Now that you understand the differences between traditional and self-publishing, I assume you’ve decided to self-publish your book. While there are many platforms and services for self-publishing, I will focus on the two I am most familiar with—Barnes & Noble and Amazon. First, let’s start with how to self-publish with Amazon. While this might be more useful when you are ready to publish with a completed draft and cover art, it doesn’t hurt to understand the process ahead. When we get into formatting for paperback, there are specific steps you can take ahead of time to make it easier.
Create an Amazon Account
Most people in this day and age have an Amazon account. However, I created a separate account using the author email I bought through Wix. It’s a matter of preference if you would rather keep your personal Amazon account separate from your book-writing account. One benefit of keeping them separate has to do with noise in your email inbox. Amazon sends you emails related to royalty payments or other updates (such as letting you know your book has gone live), so it might be nice to have a less cluttered email to see those notifications more easily.
Once you have an account, you sign in at: https://kdp.amazon.com/. It’ll usually default to the KDP of your region (/en_US/, for example, since I am in the US).
Setup your Title
After you’ve logged in, you should see a large button that says “+ Create.” Don’t worry about the different menu items at the top (bookshelf, reports, community, marketing); we’ll get to those later. There’s also an option for Kindle Vella, but that’s if you want to serialize your work. But, again, don’t worry about that for now. Let’s just focus on uploading your first completed book.
Once you click the “+ Create” button, you’ll have a few options:
Kindle eBook
Paperback
Hardcover (Beta)
Series Page
Kindle Vella
We are going to start by setting up our Kindle eBook first.
Setting up a Kindle eBook
There are three basic steps in setting up any book: details, content, and pricing. You’ll start on the details page.
Kindle eBook Details
Here are the different fields you have to fill out:
1. Language: select the appropriate language for your release. There are 41 languages to choose from at the time of this article.
2. Book Title: you have two fields; one for a main title and a subtitle. You’ll probably only use the “book title” field, but if you write more books related to a series, you might use the “subtitle” field. (I am working on a book in the same timeline as my main alternate history series, but I am using the subtitle field to tie it back to the original content more clearly in its title. For example, The Stories of Tom Bombadil: A Lord of the Rings Story).
3. Series: this section has a button labeled “series detail” (you have to fill in the “book title” field first before doing this).
New Series: you’ll be prompted to classify this content as “main content” for the series or “supplemental” (supplemental would be a prequel to a trilogy or longer series, for example)
Existing Series: it will provide you with all the series you’ve previously created so you can easily add them to one.
4. Edition Number: you can skip this. But on a side note, you would only release another edition of something if you’ve made significant changes (like the ending has changed). You can replace the old content if you’re making copy edits and releasing new cover art.
5. Author Name: okay, so are you using a pen name or just your name? And if you are using your name, how do authors represent themselves in your genre (two first initials, then their last name? First name, middle initial, and last name, etc.)? There’s a lot of debate about whether you should have different names if you write for different genres. Go with what makes sense for you. I went with my first and middle initial, then my last name. So in this section, my initials “EA” would be entered into the “first name” field and my last name in the “last name” field.
6. Contributors: this section is for you to enter any contributors to your work, such as a co-author, editor, foreword writer, etc. This information will show up on the details page for your book on Amazon. I have never used this function, but I imagine you should use this if someone contributed heavily to your work or they are a well-known name (a special Foreward by another known author, for example). Otherwise, you can skip this section.
7. Description: this is one if not the essential part of this setup. You have 4000 characters or less to describe what your book’s about clearly. But more than that, you are trying to sell your story, build excitement, and entice potential buyers to click the purchase button.
I recommend looking at how other authors do it in your genre. Spend some time working on it. Don’t rush it. A good way to think about it is sort of like a movie trailer but in text form. You should provide enough for them to understand what the story will be about but don’t give them everything. You want to tease the story and leave them excited to read it.
8. Publishing Rights: you have two options: you own it or offer it in the public domain. The vast majority of self-publishers will want to select the first option: I own the copyright and hold the necessary publishing rights.
