The Amazon Self Publishing Process

 I got asked today about the process for publishing and since I was already planning to write a blog on my experiences, that just stepped up my plans.

Overall, it's a fairly pleasant and quick experience. I was fairly intimidated at first, but then I realized I was over-complicating things (as I do) and went back to basics and things smoothed out immediately. So, rather than let my fellow indie authors also over-complicate things, lets break it down.

First of all, decide if you're going to do Kindle, print or both. Both is best (I mean, you might as well), but you have different tools to work with once you are done with your manuscript. I'll tackle kindle first because it's super quick.

I would 100% recommend downloading Kindle Create. You can get it here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GUGQ4WDZ92F733GC

It was really helpful and it means that you have a Kindle book already formatted with just a few clicks and no squabbling.  Plus you export to the correct file format and then toss it on your upload manuscript area, and you're done. 

Here's what the interface looks like:

On the side, you have any chapters that you have defined using the Heading Styles (in Word and whatever your equivalent is in other word processors), plus front matter and back matter you can add directly into this interface. (don't worry about your cover art-that is handled separately). 

Technically, you could do your entire manuscript directly in this app, but I'm not going to do that. Too used to Word.

When you first put your manuscript in, it's going to run through a check where you can see whether you like the app's changes or not. Personally, I didn't like their table of contents (So I cleared their checkbox and went back to mine). There were one or two other things that I didn't want the app to mess with so I told it no and it was easy about it.

Once you're done, you can go to preview (top right) and see what it looks like and make any changes. When you're happy, hit Generate (or Publish) and the file will be exported to a kindle ready file that you can upload to Kindle Publish later.

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If you want to publish print copies, you have some more work ahead of you. Amazon has very strict formatting rules to ensure that things don't get cut off by the printer. Honestly the best thing to do is set up your document and then save it as a Template or set it all as defaults so you don't have to keep doing this!

First off, Amazon does have a great walkthrough:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202145400

This is the one I used lol. And they accepted the manuscript first time, so it must have worked (Though we'll see when I get a book and see what they might have wrecked behind my back).

The absolutely necessary things:

-Correct margins. If you don't have the correct margins, stuff will get cut off. Amazon won't even let you get past their automated review if you don't have the margins right. Fortunately, you get to be a part of that review, so you can fix things.

My margin settings are:

Pay attention: Multiple pages are set to Mirror Margins (That screwed me up). Top, bottom and inside are set to .75" and Outside is .5" with a Gutter of .13". Yeah, that will make your word doc look funny, but you have to do that. I then set those as default so I never have to much around with them again. (I just put them to Normal when I'm working on anything else)

-Page Size: 6" by 9". 

The margins and paper size go hand-in-hand. If you have a larger or smaller paper size (ie, book), then your margins will have to be changed. Amazon gives you the breakdown for this. Longer books also have different margins (Again, Amazon walk through will give you that information). 

***note unless you have pictures in your book, DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BLEED! Bleed is only for pictures

-Styles: Amazon will tell you exactly how to modify the Heading 1 style for print (Word). Make sure to follow their steps and to save time later, you can make that style the default one for all of your documents by making sure the Add to Styles gallery is checked off. Or, you can make it so it will only be available on templates that you create with that style. Depends on how often you intend to use Style 1 for other things and you don't want it to always be like Amazon's.

Otherwise, it's useful to do the footers and headers for page numbers and name/book title, but the rest of the walkthrough is a lot on images and then the Table of Contents.

Margins and page size and heading styles are the big time sinks. Fortunately, once they are set up, Word at least lets you leave them on those settings forever. 

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Once you have your book formatted, you can then take the whole mess over to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (Despite the name, it's not just Kindle, it does print too). 

Once you are logged in (or registered, but you can log in via your usual Amazon account, assuming you have one), you have three steps to go through.

1. book details. Title, author, language, series information (if relevant), Edition information, other authors, contributors, Description (book blurb), keywords, categories

2. Book content. This is where you upload your manuscript, get your ISBN (Kindle books don't need one and you can get a free one for print from Amazon), cover art (upload or create your own using their stock. Warning, their stock is well, stock. But they're free), make modifications as needed for sizing (cover art), preview the manuscript to make sure nothing will be cut off (This took me a while, but I was making a hash of the margins without realizing it for a while).

3. Figure out where you want to distribute, your royalty percent (in Canada, it goes up to 60%) and pricing. 

Then you can either save your draft if you don't want to publish right away or hit publish!

With Kindle, you can do preorders. With print, you cannot.

The print took about 24 hours to clear their review, though they say to give it up to 72 hours. Kindle usually takes about 4-6 hours, unless you have really minor changes for them to clear in which case it's less than an hour.

Once everything is approved, you can always go back and do things like change pricing, update your manuscript (say you realize you made some typos, lol) and so on. You just cannot change the ISBN or title/author information. 

Other things:

-I'm doing the the Kindle Unlimited because why not. You get royalties from that too, though not as much.

-You can do marketing through Amazon. I have not yet.

Amazon direct publishing is 100% free, but if you want them to do marketing for you, that will cost some money. Everything else is free.

I would recommend sinking some money/favors into a good editor and a good cover artist if possible though. Their cover art is pretty boring, mostly abstract patterns and geometric shapes. And of course, no one on Amazon is editing your work, so that falls on you. 

I would also recommend taking the time to go through Amazon's walkthroughs as well. I spent about an hour formatting my book, but it was well worth it because it went through the first time and I didn't have to make changes after publication (well, hopefully not!)

I hope that helps and we see more indie authors hitting the scene!

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You can order The Curious Case of Prince Charming here

Kindle comes out on February 5. Print is available now!