1) I went to
www.kdp.amazon.com and its time to sign in. I click the sign in button and now, after I signed in, I'm at the Bookshelf. Suddenly I'm filled with fear and trepidition. They are Introducing KDP Select, my eyes are flickering all over the screen. What should I do!??? Where should I go!
Just calm down. Calm down and don't worry about it. Instead select, 'add new title' and simply click it.
2) my heart beat slows and I start to calm, then suddenly my screen is filled with boxes that need filling in!!! Once again pretty simple. 1. Enter Your Book Details: now this isn't too hard to understand. There's a title section. In Which you very simply enter the name of your title. For instance the name of my books is 'Admiral Who?', now you can just move on. But wait, asks the paranoid new author, when I go to
http://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Spineward-Sectors-Novel-ebook/dp/B007WQSY44/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336250641&sr=8-1 and look at your book Mr. The Deposed King, I see that your title includes your series title: Admiral Who? (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) [Kindle Edition]! I've found you out, you are trying to decieve me and I shouldn't listen and just put the name of my series in their also, you say triumphantly. (I wag my finger at you.) If you will just look below you will see a box to check, that asks is this book part of a series. If it is, check the box. right below the box it says series title and volume. Simply fill out the information. Since I was a new authors. I put in: A Spineward Sectors Novel: and in the volume area I put 1. For edition I put number one. Because this book has never been out before. Then its time for...? The description. No deception involved, honest.
2) Next to your cover, the description of your book, is your best piece of advertising. You can have up to 4000 characters in your description. Think of this as the back of your electronic paperback. After looking at your cover and clicking the link, this is what I will read before deciding if I'm going to read the free sample of your book. So spice it up and make it count. If you look at my book, you can see what I did. Then just go forth and beg your friends to help you construct something to hook the masses.
3) Book Contributors: now this is a really terrible name. I had the darndest time figuring out what it meant just by looking at it. What this really is, is the name of the Author, Co-Author, and if you're going that route, the Editor. You need to click the button and fill this out. This is where you can put your name, or a pen name or call yourself the Purple Green Dinasaur. But whatever you do, when you go to amazon and look up the author, then whatever you put in here, will be the name they need to use to find your book. You don't have to use your own name. But you can. Just put in whatever you want. For instance I put in the name of my son as the author. Amazon didn't reject it because it wasn't the name on my amazon account. So do whatever you want. Just keep it PG, amazon is against sexually explicit stuff. Pretty obvious to me but anyway there you go anyway.
4) Next are Language (the language you want the book in) there are some drop down boxes. I just put english. Next Publication date: just put the current date. Next Publisher: I left this blank. Next ISBN: I wasn't willing to pay a hundred bucks or more, and so didn't get one. Instead I have an Amazon AISN. Please note if you don't put your ISBN in now, you might have trouble doing so later. Read the FAQ if you have questions, because I didn't do it, I'm not up on the whole what you can and cannot do process.
4) 2. Verify Your Publishing Rights: for everyone here I'm pretty much assuming this is your own unique work, not something you are publishing off the public domain. Just pick, 'This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights.'
5) 3. Target Your Book to Customers: you've got two places here to pick from. Catagories and Keywords. These are for Amazon, to help put you in the right spot to get readers. For catagories (you can only have two) there was a big tree but I ended up selecting: Adventure, Space Opera. For Keywords you can have 7 and I picked: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Sci-Fi, Military Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy, Admiral Who. Please note, I had to play around with that last keyword. When I did a search for my book before I had the title of my book in the keywords, it wouldn't come up on a search. So putting the title of your book in there, or at least some of the first words are key. Otherwise you can only find your book by looking up the author name. So keep this in mind as you figure out what keywords to use. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure I picked the right keywords for my book, this was just pulled out of my hind end. So other than putting the title of your book in there, if you've got a better idea for the other 6, let me in on the secret.
6) 4. Upload Your Book Cover: Okay three things to remember. 1) File Tye: TIFF (.tif/.tiff) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) format
At least 1000 pixels on the longest side, with an ideal height/width ratio of 1.6.
2500 pixels on the longest side is preferred 2) The Kindle file format internally supports JPEG and GIF images of up to 127KB in size. So keep your image sizes down 3) When I uploaded my image of Admiral Who?, it was grainy and blotchy and I was sure it was ruined for my cover. I tried again and again. First letting amazon automatically resize my image, then had my brother manually fix it. Couldn't get the glitchy picture on my bookshelf to fix. But don't worry, I put in anyway, accepted the grainly glitchy surface, yet low and behold when it popped up on the amazon kindle store, it was just as you see it now. I did nothing and in my book shelf, still today it looks glitchy but if you follow the link to my book on amazon, no issues. So take a breath. Amazon isn't perfect, nor is its software. If you've got a bad picture showing up on your bookshelf cover image, just go with it. After 12 hours, they'll have reviewed your book, it will be up on amazon, and you can see if it looks okay then. If it doesn't, simply go back the 'brows for image' tab, click it and upload a new image. SAVE and wait another 12 hours. Rinse and repeat until you've got the image you're looking for.
7) 5. Upload Your Book File: Two parts here. DRM or no DRM (which is encryption for those of us who are clueless) I chose no DRM, being more inclined to the Baen model. If you want it so no one can copy your book. Whatever, its up to you. Just don't start a whole big diatribe against me about how I'm a fool or shouldn't have done it. I know the subject can get a bit hot at times. Keep it off my thread and start your own. I am sharing with you the step by step process as I did it. Make any changes you want, and let us know how it worked out for you. Next Book Content File: Click 'Browse For Book' find the file you want to upload on your computer, select it. Then upload it. They've got an option to preview it, you click and button and so forth. If that's what you want to do, then do it. i'm not going to step by step that part.
when everything on this page is how you want it you either click: save and continue or click: save as a draft. This will take you to page two: 2. Rights & Pricing.