9. Keywords: along with the book description, this section is critical and can impact your sales. You have seven fields for keywords to describe your book. KDP has guidelines for keywords (see resources at the end). Kindleprenuer offers another good resource that I’ll share as well. Do not grab the first keywords that come to mind. Take the time to do a little research to select the best ones for your book.
10. Categories: yet again, another section that you need to pay attention to. Selecting the correct categories for your book will determine where your book shows and with what other books are in that genre. It’ll also determine how easy it will be for your book to become a bestseller in a genre. Kindelreprnuer has good advice, which I’ll link out at the end.
Don’t rush this part, either. Do your research to make sure you get it right. My first books were not categorized correctly, and I had to go back and manually request Amazon to place my books (there are more categories than what Amazon lists for you to select from, so you’ll probably have to do this as well to be placed in one of 16K+ categories Amazon offers).
11. Age and Grade Range: this is an optional field. I don’t use it, but if you are writing in a specific age-defined genre, this can be useful to fill out.
12. Pre-order: you can either make your book available immediately or pre-order. I intend to make my next book available for pre-order (since I have a small following now). If you don’t have a following, you should just get your books up until you build an audience through a newsletter (more on that in future blogs).
Kindle eBook Content
Alright, that was a lot. But luckily, you are pretty much out of the woods now. The next two sections are not nearly as labor-intensive. In this section, you’ll need to complete the following:
1. Manuscript: here, you’ll upload your completed manuscript. For eBooks, I use Amazon’s proprietary software, Kindle Create, to make an eBook version of my book. It exports as its own file type (.kpf), but you can also upload your manuscript as an EPUB (I have only had one person ask me for this file type) or a docx file. I conformed to what Amazon offers since I am only publishing on Amazon. But you’ll have to make that choice.
Spell Check: the system will flag possible spellcheck errors as an additional layer of proofreading that can help catch anything last minute. Mostly I have found it flags stylistic choices I have made.
Add Digital Rights Management: you’ll notice a checkbox in this section. It basically determines if readers can freely share your work. In other words, it inhibits the unauthorized distribution of the Kindle file. I personally leave this unchecked because I care more about having as many readers as possible. But BEWARE. If you decide to check it, you cannot undo this after publishing if you change your mind.
2. Kindle eBook Cover: next, you’ll need to upload your cover. You only need the front cover of your title for the eBook, but you’ll need the complete spread for paperbacks. Amazon only allows for JPG and TIFF file types. I uploaded my designed covers as a JPG.
3. Kindle eBook Preview: after the platform has completed uploading these two files, you’ll need to ensure everything looks correct. You can preview your eBook to ensure things start and finish as they should.
4. Kindle eBook ISBN: all of my Kindle eBooks do not have an ISBN. I only use this function for my paperback books. You can skip this step. Your eBook will receive an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) number anyway.
Kindle eBook Content
You’re almost there. In this final step, you’ll determine distribution and pricing. Here are the fields you need to complete:
1. KDP Select Enrollment: I discussed this in a previous blog. If you sell exclusively on Amazon, I would enroll your book into this offering. It allows your books to reach more readers and earn more revenue based on pages read, but you must keep your eBook exclusively on Amazon.
2. Territories: unless there’s some reason why you can’t sell the book in certain regions, you should select the “Worldwide” option versus “Individual Territories.”
3. Primary Marketplace: all this determines is to set the prices for your books based on the currency of your region. Most people select Amazon.com (the US market) because that’s the largest market. You can always adjust pricing for specific regions anyway.
4. Pricing, royalty, and distribution: at this section's top, you must determine your royalty percentage. You have two options: 35% or 70%. Most will want to take the higher royalty, but there’s a catch. Your book has to be priced at $2.99 or higher. If this is a one-off book, you’ll probably price it higher. But a common strategy for a series of books is to price the first one lower than the rest (mine is priced at $.99). The idea is that the lower price makes the barrier to entry for the consumer lower. If they like your story, they’ll be willing to pay the higher price for the next books.
