How to Upload a Short Story or Book to Amazon Kindle

How to Self Publish on Kindle in Three Piece of cake Steps

If you've decided to self-publish your novel, volume or short story and then the easiest style is to self publish on Kindle and Amazon'south website using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

I know the idea of cocky-publishing can seem daunting, only it is straightforward really. And it'due south so easy that you'd have to be crazy to pay someone to exercise it for you!

I'm a commercially published writer now, but I empathise the frustrations of trying to break into conventional publishing, because it took me x years to become my big pause. Before I got my publishing deal, I self-published a short story called Veronika, using KDP, with small success – it has been in the Amazon top fifty. Self publishing has the reward of getting your work out there, which can lead to attracting attention and sales.

Then, I've been through the process of self-publishing on Kindle and learnt a few things. Now, I can share my tips, so you don't make the same mistakes!

Why Cocky Publish on Kindle?

Amazon'due south 2 major competitors, Apple and Barnes & Noble, both claim to have gained a twenty+% market share of the eBook market, leaving Amazon with something like sixty%. But surveys of self-published authors take shown that Amazon's share of cocky-published eBook sales is much higher – more like 80-85%.

Whether the accurate figure is 60% or as high as 85%, Amazon is the biggest market place by a long way.

KDP is also easy to utilise, and that makes selling stories on Amazon relatively easy.

Self publish on Kindle: Step 1 – Your Book

Whether you lot want to publish a novel, book or brusk story on Amazon, the process is the same. First you'll need to sign up for Amazon's KDP programme hither.

Then you lot start past clickingAdd a Title. The important options to fill in are:

Book name
Description (up to 4,000 characters – apply it to sell your volume to the reader)
Volume contributors (you as the author)
Categories (whichever genres yous are writing in)
Search keywords (up to 7, add together the themes of the novel, don't duplicate the categories)

We can go out these other items blank/default: Subtitle, Series, Edition Number, Publisher, Language, Publication Date, ISBN.

Verify Your Publishing Rights

As you are self-publishing your own work, then you accept copyright, and can legally sell your story on Amazon, select This is not a public domain work and I concord the necessary publishing rights.

Convert your book to Kindle format

KDP accepts iii main formats:

Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx)
Ebook Formats (Html, Mobi, Epub)
Adobe PDF

Information technology is possible to transport Microsoft Give-and-take and Adobe PDF documents straight to KDP, but the formatting is far from ideal if you lot do.

If you desire a really professional looking book, then you should convert your document to Amazon's Kindle-specific HTML format yourself before uploading. I found the easiest solution was to use Komodo Edit to convert the formatted manuscript into Kindle specific html. Komodo Edit is hither.

But, as nosotros're doing things the piece of cake manner for now, I advise you lot just upload the manuscript and permit Amazon reformat it for Kindle.

Use Kindle Previewer

If y'all take created an HTML format file, then you can utilise Amazon'south Kindle Previewer, a downloadable Kindle emulator, to checkhow your volume will look on diverse types of Kindle . What I plant was that without careful tweaking, my book looked proficient on ane blazon of Kindle but not on others. Kindle Previewer allows y'all to switch betwixt Kindle versions and encounter how the book will look on each blazon.

Kindle Previewer is bachelor here.

Upload Your Volume File

Once you're happy with the format, y'all tin upload the file to KDP. The only option is Digital Rights Management. This is your choice. Choose Enable if you lot want to brand it harder for people to copy your volume, or Do Non Enable if y'all prefer to make your book bachelor without restrictions.

Afterward you lot've uploaded, at that place's an online previewer to check the text still looks right.

Self publish on Kindle: Step 2 – Cover Photograph

There are two options, blueprint your own encompass or use the template-based Cover Creator. I recommend designing your own cover. The book cover is critical to alluring readers, and a template based design is less likely to stand up out from the crowd. The picture above shows what the embrace I designed for Veronika looks similar on the Kindle.

Designing your own cover doesn't take to be hard. At the simplest, you just find a photo, brand information technology the right size and add the book'due south championship and your proper name to information technology. I go over designing a cover in How to make a book embrace.

Detect a Encompass Photo

There are ii options: employ an original photograph or artwork of your own or download 1 from an image library. The cheapest and easiest pick is to utilise your own photograph.

Make the Cover Photo the Right Size and Add the Championship

You'll demand some image editing software to make the cover the right size and to add the title and your name as the author. The gratis and easy to employ image editing programs I recommend are iPiccy and Pixlr.

iPiccy is here and Pixlr is hither.

Use the paradigm editor to ingather the photo then information technology is i,563 ten 2,500 pixels, as in the diagram beneath:

The cover should also exist in colour, despite the fact the virtually mutual Kindles only brandish black and white. This is considering the Kindle Fire and the Kindle app on iPhone, Windows etc. can display color.

Both iPiccy and Pixlr have a variety of gratis to use fonts. Experiment with a few different ones until you discover one you like.

Upload the Cover

This is simply a matter of clicking Scan for Epitome… selecting the cover you lot've designed and so clicking Upload Image.

Design a cover using the Embrace Creator

Alternatively, if yous just want a unproblematic cover, use the Embrace Creator.

Self publish on Kindle: Step three – Rights and Pricing

Verify Your Publishing Territories

SelectWorldwide rights – all territories. Your book will and then appear for sale on all the different Amazon sites around the globe.

Choose Your Royalty

I propose you set your price so that you receive the 70% Royalty – which means a minimum of $2.99 / £1.49 later that information technology's upwardly to you.

You can set prices worldwide automatically, based on the The states Amazon price, or customise your prices for dissimilar territories. It might be worth setting prices manually to exploit psychological cost points similar £ane.99.

Cocky publish on Kindle: Final Step – Publish!

Now simply click Save and Publish.

That's it. In a couple of hours, your book volition be selling on all the Amazon stores around the world.

See – I told you information technology was easy to self publish on Kindle!

Pretty soon perchance your volume will be in the Amazon best-seller chart too!

Extra Step: Publish a paperback too!

You've washed most of the work already, so why not produce a paperback too? Information technology's much more satisfying to hold your book in your hands and it gives you much more than credibility as an author. Also, you tin give your parents a re-create of a paperback!

Amazon'southward Createspace is the easiest way to sell a paperback on Amazon and like KDP it's completely free.

See self publish on Createspace the piece of cake way for my footstep-past-step explanation and tips.

Want to read Veronika?

To read the opening of Veronika for complimentary, click here.

Concord? Disagree?

If y'all'd like to discuss the process of self-publishing novels and short stories on Amazon, please electronic mail me. Otherwise please feel free to share the commodity using the buttons below.