After a year of social distancing and working from home, you might have found yourself starting a new hobby or picking up an old one, like writing! Pandemic times have given plenty of opportunities to inspire a book or two, you might be wondering how you can get your book from your laptop to your readers. It’s certainly a different world, it’s not all bad either because you can get your eBook published in just a few steps through Amazon Direct Kindle Publishing.
Anne Marie Concepcion, the instructor for the LinkedIn Learning course “eBook Foundations” course, takes you through all the basics for eBook publishing. She gives a pretty good reason to get your book published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Kindle eBooks make up 70-80% of all eBook sales. Not only is this a simple way to self-publish your eBook, but it also gets you into the largest market for selling and distributing.
Since you’ve already done the hard part, I’ll cover the 5 easy steps to get your eBook published on KDP. If you are still working on the first part, you can check out “The Write Life” to find an encyclopedia of information through their blog. They are a great writing resource covering every topic from writing craft to self-publishing and everything in between.
Why Kindle
When it comes to self-publishing an eBook there are a few options to choose from where you can publish, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has a ton of benefits for you as the author and publisher. Not only do you get access to the largest market by making your eBook available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers (and Kindle users) they also have a step-by-step guide on everything you need to know to get the most out of their publishing platform. With any good thing, there is always a cost however, it’s free to create an account and get your eBook published, you will still need to pay a bit on the backend. KDP has a Royalty cost for each sale of your digital book, you find the break-down at their “Digital Pricing Page“.
5-Steps to get your eBook on Kindle Direct Publishing
While I have not yet self-published an eBook (or written a book), Leah Campbell has, and she has an in-depth guide to getting published on Amazing self-publishing. She has been in the business of writing and publishing for years, Campbell is a contributing author to The Write Life blog where you can find her article, “Get Your Book on Kindle: Everything You Need To Know About Amazon Self-Publishing“, with all the details about publishing with KDP. I’ll overview the steps she laid out in a quick summary guide for you to get started with self-publishing your eBook.
1. Convert your eBook format: Formatting your eBook is necessary to get your book published on KDP, the process is simple to get your file from an EPUB to a Kindle Mobi. The reflowable format allows the eBook to be read on any device, this also makes it more accessible to more people. Amazon KDP makes this process even easier by giving you a how-to guide along with an instructional video for using Kindle Create. Once you have your eBook formatted to a reflowable Kindle Mobi. You can move to the next step.
Editor’s note: “KDP supported formats update“- “After June 28, 2021, we will no longer support MOBI files when publishing new or updating previously published reflowable eBooks. Instead, use EPUB, DOCX, or KPF formats. MOBI files are still accepted for fixed-layout eBooks.”
2. Get your KDP account: Campbell mentions this is an important step to do if you want to get paid. If you are already an Amazon user or have an account, you can sign in with your Amazon credentials from the KDP registration page. If not, you can register by email. The getting paid part comes when you fill out your author and publisher details in the account set-up process. Now you are ready to get your eBook into the KDP collection.
3. Add Your eBook details – Publishing Rights: Next, you will be adding all your book details from cover to cover. These include what language you’d like to have your eBook published in, your title, description, who you want to read your book, and your publishing rights. It’s good to know what those are and how to get one. Copyright laws are for your protection so obtaining a copyright for your eBook is an important step because it will prevent any question of your original work. For some, it might not be an option that is available to them yet and have gone a more penny pinching savvy route, the best way to get your copyrights is by registering it through “copyright.gov“, Campbell says the fee is $85, that is a small price to pay for the peace of mind of protecting your work.
4. Upload your eBook Files: In Campbell’s article, she mentions Digital Rights Management (DRM) which is a program you can opt-in for added protection of your digital literary work. Another benefit of KDP is getting a free ISBN for your eBook, it’s not required for digital books, but it is one less cost to you as the author and publisher. After you have uploaded your files and previewed the content, you can get started thinking about how much to get paid for your masterpiece.
5. Price Your eBook: Your book is ready for Amazon KDP, but first, you’ll need to figure out how to price your eBook. Luckily KDP offers a detailed pricing sheet based on their royalty plans. Through this resource, you can get all the Price Support you need to calculate how much to sell your book.
It might take you a year to write your eBook, but getting it published with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing won’t. These 5 steps are a quick reference to get you to the largest audience of readers. You can get more expert knowledge from Leah Campbell’s article, “Get Your Book on Kindle: Everything You Need To Know About Amazon Self-Publishing“, and be well on your way to becoming a self-published author.
This chapter is a revised version of a blog post titled “ 5 Steps to get your eBook published on Kindle” on Mau Does Web Publishing.
