Amazon makes self-publishing easier for writers than traditional publishing does, enabling them to earn up to 70% royalties from eBook sales while maintaining ownership of their book(s). Through their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program authors can use Amazon as their publisher.
KDP provides not only excellent pay, but also free file conversion and additional tools for formatting different kinds of books like textbooks and children’s books. Its user-friendly design features helpful prompts, demonstration videos, forums, and help centers that even a novice author can use quickly to get their book up and running in just hours.
KDP provides authors with an invaluable opportunity to market their book to millions of potential readers on a massive scale, which in turn should increase book sales rapidly as soon as it hits digital shelves. Learn more on this site – https://www.publishing.com/blog/how-to-publish-a-book-on-amazon for more information. After you go through the how-to, you’ll see how this can be hugely advantageous when trying to reach as many readers as possible with their work.
Though KDP can bring many advantages, self-publishing on Amazon requires hard work from an author if they wish to self-publish successfully. Most of this work lies with marketing and promoting their writing effectively – without an established social media presence, or adeptness with writing press releases and marketing materials, sales may prove difficult.
Researching and selecting categories for your eBook requires some legwork on your part. Categories play an integral role in how your eBook ranks in search results; select ones relevant to your work but without being so narrow that your work quickly gets lost among competitors – for example, avoid “Fiction” and “Romance” categories if possible and focus on finding niche categories with less competition instead.
Finally, make sure that you devote sufficient time and attention to formatting your eBook properly. A poorly formatted eBook may look terrible on most e-readers and rushing through technical steps may result in an unprofessional-looking writing.
Along with formatting your eBook, digital rights management (which you can learn about by clicking here) should also be enabled so only its owner has access and shares it. Without DRM enabled, anyone could download your writing for free. While DRM may not be ideal, it remains an essential tool in modern publishing.
To help prepare your eBook for digital publication on Amazon, check out our comprehensive guide for doing just that – covering topics like editing, covers, pricing and other crucial aspects of preparation for digital publication. If you have any further inquiries on publishing your book via Amazon please reach out to Location Rebel for further advice or assistance.
Getting Started
Many contemporary writers are opting to self-publish their books, which may seem like a simple and cost-effective solution, yet can present unique challenges. Before embarking on this venture, it is crucial that you fully understand all that lies ahead; anything from poor formatting to misplaced keywords could threaten to reduce its quality or salability if done wrongly. By investing in the appropriate tools you can ensure a smooth publishing journey without making costly errors along the way.
There are a few key resources that can assist authors in publishing their books through Amazon successfully, including KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). This platform allows authors to easily create both an eBook and paperback edition of their writing that will be listed for sale on the marketplace.
Step one in getting started with KDP is creating a free account. Next, enter information about your book: title, subtitle, cover art, page count and author bio. Selecting a category from Amazon’s selection or even customizing one by entering in genre code(s).
As part of your royalties payment setup, you must also choose an acceptable payment method for royalties. To do this, you will require both the name of your bank and its routing number (the first nine digits on its check). When this has been accomplished, uploading your written manuscript can occur.
As part of your uploading, Amazon requires a specific file type for your manuscript upload. Amazon prefers EPUB formats as this open-source file type can be read across most devices; however, other file formats including DOCX and KPF (generated through their own Kindle Create tool) may also be accepted; an EPUB version would provide the best chance of ensuring wide compatibility for readers worldwide.
Formatting Your Book
Your words and images must come together seamlessly in your writing, which requires proper formatting. Unfortunately, many authors skip this step, yet its importance cannot be understated: an unprofessional looking book could turn away potential readers while failing to meet different publishing outlets’ formatting requirements may result in rejection.
Professional programs such as Atticus or Vellum provide the most efficient way to format books. Although these services typically cost $147 to $250 per written piece, Amazon Kindle Create provides an alternative. Specifically designed to format books for KDP, this free program has all of the functionality you need to prepare your file for uploading to KDP as well as create files compatible with Kindle devices.
Once your file has been formatted properly, make sure it hasn’t any mistakes or issues that might detract from its content – page numbers, margins, font size/style choices as well as any widows/orphans (words that don’t fit within any paragraph) should all be carefully examined to ensure your readers won’t be distracted from what it has to offer.
Decide whether or not you will use spaced or indented paragraphs, curly or straight quotes and how often. Pick one style and stick with it throughout your writings for greater consistency. Incorporating links in your text could enhance the reading experience while providing readers with additional knowledge.
Once your file is clean, you are ready to upload it to your KDP dashboard and begin making money with it. Take time to add cover images before clicking “Publish”, once satisfied that your file is ready for public consumption. When selling books for less than $159.99 you must choose either 70% or 35% royalties as this determines which royalty rate applies based on how much is sold per book.
Pricing Your Book
Once your book has been formatted, edited, and polished until it shines, the next step should be deciding how much to charge. As an author, this decision will have a huge effect on how your book sells – get it right, and it could become an income-generating machine; get it wrong, however, and you may struggle even though all other work has been done successfully. Selecting a price point can be both an art and science – here are a few general rules of thumb you can follow to help make decisions easier:
Bear in mind that readers will judge your book against similar books available on the market, so do some research into average prices in your niche for that genre and then aim for an acceptable price point within those parameters.
Consider royalties when setting the price for your book. While sales do not directly translate to income, you still must earn enough from its sales to cover expenses like website hosting and marketing costs.
If you are an indie author just starting out, it may be tempting to offer your book for 99 cents or less as an introductory price in order to attract readers and generate reviews, but try not to go so low that the book becomes subpar quality and readers come to believe they cannot trust future works from you.
Your book can benefit from special promotions and temporary discounts to encourage readers to buy it – this can increase sales while moving your book up in Amazon search rankings. Ongoing series authors might consider offering bundles or box sets with discounted prices at various retailers to increase readership and sales – just be sure that the pricing remains consistent across retailers so that Apple and Amazon don’t end up charging different amounts for the same title.
Marketing Your Book
When publishing your book, you will be given the ability to select up to seven keywords that best represent it and will help readers discover it. Publisher Rocket can help you locate keywords with low competition that could prove fruitful in driving sales of your book.
Once your book is out there, you’ll need to promote it to reach readers. There are free methods of promotion available such as social media posts and website ads, while those on a budget may pay for promotional opportunities such as Amazon Daily Deals that feature books at discounted prices, or BookBub, which advertises free or discounted ebooks to a wide audience.
Building a reader base is important when marketing your book. One way to achieve this goal is by giving advance reader copies to readers who will provide feedback and reviews once your book becomes widely available for sale. Or create an author email list and send out newsletters announcing your book release date as well as soliciting reviews.
If you haven’t done so already, creating an Amazon Author Central account is highly recommended. Here, you can upload biographical details, photos, videos, events information, book sales details and much more – in short – everything necessary for an author profile page to flourish! You can even link directly from the Author Central page to each book’s sales pages on Amazon.
Another step is running periodic promotions for your book. This will elevate it in the charts, reaching new readers, and increasing its odds of reaching the Kindle bestseller list. You can do this yourself or through an aggregator such as *Smashwords that distributes books across multiple retailers by formatting for each.
One of the best things you can do to advance your book is solicit reviews. Every time someone reviews your work, its internal ranking changes – helping it move higher up in Amazon search results and drive additional sales of your book. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start selling that book.
