How to Publish an Ebook on Amazon: Easy or Not?
Most of the people often wonder how to publish an ebook on Amazon, is it easy or difficult? That is the question.
The answer is both, it can be as easy as falling off a log (without the pain involved) or it can be as difficult as you choose to do it.
In this article, I am going to describe the easy method and the steps that you need to take to get almost any book published in a few days. What I need you to do is follow the steps below and do it!
Before
Before we get into the steps involved, I want us to understand. The reason for writing this article is not for me to achieve fame or fortune (I already have 35 books published on the Amazon Kindle platform that generate a regular income).
The reason
The reason is YOU! You have already shown interest in how to publish an ebook on Amazon, simply by showing up and being here. want you To step forward, ‘bite the bullet’ as they say, let’s not just ‘think’ about it, let’s do it together, right now!
Commitment
So i would like you to commit to completing the following steps and my commitment to you is that you will have a book published on the Kindle platform in record time.
The book you are going to publish
The book you are going to publish will be a very short children’s book. But ‘I don’t want to write a children’s book’, I hear you say, ‘I actually hate children’. (Now, I don’t think for a minute that you hate children, after all, you were one once.)
Why a children’s book
The reason you are going to publish a children’s book on Amazon it’s not because you want to, but because you know that doing so will teach you the following:
1. How easy it is to publish almost any book on the eKindle platform.
2. The simple steps required for the process.
3. How to produce a topping in less than five minutes for peanuts (if there is one).
4. You will unlock that ‘it’s too hard’ barrier in your mind, as long as you follow the steps outlined below.
5. Then you know that without a doubt, if you can publish a simple children’s book, you can publish almost anything you really want.
Back to school
Remember when you went back to school and they made you do all those exercises so you can learn the alphabet? Well, all those little worldly exercises made sense and had a successful result, because you are reading this now.
Think of this as one of those little mundane exercises that you have to do to keep going. Ho-um …
Let’s do it, shall we?
Before you start publishing your book, you will need to open a free KDP account on Amazon, this is where you will upload your finished book. Go to the KDP Amazon website for more information and fill out the application, if you are already an Amazon member, the process will only take a minute.
Step One – Topic
The book you are going to publish will be a short 1800-word children’s story. What will the topic be? Well what are some of the things that you Did you like to do when you were between 6 and 7 years old? I bet you liked a lot of things, spending a day at the beach, going to the zoo, going on a picnic, I think you get the idea.
Step two: title
Let’s choose a title similar to this:
Little Lucy’s Day at the beach or Tommy goes to the zoo
Step three: writing
There are several schools of thought here, when writing a book you can choose to write it yourself (if you are passionate about a topic) or you can choose to hire a subcontractor to do it for you.
‘Shock-Horror’, getting someone else to write a book for me, isn’t there something that feels ‘not right’ about that?
Well, there are many reasons why many, many, many people choose to hire an outside vendor to write their book. They may not be fluent in the English language, they may not have time, etc.
Just remember that hiring a subcontractor is an option. With your children’s book you will write the chapters and about 1800 words will not take long.
Use a program like MS Word or the free equivalent, your book will be in .doc format.
Step Four – Chapters
Your book will have 5 chapters of approximately 360 words per chapter, if you are writing about Little Lucy’s Day at the Beach then it could be like this:
Chapter one Introduction.
You could write about how little Lucy was always looking forward to going to the beach. Her parents took her there almost every weekend, etc., etc.
Chapter Two – Sand Castles
Chapter Three – Lucy Finds a Crab
Chapter Four – Lucy Finds Some Seashells
Chapter Five – Homecoming
Just keep it simple, write roughly 360 words per chapter, that’s roughly three or four paragraphs, comparing it to most short articles that are roughly 600 words in length.
It may only take about twenty minutes per chapter.
Step five: images
You will need at least 5 images for your book. You can use one of these images for the cover. These can be hand-drawn illustrations or just some real-life photos of what your story is about.
Illustrations – You can outsource an artist to do specific illustrations for you, this can cost anywhere from $ 5 to $ 50 per illustration, it depends on who you use. There are many websites that offer this service, just google cheap illustrations. In one of my children’s books I made 5 illustrations for less than $ 45 total.
Photos – This is the fastest method, you can find some really good royalty free photo sites on the internet where you can buy photos for $ 1 each. (recommended method)
Google Photos: you have to be careful hereYes, there are many photos available on Google, but many are not copyright-free, if you choose to use photos from a Google search, before searching, please set the photo and image search settings that you can use commercially. (Google only how to do a safe image search)
Use five images, use one of them for the cover (or a compilation of all if you wish), and insert an image at the beginning or end of each chapter.
Step Six – Cover
Almost done now, this is easy right?
The cover will only take about five minutes, seriously. The easiest way to make a cover is to search the web and find someone who offers access to free e-book covers, more specifically Kindle covers. Although they are few and far between, there are some websites that offer a free membership for aspiring authors and it is possible to get some basic covers to suit your needs.
Step seven: upload your book
Now that you have the following two things, your book cover (.jp image) and your entire book manuscript (with photos already inserted) in .doc format, you are ready to upload your book.
There are several different formats that you can upload your book in, but maintaining it is simple.
All my books have been uploaded as a word.doc file with the images already inside the document and the separate cover file a .jp image.
Now that you have your KDP account, uploading your book is a breeze.
1. Open your Kindle Direct Publishing account, on the first page you will see that it will be blank (unless you have already published a book), you will see the menu at the top of the page and then just below you will see a small box on the left that says ‘+ Create new title’. Left click here and you will be taken to the first of the two pages.
2. On the first page, you will enter the book information, author, title, keywords, and so on. Simply complete what is asked of you.
3. You will then be asked to upload your cover image.
4. Next, you will upload your book file.
5. You will then go to the second page where you can enter the price you would like to charge for your book. (If a book sells for 99 cents, you will earn 30%, if your book sells for 2.99-10.00, you will earn 70%)
6. Just fill out the rest of the form when necessary and you’re done.
The end
That was quite a painless exercise, in fact your teacher didn’t even hit you on the knuckles for not holding your pen properly (like mine did when I was in school). Now that you know how to publish an ebook on Amazon, the world really is there for you.
You just need to find out if you want to write for pleasure, for profit, or for both.