Quick Self-Publishing Guide

For those of you who have never published for the Kindle before it can be a bit of a pain, so we are going to take a quick look at the process that is involved in publishing your first E-Book.

Formatting

The first thing you will want to do is ensure that your book is properly formatted. Far to often people upload their book to kindle publishing and it results in cropped pages, pointless blank pages, or duplications of text.

You can download this template for Microsoft Word that comes with pre-defined margins and text locations to help you ensure you won’t run into the same issues.

Setting Up Your Account

Once you’ve got your book in order you’ll want to head to the Kindle Direct Publishing Site and either login with your existing Amazon Publishing Account (createspace) or sign-up.

The Dashboard

Once you are logged in you will be presented with your “Bookshelf” which is the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboard you will see a list of your current titles, their status, and various other information.

At this time click “Add New Title” to start the publishing process

Adding a New Title

Section 1: Entering Book Details

In the book details section you first enter your books title (keep it short if possible to make it more kindle friendly).

Edition Number: If this is an edit of the book you will want to change the edition number

Description: This is the description that will be seen in the Kindle Book Store and when your book is pulled up in searches – try and be SEO savvy about it and include your desired keywords

Book Contributors: This is where you would put an author name

The other information is pretty straight forward. For those of you who do not have ISBN’s but would like to use one for broader search purposes I will be covering that in another thread.

Section 2: Verifying Your Publishing Rights

If the work is original you will want to select “This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights.” otherwise select that it is public domain.

While you can sell both public domain and private rights on KDP only the second option will protect your IP rights.

Section 3: Target Your Book To Customers

This section is pretty straight forward, select categories that relate to your books content and select keywords that would be used to find it. (These keywords are not only used in KDP but also passed into Meta-Information for use in Google)

Section 4: Upload Your Book Cover

In this section you have the opportunity to upload your own book cover (if you don’t a place holder sample is used – it’s not terrible but it isn’t favorable)

The requirements for your cover art are as follows:

• Image dimensions of at least 500 by 800 pixels.

• A maximum of 2000 pixels on the longest side is preferred

• Ideal height/width ratio of 1.6

• Save at 72 dots per inch (dpi) for optimal viewing on the web

• RGB color mode

Section 5: Upload Your Book File

Here is where you have the chance to upload your book file. It is best uploaded in .doc (not .docx as that has some transfer issues).

You also have the option to enable DRM or not. Enabling DRM will ensure that only users who have bought or rented your e-book have access to it. If you plan to profit from the sale of the ebook this is the best way to go. If you plan to profit from an affiliate method then do not enable DRM.

Section 7: Verify Your Publishing Territories

This section allows you to declare product availability (where you will sell your ebook) also if you have licensed rights to a product in a single country, region or territory section 7 would allow you to ensure you keep to your contract while using the exposure of KDP

Section 8: Choose Your Royalty

The choose your royalty section is one that confuses a great deal of people. So the best way to break it down is that 35% royalty means you get 35% of EVERY sale and can set your price as low as $0.99.

70% royalty means you get 70% of every sale in UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Spain. The minimum price of your book must also be $2.99

In both royalty situations you are charged for the delivery cost. Which depends on the size and graphics involved in your books.

Section 9: Kindle Lending

The last section is Kindle Lending, it gives you the option to allow buyers to loan their copy of the book to family and friends for up to 14 days. During which time the original buyer can not access the content as it is on loan.

Once again whether you enable this or not is something that depends on your monetization method. If you are monetizing through affiliate methods feel free to enable it. If sales are how you are monetizing then do not enable it.

Publish

You are now finished creating your first e-book and can hit save and publish. It will take roughly 48 hours before the book is published. Now it’s time to start advertising that book!

Quick Self-Publishing Guide