Self-Publishing your ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle Store can be fun as well as profitable. It is fun because you can write an ebook simply using Microsoft Word or Open Office and upload in .doc format. No fancy ebook writer is required and if you know the procedure it can be very easy to get your ebooks published with hours. It is profitable because Amazon will promote them for you and you don’t have worry about traffic, SEO, Affiliates etc. You just have to publish once and will be able to sell automatically everywhere on Kindle, iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android phones. It is free and you can get up to 70% royalty.
At this moment you can self-publish you ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle Store using 6 different formats which are Word (.doc, or DOC), ePub (.epub, or EPUB), Plain Text (.txt, or TXT), MobiPocket (.mobi, or MOBI and .prc, or PRC), Zipped HTML (.zip, or ZIP) and Adobe PDF (.pdf, or PDF). Since most of us are familiar with Microsoft Word I will keep my focus on using MS Word.
Self-Publish Your Ebooks On Amazon’s Kindle Store Step 1.
The first step towards publishing your ebooks after you have written them is formatting the ebook using Microsoft Word. Here the simple things that you should keep in mind:
- Since Kindle ebooks can be viewed in different font sizes by readers, the Page Numbers, Font Sizes and Margins you set using MS Word do not apply.
- Remember to insert a page break after the Title Page, Copyright Page, Table Of Contents and End Of Each Chapter, i.e., all of them should start at a new page.
- The Title page should be centered on the top followed by the author name.
- This should be accompanied by Copyright Page (if required) and a Table Of Contents page.
- The Title of each Chapter should be centered. You can use indentations, bold characters, italics and headings to format the ebook. However avoid using bullet points, special fonts, headers, and footers.
- Avoid using to many images. When inserting images (JPEG or .jpg) use the ‘Insert’ (Insert > Picture >) function in MS Word. Don’t use the copy paste function. Images should also be centered.
- Lastly make sure you save the file in .doc format and not DOCX (.docx) format or RTF (.rtf).
For more info check out the Simplified Guide to Building a Kindle Book.
Here is how the Title Page should look like:-
Here is how you should insert Page Breaks and Images:-
Self-Publish Your Ebooks On Amazon’s Kindle Store Step 2.
The next step is to create a cover image. Creating an attractive cover image will certainly help to increase sales. The ebook covers should be minimum 500 px wide (width) and 1280 px long (height). Save at 72 dots per inch (dpi) for optimal viewing on the web. However remember that the Amazon Kindle device has a black and white display. So it will display in black and white but Kindle applications for iPhone, iPad etc. can display color images.
Self-Publish Your Ebooks On Amazon’s Kindle Store Step 3.
The last step is uploading your ebooks on the Kindle Store. This is very simple. Just watch the video below and you will get the hang of it. However there are certain things that you should do before proceeding to this step. Make sure you write a description that is good and convincing. It should highlight the main points of your book. Apart from the professional looking ebook covers, this is the next best thing that will entice the visitor to buy the ebook.
You also do some keyword research, as you will be required to enter some keywords that are related to your ebook. Finding related and profitable keywords should certainly increase your sales.
Here is the video:
Tips And Recourses: Before you upload your ebook on Kindle Store make sure that the formatting and things are ok. You can preview your ebook by download and using Kindle Previewer.
If you want to use and other format other than Microsoft Word DOC (.doc) format be sure to check out Kindle Direct Publishing Help.