What exactly is that higher price then in either case? Look at what other top books in your genre or related genres are going for. My advice is not to sell yourself too short. It takes A LOT of work to write a good book. But you don’t want to be on the pricier side for your genre, especially if you haven’t built an audience and name for your work. For my other eBooks, I have priced them at $4.99. Paperbacks are a different story, which we’ll get into next.
Setting up a Paperback Book on Amazon KDP
To self-publish your paperback book on Amazon, the process is almost the same as for an eBook, with some special caveats. Here are the differences in each section:
Paperback Book Details
You’ll find a section called “Adult Content” with an option to say “Yes” or “No” if the content is inappropriate for children under the age of 18. Unless you’re writing in Erotica or some genre with highly explicit content, you should select “No” (even for those genres, you might want to double-check what other authors say on this topic). For example, my book doesn’t have sexual situations, but there’s violence and cursing. I put a disclaimer in my book description shown on Amazon to ensure buyers know this upfront. My understanding is that if you say “Yes,” it’ll have a negative impact on your book showing to buyers.
Paperback Content
Three new sections will appear before the “Manuscript” field:
1. Print ISBN: Amazon will generate an ISBN for you. You should add this to the front material of your book along with the copyright boilerplate.
2. Publication Date: leave this blank unless you’ve previously published this book—this, I imagine, is for edition releases.
3. Print Options:
Ink and Paper Type: Amazon supports the following—black and white interior with cream paper or white paper, standard color interior with white paper, and premium color with white paper.
Most fiction uses cream color, but my recent book had a blue and white cover, so the white paper matched better. It’s a personal preference, but the cream is easier for the eyes. As for the other options, those would be for books with many colored photos or illustrations. I can’t speak to those since I haven’t used them, but a fellow author had better luck using Barnes & Noble's service for that type of book in terms of quality.
Trim Size: this is why formatting is so important. When you reach this step, your manuscript must have been formatted to the trim size you want. Amazon guides formatting the internal components of the book for the different trim sizes. I personally used 6x9 for my trilogy and a slightly bigger size for my prequel to differentiate. Whatever you decide, and you’ve formatted it that way in your word processor, it will be easier to write future books because you can write your drafts with the text formatted correctly.
Bleed Settings: you’ll most likely select No Bleed, but if you include images (for me, I have maps at the front of my book), I chose Bleed to make sure they don’t get cut off in the printing.
4. Manuscript: there’s no difference here except for file type. I use PDF since that’s what Amazon recommends.
5. Book Cover: in addition to the guidelines Amazon provides for formatting, they also can help you determine the dimensions for your cover spread (more pages mean a bigger spine). You’ll need a front, spine, and back cover (called a spread) created. I talked about this in the previous blog, but if you don’t do it yourself, you’ll need to look at what cover designs look like in your genre, find an artist that does covers or has a style that works, then coach them on what you’re looking for. If you want a back description, you must write it and provide it to the designer. Look at books in the genre to see how they do back descriptions for reference. Amazon currently only accepts PDFs for book spreads.
6. Book Review: just like with your eBook, you’ll need to review how it will be printed. The system will call out of something doesn’t work (such as the size of your cover for the trim you have selected). This gave me a lot of headaches, but if you use the resources, I share at the end of this, it will make things smoother for you.
Paperback Rights & Pricing
The only real difference here is pricing and the ability to request proof to ensure everything looks correct before it goes live. Again, you’ll want to look at what paperbacks in your genre are going for. Remember that well-known authors can charge more of a premium for their books, so be mindful of who and what you’re looking at for reference.
All of my paperback books are priced at $11.99. That was a personal choice based on the average price paperbacks authors in my genre were selling versus their eBooks. You want to be competitive but don’t want to discount your work too much, even if you are a new author.
Click Publish
And that’s it. Amazon takes up to 72 hours to process your book. If you did everything correctly, it should publish without any problems. Congratulations, you’re a self-published author now! But the journey has only begun. Even after all of the writing, editing, and preparing, I would say the most challenging part is the work you must put in after (which I intend to cover in future articles). Next time, I’ll talk about some other publishing platforms, including Barnes & Noble Press.
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