Publishing on the Kindle...

Welcome to another Writing 101 Monday!

Yep, I think I'll use Mondays to discuss the writing profession, and techniques, and the industry. (At least the little part I've seen of it. I'm still learning the ropes myself.)

So, a forum friend from Spacebattles wanted to know how the publishing process goes, if you go through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). There's some pretty good guides on the subject, but I can tell you how it went for me...

In a word? Easy. Here, let me give you an overview:

Basically, the first step is to head over to KDP.amazon.com, and sign up for an account. If you're in the US, this usually entails giving them your tax information. That's not a big problem, but it can cause a day or so delay as they check it and make sure it's on the line. You'll also need to supply information depending on how you want to receive royalties. If you want your royalties sent to an account, you'll need to provide account information, that sort of thing.

The next thing you'll need to do is format your manuscript so that the Kindle upload tool can convert it into a .mobi file. There are free e-books that tell you how to do this... though do note that if you're not using MS Word, you may have to adjust a bit. I use Openoffice, so I went and got a 99 cent ebook from Aaron Shepard on the subject. It walked me through the basics, and I'm glad I got it.

Once you've got the manuscript formatted and finished, I recommend using Caliber or some other method of file conversion to turn the file into a .mobi. Then try reading it with your Kindle, or Kindle emulator. Go through each page, and make sure your formatting is okay. Trust me, this will save a lot of fussing later.

You'll also need cover art. Go buy some, or draw it. If you buy it, make sure you have signed rights to use it for a cover. Trust me, you don't want this coming back on you later.

Then, once the manuscript is ready and you have your cover art handy, go into KDP and start a new project. There are a lot of fields to fill out, and the guides will step you through them. The most important ones, and the ones you should think about carefully, are as follows;

Description: This is the blurb that comes up when someone will look up your ebook on Amazon. Think of it as back-cover information, or inside-cover information. Make sure it's a good summary of your book, because if it's bad, it WILL hurt you.

Categories: These are basically genres. You get to choose two of them. Choose wisely! If you put your book in the wrong genre, then people may be upset when it's not what they wanted.

Keywords: This is the tricky part. Think of these as search engine bait. If people search Amazon for "superhero", and your book has the keyword superhero, then it'll come up. You get seven of them. They can be phrases.... Dire:Born has "strong female protagonist", for example. You don't have to use all the keyword slots, but the more you use, the more you'll appear to searching customers.

There are other fields, but they're mostly self-explanatory. You can look them up in guides, or with a good google search.

During the process, you'll be asked to upload your manuscript. Now, sometimes this takes a few tries... don't be discouraged if it errors out for no reason you can see. Save your current info, log out, close the browser, log back in and try again.

Once you've uploaded the manuscript, use the previewer tool to check it over. Now sometimes this tool errors out as well... this is why I recommend checking it via file conversion earlier in the process. (Remember that part? Cool.)

After that, it's mostly done. Ah, you'll have to choose royalties. Without getting complicated, basically if your e-book is between 2.99 and 9.99, you can choose 70% royalties. Any less or more, and you're limited to 35% royalties. So it goes.

And you'll need to choose whether or not you want to put it into Kindle Select. I could write dozens of posts about this, but... basically, unless you really want to sell through other online channels, it's a good idea. At least it is right now, the ebook industry is volatile, and if you're reading this five years later, I can't promise that it'll be as good an idea as it is right now.

With me so far? Cool. Alright, so once you've filled all the fields, uploaded your cover art and manuscript, and checked everything over to make sure it's good, then it's time to publish. PUSH THE BUTTON, FRANK!

Now go do something else. It doesn't instantly put your stuff in Amazon, there's folks who are going to go check it first to make sure it doesn't break their TOS. (That's Terms of Service, by the way.)

Generally it'll show up a few hours to a day afterward, with some variance.

Congratulations! You're now a published author! It's that easy.

After that, comes the tough job... marketing.

But I'll leave that for another week. Be well, friends!