The largest online eBook retailer, Amazon, provides publishers a platform to publish their eBook by means of the Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) program. This Penlighten article has more on how to publish your own eBook on Amazon Kindle.
Delivery Cost of eBook
Amazon calculates the delivery cost of an eBook on the basis of the size of file, which contains the book that you have uploaded. The minimum delivery cost, irrespective of the file size, is $0.01.
Getting a publisher for a book is quite difficult for a writer, and more so for a new entrant in the literary world. For those who wish to self-publish their eBooks, Amazon provides a great platform to get recognition and also to sell books. Publishing an eBook for Kindle eReaders is one of the easiest ways to get recognized as a writer.
Apart from writers, online marketers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs, can benefit from publishing their eBooks on Amazon Kindle. They can reach out to their potential customers (readers) through this platform. The use of eReaders is growing; in the year 2011 – 2012, the sale of eReaders doubled. Therefore, one can think of tapping a big market through Amazon’s Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP). You need to have an Amazon account to proceed with the process of publishing an eBook.
Publishing Your eBook on Amazon Kindle
The process to be followed for publishing an eBook for Amazon Kindle is presented below. Along with the necessary steps to followed, there are certain things a writer should take into account before publishing a book on Kindle.
Creating a table of contents is a must to make it easier for readers to navigate the chapters in your book. The Lead-in Emphasis feature of Microsoft Word can be used to create the Table of Contents. With this feature, you can mark a portion of text in a paragraph and include it in the Table of Contents.
File formats like .doc, .docx, .rtf, .pdf, .epub, .txt, .zip, .mobi, ‘.txt’, ‘.pdf’, ‘.htm’ and .prc are accepted by Amazon and can be uploaded. However, Amazon recommends the use of Microsoft Word, i.e. a .doc file to create content. The .doc should then be converted to ‘.mobi’ before uploading. If you are using the Microsoft Word application, save your file in the ‘.doc’ format, and avoid using the ‘.rtf’ or ‘.docx’ formats.
Don’t use fancy fonts to format the text in your book. As far as possible, avoid using headers, footers, and bullets. Also, you should place images at the center of the pages.
Your book should not appear as if it is one big chapter. To start every new chapter on a new page, insert a hard page break. The Ctrl + Entercombination of keys can be used to insert a hard page break, where ever necessary.
If you are not good at HTML formatting, it is better to hire a professional to do the formatting work. Designing the cover page of the book is one of the most important part of book publishing. A book with an attractive cover would obviously help increase its sales.
Before publishing your eBook, you’ll have to preview it with a program called Kindle Previewer. Along with this Kindle Previewer, you’ll need KindleGen. The KindleGen program changes the format of the file to be uploaded to ‘.mobi’.
The eBook to be published can uploaded through the Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) program. The ‘.mobi’, ‘.doc’ and ‘.prc’ formats are commonly used to upload eBooks. Some of the other formats that are accepted include ‘.docx’, ‘.rtf’, ‘.pdf’, ‘.epub’, ‘.txt’, ‘.zip’, ‘.txt’, ‘.pdf’, and ‘.htm’.
eBooks published through the KDP program are given a 10-digit number called the Amazon Standard Identification Number (AISN). Therefore, the eBook won’t have an ISBN number.
An author can receive either 35% or 70% royalty from the sales of an eBook. Amazon offers 70% royalty to self-publishing authors on eBooks, provided the following conditions are met: the book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and the book’s list price is lower than 20% the lowest list price of the physical book.
eBooks published for the Amazon Kindle can be read by users of Windows PC, Mac, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows 7 phones, and also Android. Users of these systems can access eBooks by downloading the free Kindle app. Therefore, you can rest assured that your eBook would enjoy a wide reach, and not just be limited to Kindle users. Today, the Amazon Kindle eReader is the biggest platform where authors can reach out to their readers. Make the most of it!
