear where you can click the button labeled “Add a new title.” Then you simply enter your book details. Amazon provides simple, self-explanatory fields. If you are not sure what to type in the fields, you can click on the “What’s this?” link for more details.
The book details consist of providing your book name and selecting whether your book is part of a series. If your book is part of a series, you will need to provide a series title and volume number. If you have an edition number, you can also provide that as well.
One you have completed the book details, you simply type a brief description of the book in the text box field. Most of the times this is the blurb you find on the inside flap of a hardcover book. The description has a 4000-character maximum. This is just enough to give the reader a basic overview of what the book is about, and perhaps include a little teaser to entice the reader to buy the book. You can look at other books on Amazon for examples of what to include for these details.
Next, you will need to provide information as to the book contributors by clicking the “Add contributors” button. This is where you identify the book’s author (you or your company). If you used an editor, illustrator, or translator, you can list those resources as well. To publish your book, at least one contributor name is required, and all contributors of any public domain content are required.
After specifying information about the contributors, you then select the language you want the book to be published in. Kindle Direct Publishing supports many languages. An as option, you can also list the publication date, publisher or even the international standard book number (ISBN), if you have one.
Next, you have to specify whether you hold title to the book privately (yourself or your company), or whether your book contains content that is in the public domain.
You also need to select the categories where you want your book to appear. You can add two categories where the title can appear on Amazon.
Furthermore, you can assign 5-7 descriptive keywords that will be used to help your book show up in searches that are done within Amazon.
Note that these key words are different than those that could allow your book show up in the search engines like Google. You should consider naming your book title with the key words that you want your book to be found in through the search engines. But these key words that you specify within the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing site are used within Amazon when people are searching for books on a certain topic.
Once all the book setup is complete, you can then move on to the steps of uploading your actual book.
Step 4: Upload Your Book Cover
Select the option to upload your book. Upon selecting this option, Amazon provides you with an option to include a product image for your book cover. Since customers see your book cover in search results, it is always recommended that you include a product image. Otherwise, Amazon will use a placeholder image.
If you upload an image, the image must be a .tif or .jpg file at least 500 pixels horizontally with a maximum 1280 pixels vertically. Otherwise, the image, either full-size or as a thumbnail page, will be grainy and difficult to read.
Once the book cover is has been uploaded, the next step is to upload your book file.
Step 5: Upload Your Book File
Before you begin the process to upload your file, you will need to select a digital rights management option. This option is intended to prohibit unauthorized distribution of the Kindle file of your book. Some authors want to encourage readers to share their work with others, while others do not.
If you choose the Book Lending option, customers will be able to lend the book to another user for a short period of time. The customer can also purchase the book as a gift for another user from the Kindle store. Once you publish your book though, you cannot change this option.
Once you have specified your desired digital rights management option, you are now ready to upload your book. As discussed in Step 1, Kindle Direct Publishing supports several file formats, such as a zipped HTML file, a Word document, Adobe PDF, Plain text, or ePub or MobiPocket reader file. As I mentioned earlier, I have found that uploading a Word document is far easier than any other format. But you can upload whatever supported format you have available to you.
After you have uploaded your content, you can click on the “Preview book” button to see what the material will look like when rendered on a Kindle. Here you can change the font size, just like you can on an actual Kindle. Unfortunately though, you can’t make any other changes from the preview. If you need to make changes, you will have to go back and change the content of the book itself in your chosen format and then re-upload it.
Click the “Save and Continue” button and you will then be prompted to select your royalty option.
Step 6: Rights and Pricing
The last step before you publish your book is to choose your royalty and list your price. Amazon offers two royalty options. A 35% royalty or a 70% royalty. This may seem like an easy choice, right? Your gut tells you to automatically select the 70% royalty option. Well before you do that, you need to know the difference between the two royalty options.
With the 70% royalty option, the minimum list price for a book is $2.99. Any book under this price must be listed under the 35% royalty option. The 70% royalty option also has the Kindle “Book Lending” feature enabled by default. Under the 35% royalty option, you can disable this lending feature. So, the tricky part is to figure out where you will sell more books, either under the 35% royalty or the 70% royalty option.
Once you have decided which royalty option will be best for your scenario, click the “Save and Publish” button. You are all set. Within 24-48 hours your book will show up in the Kindle store.
Congratulations, you’re an author!