9) 7. Verify Your Publishing Territories (this is literally the next thing you see after Rights and Pricing which is up in the top right corner of the screen): You can pick World Wide or select Individual Territories. I picked world wide so everyone could buy my book. But if you are discriminating against other or various countries for whatever reason, you can go in and manually pick which areas you want your book to show up in.
10) 8. Choose Your Royalty: This parts pretty simple, although they make it look complicated. You can chose to have 35% royalties or 70% royalties. There's some fine print in there. But for an indie author? Pick the 70% royalty and just go with it. The only reason not to pick the 70% royalty option, is because of this. Any book selling for under $2.99, has to automatically take the 35% option. Now I am selling my first book for $0.99 because I want to get it to as many people as possible. So I'm stuck with the 35% for my first book, I don't have a choice. But if you're book is selling for 2.99 and higher I will go for the 70% option and run with it.
Since we're talking about royalties and such. FYI: There's like a penny per MegaBite file size fee, (this is the cost of downloading your book and I do know its not a penny, they've got some calculations there, somebody else look it up and put it there, I just remember what it looked like, just remember also, the transfer fee is a one time cost that comes out of your end) Also unless you're a foreigner Amazon says they'll hold 30% of you're end for taxes. Meaning they take their 30%-65% off the top, charge you a penny for sending the book to your purchaser, then hold out 30% of the remainder for the government. If you are a foreigner, they will attempt to give this to your government for taxes, if your side has anything on the books if not. You need to send them the tax treaty info I think. I'm USA so I didn't really go into that info very far.
Also for getting paid: They hold everything you make for two months. Theoretical Example: In March I make 5 bucks day, so 5x31 = $165, they hold this $165.00 during all of April and I can't touch it, then they hold it for all of May and again I can't touch it, but then on June 1st, my money is now finally available to be withdrawn. They will either send a check to your mailing address or if you add a bank account, they will allow you to withdraw it there, also you have to have at least 10 bucks in your account or they won't send you the money yet got to have over the $10. Please note: this is the info I have from my reading, haven't had my book for sale for 3 months yet. Oh yeah they've got like six different amazon sites. I clicked to sell them on all of them with the auto conversion of my 0.99$ into the equivalent of euros or yen or whatever. So just a, click all the little boxes, unless you're out to stop those europeans or japanesse or whatever from reading your book.
11) 9. Kindle Book Lending: You are coming in on the home stretch now. I allow people to lend my book to other people. They can lend it to a person for 2 weeks, then my book disappears from the computer of the person who was lent the book. I'm not up on everything but hey guys. I just want the exposure, I'm not a house hold staple. The best thing for me is if a million people pirated this book and half a percent felt sorry afterwards and wanted to pay me. It'd be better than the 20+ sales I've got so far my first two weeks.
Then finally you once again verify that you have all the rights to publish your own book. You click the box. then you click the button 'save and publish'.
At last you are done with the ABC's and the 123's. And there is nothing left to do but stress and agonize. Both because you are filled with the irrational fear that Amazon will reject your book for some odd reason you don't have a clue about, or else really you would have fixed it. This fear then combines with a new fear when you go to try and make last minute changes to your book before it hits the shelves. Why? Because while you book is under review by amazon, its locked. You can't get into it and make any changes until the 12 hour review process is done. Click that button frantically, e-mail customer support, there's nothing you can do. After they're done reviewing it, then you can go back and adjust and re-upload and whatever else it is you want to do. I think even trying to delete and unpublish you book takes.... you've got it 12 hours. So after hitting this save and publish button you are committed. Someone out there in Amazon is going to be looking and judging your book. Even if its just with automated software making sure you're not an offensive porn queen or king in disguise, secretly trying to violate amazon policy or as I've heard in some cases, trying to upload someone else's book to make money. So once again take a deep breath and realize you're now committed. All those nifty little changes you want to make. Write them down and go to sleep. You can check in the morning and make all those little fixes then.
Sorry if this is a little bit long here. I know for most casual readers this is pretty deep in the weeds. Also know that for those of you stuck in the mud, I probably missed a few things that have you pulling your hair out. To each and everyone of you I say. I'm Sorry. But as of today. Amazon doesn't have a simple point and click option for publishing your book. This is literally as good as it gets.
One other caveat. If you go with amazon, you agree that your book sells with them, at the lowest price online. Meaning! If you go and sell your book on Smashswords or Barnes and Noble, that's not a problem. However while you can sell your book for more on otehr sites like Smashswords or Barnes and Nobles, Amazon will automatically crawl the internet and if they find your e-book selling for less anywhere else, they will automatically slash your price. Slam bam thank you officer, no review, no mitigation, your only recourse is to find where its selling it for less and raise the price. You're only other choice is to de-publish your book. Also if your book drops below the 2.99 mark, they will also automatically slash your royalties down to 35%.
I have also heard that it can take weeks or months before you can get the amazon price back up, if they cut it down. And that's after you raise all the other options like barnes and noble and smash swords. Why? Because when they crawl the internet, they will still find your lower price in some hidden chache. Be assured their bot crawlers will find those other (now deleted) options and reduce you again, even though you've already changed everything already. Basically you are fried and will be SOL until everything's aged off.
Okay I think I'm finally done. These are all the tips, pointers and advice I can come up with on short notice. Just ready yourself to take the plunge and submit your work of sweat, blood and tears to the Amazon Upload Gods and prepare yourself for a leap of faith! Know in your heart that you too can do this and that your heart is pure. Nothing can stop you!
Always follow the Dream,
The Deposed King
