Publishing Your Book

Now you have your perfectly optimized book for Kindle, the next stage is to upload it for Kindle. Yep, that’s the bit you’ve probably been waiting for!

To get started, you just need to head over to KDP.amazon.com (http://kdp.amazon.com). This stands for ‘Kindle Direct Publishing’ and is where you can upload and manage your different titles.

Now you just need to sign up/log in. You can use your usual Amazon account for this and the great news is that it’s completely free. Amazon will take a commission for the sales of your book but there is no fee for setting up in the first place, which is great news if you don’t have a ton of cash to invest!

Next, you just click ‘Create New Title’

From here, you then enter your title (duh) and a few extra pieces of information, such as:

• the book name
• subtitle
• series title
• volume number
• edition number
• language
• author
• publisher
• contributors
• ISBN (if you’ve purchased one)
• categories
• publishing rights (don’t check that your book is in the public domain or you will waiver your copyright!)

Creating Your Listing and Cover Image for Maximum Sales

Most of this is self-explanatory. Note though that some of these elements are going to have a big impact on how easily discoverable your book is. The description for instance is particularly important for helping people find your book and for maximizing your sales. Make sure to use your key phrases a couple of times (very subtly and only if it reads naturally) and to sell what makes your book such a good buy. Remember, we discussed earlier how mentioning similar titles is no bad thing. Likewise, you’ll recall that focussing on the ‘problem’ that your book solves can help, as can looking at the value proposition – how your book will make someone’s life better. Likewise, you need to carefully choose your category. You can select up to 2 browse categories, meaning your book will come up when people search in those areas.

There are also a few other things to select – such as an age and reading age – but these are optional.

Now move onto the next step, which is to upload and preview your book content. Once you’ve taken a look and you’re happy with the way it looks, you’ll need to confirm your content rights.

This is also the point at which you’ll be adding your cover. This is one of the most important factors when it comes to getting downloads as it’s going to be what people look at along with the title and description when making their decision. This is also how you will stand out when people are browsing through different options. Make sure that your book has a title that looks good in black and white (think high contrast) and choose something that immediately communicates with the readers what your book is about. It needs to look good in color too of course – as people will browse on their Kindle Fires and through their PC browsers.

Again, if you don’t have the necessary skills to create a beautiful, high definition book cover – outsource it!

Pricing and Royalties

Finally, you need to enter your pricing and your royalties. Interestingly, you can choose to select 35% or 70% for your royalties – though the thing to keep in mind is that you can’t choose 70% royalty above a certain price.

Another reason that you may choose the 35% option is that the amount you’ll earn will never change. If Amazon introduces a special offer to promote its books, it will still pay you 35% of the original price you chose. On the other hand, if you opted for the 70% royalty option and Amazon has a special offer running, you’ll only get 70% of the current price at that time.

Choosing your price carefully is an important part of this whole process as it will impact on your turnover and your profit margins. If you’re unsure how to go ahead, Kindle actually offers some support with its KDP Pricing Support service (https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A22DBITFA52H1S). This can help you to identify how changing your price will impact on profits and sales. This takes into account factors such as your category, customer reviews and ratings, the book’s best seller rank, your previous sales as an author, page count etc.

Another strategy is to compare yourself with other books in the same category. How are they priced? Which ones sell best? Ultimately, it’s worth experimenting in this area and bear in mind that you can change your price whenever you like.

Kindle Select

There are more options too for how you want to monetize and distribute your book. You can enroll in Kindle Select for instance, in which case your book will be entered into Kindle Unlimited and will be available for Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. In these cases, you will receive different royalties depending on various factors. As a rule, you’ll be paid a very small amount of money each time someone reads one of your pages. The hope is that this will add up for you over time.

The big restriction? To be eligible for Kindle Direct, your book neds to be exclusive to Amazon and you can’t sell it anywhere else. Conversely, if you become a best seller, you might be chosen for Select without having to agree to exclusivity. If you’re a really big player, you can even negotiate different agreements for Kindle Unlimited, though most people reading this won’t be in that position unfortunately.

If your book is enrolled in Kindle Select you’ll also be more likely to be included in promotions – your book might even be free for a given time period. That might sound damaging (unless you opted for 35% commission) but it’s actually a very good thing as it can increase your downloads, help you get more five star ratings and ultimately improve your position in the Kindle store. This then leads to many more sales subsequently. While there are some downsides to Kindle Select, it’s ultimately going to be worth experimenting with for most people.