How do You Get Published, Publish a Kindle Ebook on Amazon

How do You Get Published? How to Publish an Ebook Introduction

Presumably you’re reading this article because you’re an author publisher and asking a question such as, ‘how do I get into publishing’, ‘how can I get published’, ‘how do you write for Kindle’ or even ‘how do I start an ebook business’. Well in this how to publishing for Kindle with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing guide you will find the answers.

If you are unfamiliar with the process of writing and publishing your own ebook you might like to consider Kindle Ritual for a very easy solution to publishing your ebook, not only with Amazon but your own website. This places you firmly in control of your ebooks destiny, click here to watch the video.

Writing Books Should be Fun

If your anything like me you find writing books a pleasure but writing books for publication is a real pain in the rear end. Writing books should be fun but the technicalities and hassle of getting published really puts me off and most of my work simply gets filed away for posterity.

If you’ve tried to get your book published, you’ll undoubtedly know the type of thing I mean! Find a publisher and jump through all sorts of hoops to get your work accepted, then, once your work is accepted, you have to deal with commissioning editors to negotiate the intellectual property rights and agree on royalty rates etc.

Self ePublishing the Quick and Easy Way

In this day and age it’s simply takes too long to publish using the conventional route, so, first lets get some of the basic questions out of the way to make sure we are on the same page as it were, before we move on to self epublishing the quick and easy way.

What is Publishing?

What is publishing? Publishing is just the occupation or activity of preparing and issuing books, journals, and other material for sale containing text (words and numbers) and graphics (static illustrations, pictures, photographs, drawings, paintings, patterns, etc.).

• With epublishing, multimedia such as animation and reader interaction, could also be required.

Traditionally, the term book publishing referred to the distribution of printed works such as paper books and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include electronic publishing (epublishing), such as the electronic versions of books (ebooks).

• Publication is also important as a legal concept. For copyright purposes, there is a difference in the protection of published and unpublished works.

What is a Publisher?

What is a Publisher? A publisher is a person or company that prepares and issues books, journals, music, or other works for sale. A publisher is essentially a broker.

If a publisher sees an advantage in publishing your book, they will usually agree to pay the printing bill in exchange for exclusive control of your copyright.

• Note: Publishers contract for a lot more books than they expect to sell.

Many publishers contract for and produce nominal editions of many books which they never advertise or make any serious attempt to distribute to booksellers. They simply sit on the copyright, just in case the book “takes off”. The publisher is then in a position to make a hansom profit.

• Most books never make it out of the warehouse.

Don’t think that a publisher who goes to the expense of publishing a book will try to sell it, they don’t. The efforts of most publishers to market books are nominal at best and almost none are advertised. Their reasoning is, few people buy books on the basis of ads or reviews.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) the New Kid on the Block

The good news is that there is a new kid on the block. Unlike conventional book publishing, Amazon have made it very easy for authors to get started in book publishing and the really nice thing about publishing your ebook with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is that the service is a totally free publishing platform.

• Bonus: When you publish a book on a platform like Amazon, rather than self publishing using your own website, it gives authority of the work.

KDP is web-based service offered by Amazon that allows uploading your ebook in almost any format (including HTML and Microsoft Word) for conversion it into the Kindle ebook format. KDP also automatically manages the listing of your precious ebook in Amazons online store.

• The royalty received is based directly on sales and depends upon the royalty options selected (see below).

Enrol in KDP Select

With Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing you can earn higher royalties. Earn your share of at least $6 million when readers borrow your books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and earn 70% royalty for sales to customers in India.

Fast track the promotion of your ebook by making your book free to readers worldwide for a limited time. The KDP Promotions Manager tool will allow you to directly schedule and control the promotion of free books.

You can also reach a new audiences by distributing books through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and reach the growing number of Amazon Prime customers in the US, UK, Germany, and France.

What is the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library?

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books which Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle can borrow once a month with no due dates. Your books will still be available for anyone to buy in the Kindle Store, and you’ll continue to earn royalties.

What Does it Mean to Publish Exclusively on Kindle?

When you choose to enrol your book in KDP Select, you are committing to make the digital format of that book available exclusively through KDP. During the period of exclusivity, you cannot distribute your book digitally anywhere else, including on your website, blogs, etc. You can promote (and I recommend you do so) your ebooks using your own website. You can also continue to distribute your book in physical format, or in any format other than digital. See the KDP Select Terms and Conditions for more information.

