Write an Ebook for Amazon Kindle

Write an ebook with Kindle Ritual and self publish with Amazon

Self Publishing with Kindle Ritual, Ebook Writer.

Have you ever wanted to write a book but found the process of dealing with publishers too time consuming, too technical, just too much trouble?

Well now you can write the book you’ve always wanted to write and publish it yourself as an ebook and via. Amazon.

Even if you don’t have any experience of writing an ebook there’s an easy solution, let Kindle Ritual show you how.

Write your own ebook with Kindle Ritual and publish with Amazon. Visit the official Kindle Ritual website and watch the video.

Digital, Not Print, is Your Best Bet

The first thing I tell authors who tell me they want to publish a print book is that print should be their secondary focus. I advise people to test the self-publishing waters with an ebook before moving on to hard copies. It’s much cheaper to produce an ebook, particularly when it comes to formatting and cover design.

Ebook Publishing Options

Here are three big ebook publishing options to bear in mind with ebook creation:

What is the easiest and most cost-efficient way to produce an ebook?
Where will it be distributed?
How much money/profit do you get?

Amazon Now Sells More Ebooks than Hardbacks and Paperbacks Combined

Did you know that the UK’s biggest book retailer Amazon now sells more ebooks than hardbacks and paperbacks combined. Amazon says that for every 100 print books sold through the site, it sold 114 titles for its Kindle eReader device. Apparently the average Kindle owner bought up to four times more books than they did before owning the device.

“Customers in the UK are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books, even as our print business continues to grow,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice-president of Kindle in Europe.”As a result of the success of Kindle, we’re selling more books than ever before on behalf of authors and publishers.”And thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, thousands of self-published authors have also been given an outlet to share their work with the millions of Kindle readers worldwide.”
online: (https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin)

List of places to publish, promote and sell Kindle ebooks

The introduction of Amazons Kindle electronic book readers has increased the number of people buying ebooks enormously and people are purchasing ebooks for their Kindle faster than ever. This also means there is a growing market for ebook authors and publishers.

Invariably when you think of the Kindle you automatically think, as an author of an ebook, you have to publish through Amazon. Well you don’t have to. Admittedly the combination of Amazon, Kindle Ritual and WordPress make life very easy for authors to publish their ebooks, but than again, so do many others.

Top 5 Ebook Publishing Houses

The following is just my recommended list of the top five ebook publishing houses. There are many, many others, just do a web search to be amazed at the number. If your just beginning I recommend you choose from this list for starters.

Google Books/Ebooks
Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing Platform
Barnes and nobles, Pubit
Apple iBookstore
Kobo

Publishing houses such as Smashwords and Lulu are also worth a mention as they publish and distribute your ebook. So naturally your ebook gets good exposure. Both have a large audience for Kindle ebooks.

Self Publishing Your Ebook

Priority Criteria

Of the many criteria necessary to self publish your ebooks the most important one is, it’s got to be good. The same rules apply to self-published ebooks as print books, you have to start with a good product if you have any hope of selling it in quantity.

The second necessary criteria is, ownership. You must be the owner of the content and have the rights to publish.

Create an Arresting Cover

Creating an arresting ebook cover is tough. The cover image must be an eye-catching, professional-looking cover just as good as any paper book cover, but, it must also look good as a thumbnail image, and that’s easier said than done. Yet this small thumbnail cover will make a huge difference in terms of sales.

Price Your Ebook Competitively

You should obviously price your ebook competitively. Look at similar publications to yours and set your price accordingly. My research seems to indicate an optimum price for ebooks is about $5.99. The range of $2.99 to $5.99 seems to yield the most profit for self-published authors.

Free ebooks get about 100 times more downloads than priced ebooks, so if it’s just promotion your after, give it away.

Important note: Amazon’s 70% royalty for authors only applies to Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99; otherwise, the rate kicks down to 35%.

Marketing, Creating Awareness

Marketing is all about creating awareness for your e-book: There are no secret tips for this, just follow the standard marketing techniques. Just remember, you can’t sell your ebook if no one knows it exists.

Most of book marketing is simply about creating awareness and you need to do that however you can, whether it’s through social media or blogging or passing out fliers on a street corner. This is where the Kindle Ritual system can help. You could create your own publishing site and/or blog.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s e-book publishing platform, and if you think you’re going to sell a lot of e-books, you should figure out a way to upload your file (ebook) directly to KDP and avoid using any sort of middleman or e-book “aggregator” that takes a cut of the profits.

The Kindle Ritual system allows you to create an e-book with a table of contents and automatically convert it into Amazon’s proprietary ebook format, AZW, along with your book cover etc.

If you don’t want to go the total DIY route, you can pay someone a few hundred dollars to format your ebook for you, but you’ll still need to come up with a cover.

Royalty Rates

Amazon offers a 70% royalty rate for authors, but some rules apply (see Amazon terms). Amazon is also offering incentives to authors to offer their works exclusively on Amazon. This program is called KDP Select and it comes with some key perks. Here’s what Amazon has to say:

Featuring a $700,000 fund dedicated to KDP authors and publishers in October and at least $6 million in 2012.

Reach a new audience – Distribute books through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and reach the growing number of US Amazon Prime members.
Earn higher royalties – Earn your share of at least $6 million throughout 2012 when readers borrow your books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Also be eligible to earn 70% royalty for sales to customers in India.
Promote your book for free to readers worldwide – The newly launched Promotions Manager tool will allow you to directly control the promotion of free books.
Receive instant feedback – Check real-time performance of your books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

Apple also offers a 70% royalty to iPhone/iPad app developers and authors who sell ebooks via its iBookstore store. You can upload your e-book directly to the iBookstore but it’s a bit of a process (see iTunes FAQ).

Getting into the iBookstore is becoming more important as Apple continues to sell millions of iPads.

Conclusion

If you’re targeting a particular niche market then ‘plug’ your ebook on those niche forums. For example, internet marketing ebooks could be ‘pluged’ on forums like the WarriorForum, Digitalpoint, etc.

Finally, once you’ve found a good publisher and promotion channel for your Kindle ebooks, stick with them. Publishing in the same place will maintain your audience, who will buy your offerings over and over again if what you offer is good.