Amazon Bookstore: How to Publish Your eBook or Short Story?

Publishing your book on the world's largest online bookstore really does not require much effort, and it can bring multiple benefits. Frankly, when it comes to the e-books market, I have not encountered any other sales channel that can outmatch the Amazon. The fact that their Kindle device is one of the most popular of this type and their entire publishing concept is made for independent writers - clearly shows the importance of the changes that this company has made in the global publishing industry.

WHY DO I WRITE ABOUT THIS?

In order to share my experiences with people who write on Steemit, I started a series of texts that talk about the possibilities of completely free translation and publication of books on foreign markets through specialized online platforms. Most of these platforms require that you include the amazon link to the book you are offering for the translation. Of course, this is only mandatory if the book language is English, or other language that is covered by Amazon's publishing policy.

@arthur.grafo pointed out in the comments on my post HOW TO TRANSLATE AND PUBLISH A BOOK ON A FOREIGN MARKET WITHOUT ANY COST (PART ONE) that this request could be confusing for people who did not have experience with this kind of publication procedure outside of Steemit. And once again I thank him for suggesting this, because he is absolutely right.

So, if your book is written in one of the following languages, you will need to publish it on Amazon before you offered it to translation platforms like Babelcube and others that will be discussed in future.

IS THAT A PROBLEM?

Of course it is not. There is a simple logic behind the requirement for link to the Amazon book page. Today, we can meet various people on the Internet, some of them are honest and good, but we can always meet plagiarists as well as those whose books simply do not deserve to be published. Platforms just want to make sure that the book you offer is already published in the world's most famous online bookstore (which significantly reduces the chance of plagiarism), as well as allowing its potential translators to get more info and some insights about book reception.

Since this is an extremely easy procedure, it does not cost you anything and can only benefit you. Amazon offers revenue share option to all authors, and you can learn more about it here

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200644210

What is certain is that your book will have its own place in their store. How successful it will be depends on its quality and marketing that you will do.

Let's get to the point now. At the beginning, you need to register at the Kindle Direct Publishing website

https: //kdp.amazon.com

If you have an amazon account created, you can access the service with these data.

The next option will be your "Bookshelf" where you can add your first books to be published. As you can see in the picture, there is a choice of a Paperback or eBook edition. In this tutorial I will only talk about the eBook option.

After you have selected the eBook, a window will open. Here you enter everything that can be relevant to your book- title, language, keywords by which Amazon will categorize it, etc. On the following pictures are examples of what you can expect.

It is mandatory to verify that you are the copyright owner, and to carefully choose the keywords for your book. Just like when you write a blog text on Steemit, make sure that they are the most relevant.

Once this is done, in the next window you will have the opportunity to add a file with your book. This is an option which requires upload. Make sure you submit the final version. The platform has its own check system, so it will let you know if there are any spelling mistakes - as can be seen on the example below.

It is very important that your book gets a high quality cover. It will play an important role in attracting the initial attention of the readers. The Kindle Direct Publishing platform offers the Cover Creator to help you create yours. I never liked this service for some reason, so I prefer to use the Canva cover maker, which is also free and has a large selection of predefined templates.

Link to site: https://www.canva.com/create/book-covers/

After you've created and delivered the cover, you can activate the online previewer and see how your book will look on the readers. If corrections need to be made, this is the right moment.

Finally, we come to the end. In the last step, determine the price, the market, and the way you will share your earnings with the company. It's always a good idea to do a little research and get acquainted with the prices of books that are similar to yours - both by volume and by genre, but be sure to be objective and evaluate your own reputation too.

As you can see, in my case it was a short story, so I gave it a minimum price of $ 0.99.

And that is all. After completing this step, your book will soon be available on the bookstore website :-)

Later you can check the reports and see how your book is performing, and never forget the importance of active advertising and spreading the word about your book. These sites are huge, and nobody will do the promotion for you. So the trick is to generate initial attention, and let the first reviewers and other word spreading methods do the magic ;-)

If you liked this post, please upvote it or resteem. –and if you have any questions, I will answer them gladly. Thank you!