To Publish Kindle Ebook on Amazon

You can use Kindle Direct Publishing to publish your book the Amazon Kindle Store in just a few minutes. In the next few steps you will see how to publish your book in less then five minutes.

To publish your book you will need two things:

• The basic information about your book such as, book title and a description.
• A digital file of your book and cover design.

Get an Amazon KDP Account

To publish your Kindle ebook on Amazon you need to get an Amazon KDP account. It’s totally free to sign up and if you already have any Amazon account you can use that to sign in. Make sure your personal details and the payment (royalties for you) information sections are correct or you won’t receive any money. Once registered you can start publishing your kindle ebooks.

Sign in to Your KDP Account

Sign in to your KDP account, this will take you to the, Bookshelf page.

The Bookshelf lists all of your books and their status, whether they are in draft, publishing or live in the Kindle store.

Add new book: To add a new book click the Add new book button.

• This gives you the option to enrol your book in KDP Select (the Kindle owners lending library) and promote your book for free.
• The Kindle Owners Lending Library is a digital library where Amazon Prime members and Kindle owners can borrow books once a month with no due dates. You will earn a share of $6 million (variable) fund dedicated to independent authors and publishers. The share you earned will depend on the monthly fund and totally qualified borrows. Note: it’s a ‘qualified borrows’ not total number of borrows.

Kindle Ebook Title: This should be the exact title of your kindle ebook. As you know, your Kindle ebook title is very, very important, make sure you get it right, you cannot change it later. This also applies to the cover image. Your book title and cover image are the two things which catch the audiences eye, you have this eye catching, two second window to sell your book.

Book details: Next simply fill in the form with your book details, i.e., book title, edition number, short description, author, etc.

Publishing rights: It’s important to verify your publishing rights or place the book in the public domain on this page.

Category and keywords: It’s also important to get the right category and keywords (max 7) to help market your ebook. These should be the words your readers would use to find your ebook.

Uploading your ebook cover: When uploading your ebook cover remember it has to look good as a thumbnail image as well as the full cover image. Make it stand out. The cover should be a JPEG, PNG or TIFF file. Ideal height to width ratio for the image is 1:6.  Longest side should be minimum 1000 pixels and for best quality use 2500 pixels.

• Consider having a professionally designed book cover to grab the readers attention.

Digital Rights Management: Next select the DRM for your book. Once your book is published you cannot change the DRM setting so think carefully.

Upload your ebook: Brows to the location of your ebook file and upload your file to Amazon. This action will upload your book and convert it into the Kindle format.

• It’s very import and preview your ebook once the upload has completed just to make sure everything was converted correctly. Although Microsoft Word and PDF formats are commonly used they may not produce good results when converted.

Whilst you’re waiting for your book to upload you can click the, Save and Continue, button to move to the next section.

Verify Publishing Territories: If you have Worldwide rights indicate it here otherwise select the countries where you have applicable right.

Royalty Options: This is the bit we all like to complete, setting the list price.

If your book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99 (£1.49 and £6.99) you can select the 70% royalty option. Between $9.99 and $200.00 you can only chose the 35% royalty option, this is also the case for public domain books.

Publish: Finally, read and accept the terms and conditions, and click the, Save and Publish, button.

Publishing Period: Books in English should publish within 12 hours. Allow 48 hours for other languages. You book will then be available for purchase in the Amazon Kindle Store. During this period you book status will be shown as “In Review” in your bookshelf. Once published the status will switch to “Live”.

• Amazon will let know you through e-mail when the ebook is listed in store.

How do You Get Published, Publish a Kindle Ebook on Amazon Conclusion

If you are unfamiliar with the process of writing and publishing your own ebook you might like to consider Kindle Ritual for a very easy solution to publishing your ebook, not only with Amazon but your own website. This places you firmly in control of your ebooks destiny, click here to watch the video.

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this article, How do You Get Published, Publish a Kindle Ebook on Amazon. Hopefully, after reading this article all you budding author publisher received suitable answers to the questions, ‘how can I get published’, ‘how do I get into publishing’, ‘how do you write for Kindle’ and even ‘how do I start an ebook business’.

Don’t forget to let me have your thoughts in the comment box below. See you soon.