Don’t be impatient, the instructional part is on the latter section of this post. You’ll learn how to format your book for easy upload to KDP, and the things you need to prepare before you do so and hit “Publish”.
Amazon KDP. It’s a platform where you can self-publish your written work. It holds 70% of the market, so most indie authors prefer to publish on this platform. The downside would be the saturation. A lot of authors publish in this platform, so the competition is kinda wild as well. Still, they have more customers than any other platfrom so you might as well try and do your best.
KDP Select. An option. This is not a requirement. You can choose to enroll your book in KDP Select if you desire. No if you don’t want to. This is another way you can earn from your written works. Not guaranteed, though. It allows customers in the platform who have subscribed to Kindle Unlimited to read your book without actually purchasing it. So yeah, it doesn’t show as a sale, but you get a portion of the KU fund, depending on the number of pages that have been read on your books. Some authors found this helpful and a source of extra income. Others, not so much.
My take? It’s a good place to start. If you don’t have the time yet to extensively do marketing, you might want to leave your books on KDP Select. One enrollment only lasts 90 days, which means that particular work (digital format) must only be exclusively available at Amazon for the duration of the enrollment. Once that period expires, you can choose to re-enroll or not. If you decide that you want to provide it somewhere else, you must make sure it’s out of KDP Select.
My personal experience? It didn’t do much for me. Though I did earn a few dollars from it. KU has a huge selection, so… you know, competition. I’m still figuring out what marketing strategy would be good for me. That might take time, considering I’m busy writing these days. As such, I don’t have that much time for marketing yet. My personal plan is to write as much as I can while my brain is still feeling creative, then market as much as I can when writer’s block hit me. Whenever that is.
Kindle Unlimited. It’s the point of view of the readers. A reader subscribed to KU can read any book enrolled in KDP Select. It’s currently at 9.99 USD per month, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve enrolled for two months before cancelling. Only because I didn’t have much time to read as I hoped. I kept on writing instead.
Kindle Create. Most people who wanted to self-publish for the first-time face issues with regards to formatting and uploading their manuscript to KDP without any hassle. Kindle Create is a software by KDP itself which makes it highly compatible with their system. You can check the format of your manuscript on Kindle Create so you can see how it would look like to readers.
Here’s what you need to setup to make that process a breeze. It’s fairly easy, unless you want something more fancy, in which case I can’t help you. I’m a simple person.
I write my manuscript in MS Word. First things first. Formatting. Choose your font style and font size. Whatever you’re comfortable with. It doesn’t matter because KDP have a set of fonts they let readers to select, for their best reading experience. I only choose a certain font that makes my writing comfortable. To each his own. After the font is settled, check the spacing. Make it double-spaced.
Also, select “Add Space After Paragraph” and “Remove Space Before Paragraph”. There is no need to “indent” a new paragraph, by tapping “Tab”. When you want to start a new paragraph, you can simply hit “Enter” after a paragraph.
Why? The automatic formatting in MS Word can mess the formatting. You don’t want MS Word to auto format anything. That’s because the auto format sometimes doesn’t translate to anything when transferred to Kindle Create. It becomes gone.
Also, make sure to use page breaks. After you write your title and author name, page break! After copyright page, page break! DO NOT USE a lot of “Enter” spaces. Page break is what you should use. Please. I beg you. After each chapter, page break! After a certain section, page break!
To be honest, I only learned about page break when I did my first upload to Kindle Create. You’re not alone.
This is the simplest formatting. For text only. Font. Line spacing. Paragraph spacing. Page breaks.
You can italicize, underline, or bolden words. Alignments. Bullets. The normal ones.
If you wish to add photos, you could format the size and alignment in MS Word. But… but… sometimes the photo would not look good in Kindle Create. No worries. While on Kindle Create, you can simply delete the photo that was converted into it, and upload the photo file directly into it.
I feel like doing a video on this for better illustration. I will try to do so.
If you’re manuscript is done on MS Word, complete with everything. Title page. Copyright page. Intro. Body. Outro. Back matter. Then, you can now open your Kindle Create and import the MS Word document. Once imported, check again for the spacing. Sometimes it does change because of certain presets on Kindle Create. If it thinks your manuscript is a novel, there’s a preset. If it thinks you’ve written poems, the spacing is different. You can safely change that. Highlight the body of your manuscript (or any section, really), select spacing, choose how much spacing you want in your manuscript. Normally, I choose 1.25 or 1.50.
Check everything. When it’s to your liking, hit “Save”. Maybe preview your manuscript on a tablet, phone or kindle device. There is a Preview tab. You can select which device you want to view it. If you’re satisfied, you can hit “Publish”.
Yes, I’ll add a video. Maybe later, though.
When you go to your KDP account to start uploading a book, on the part “Upload your manuscript”, you will choose the file generated when you published it on Kindle Create. The file extension is kpf.
How to self-publish your work through Amazon KDP?
Here are the things you need to prepare:
Title
Subtitle, if you want (use it well)
Author name
Book description (I’ve read somewhere that a hundred words is needed for better results. Apparently, there are bots crawling for descriptions and they could put your book on results much better when it has enough keywords on the description. Think SEO.)
Keywords (up to seven, could be phrases that readers search for to find your book)
Publishing date (do you want to publish it now or sometime in the future?)
KDP enrollment (do you want to or not?)
DRM management (yes or no?)
Upload the manuscript
Create or upload a cover
Preview (seems like a required thing to do before you move forward)
Pricing
Lending
Then, you are ready to hit publish.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Book cover.
Most of us can’t hire a designer. So, if you must do it on your own, here be my tips…
Make sure you use photos that are free to use. Best if you have your own. Unsplash.com be where you want to get free stock photos. You don’t need to pay anything. You can edit the photos. You may or may not acknowledge the owner (I still suggest you acknowledge them). I’m not one to talk, ‘coz I tend to forget copying links to their profiles. Sorry. But for photos that appear inside my manuscript, I do make sure to acknowledge them.
As for photos you can get elsewhere, be sure to check for copyright usage. Just because you can copy and save it, doesn’t mean you are free to use it. This be the lesson I learned when I started blogging on niume. Sad that the platform didn’t last long, but I learned a few things. First was photo usage. Copyrights.
If you’re inexperienced, simple is best. I don’t know how to use photoshop.
What can you use to edit the photos? I only use two things. Canva and Kindle Cover Creator. I’m a simple person. With the photo as background, I only add the book title and the author name. I use Canva for that. Save the photo file. At KDP, I use Kindle Cover Creator. I upload the one I created at Canva. Then add the info and photo for the back cover (for paperback).
For e-book format, I simply upload the one I created from Canva. For paperback, I had to go through Cover Creator to add the details for the back cover. You need some info about the author, and the book description or blurb. If you feel like it, a photo of the author. There are templates available and I use the first one. Black be my game.
Next up: How do you sell your works? Let’s discuss that next week.
Thanks. Enjoy reading. Enjoy writing. 💙
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