Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
After using Kindle Create to format your book, it’s time to add it to Amazon. This part is relatively simple, and Amazon does a decent job making the tabs easy to understand. Let’s start submitting your eBook to KDP.
Perhaps the most difficult part of the entire process is deciding on a price to sell your book.
Submitting Your eBook to KDP
I’m going to assume you have a Kindle Direct Publishing account.
From the KDP dashboard, click on the “Kindle eBook” option.
This will bring up three tabs you’ll need to fill out.
Since I don’t have a new eBook ready, I’m going to show you the rest of the setup using my book, A Freelancer’s Tale.
Kindle eBook Details Tab
In the Details tab, you’ll enter the basic information about your book. This includes:
- Language: This is the language you used to write the eBook.
- Book Title and Subtitle: The title of your book will go here. You can add a subtitle if you wish, but it’s optional. You can see an example of a subtitle on the cover of my book.
- Series: If your book is part of a series, you’ll enter that information here.
- Edition Number: If you plan on creating updated editions to an existing book you have published, you can put the edition number of this particular eBook in the space provided.
- Author: Here is where your name, or pen name, would go, or the primary author if you plan on publishing books on behalf of others.
- Contributors: If you have other people helping you write the book, you can put their names in this location. You can add as many as you need.
- Description: This is the summary of your book potential buyers will see when visiting your eBook’s page in Amazon. It’s also used in search.
- Publishing Rights: Do you own the copyright of your book, or is it public domain?
- Keywords: This section is optional, but you can add up to seven keywords that describe your book. This is also used in search as well as ad campaigns.
- Categories: Set the best categories that fit your eBook.
- Age and Grade Range: Choose the ideal age and grade range of your readers. These are optional if you don’t have a preference.
- Pre-Order: You can decide to set the eBook for pre-order if you plan on drumming up some hype before hand.
When you’re done, you can either save it as a draft or save and continue the process.
Kindle eBook Content
The Kindle eBook Content tab is where you manage the files for your book.
The sections in this tab include:
- Manuscript: In this section, decide whether you want to enable Digital Rights Management, or DRM. This is a piracy app that provides a bit of protection from people copying your eBook. You’ll also click the “Upload eBook Manuscript” to upload your file to Amazon.
- Kindle eBook Cover: If you have a cover already for your eBook, upload it here. Otherwise, you can use the Cover Creator to make one. So, if you have an eBook cover from Canva, upload it by using the “Upload a cover you already have (JPG/TIFF only) option.
- Kindle eBook Preview: Here, you can launch the previewer, which is a simulation of a Kindle tablet. You will see what your eBook will look like after submitting and publishing on KDP.
- Kindle eBook ISBN: If you have an ISBN number of your own, you can add it in this section along with the Publisher. However, Kindle eBooks do not require an ISBN.
After entering the information, either save it as a draft or continue.
KDP will spell-check your manuscript when it’s uploaded, which is kind of a nice feature. Though, I don’t know how well it works as I fed my book through several grammatical and spell-checking apps before uploading.
Kindle eBook Pricing
In the Kindle eBook Pricing tab, you control how much you’ll sell your eBook, where you’ll sell it, and/or enroll in KDP Select.
This tab includes:
- KDP Select Enrollment: KDP Select is a proprietary way to market your book. Although there is greater potential for making more money, your eBook becomes exclusive to Amazon. This means you cannot sell it anywhere else while you’re using KDP Select, such as Barnes & Noble.
- Territories: Decide if you want worldwide rights or individual territories where you’re book is available.
- Primary Marketplace: Select the Amazon marketplace you plan on selling the book. For instance, authors in the United States would use Amazon.com. Authors in France would use Amazon.fr, and so forth.
- Price, Royalty, and Distribution: In this section, decide on a royalty plan and set the price of your book. Note that if you want the maximum royalty, 70%, your book needs to be available worldwide. Read the pricing page for more information.
- Book Lending: Buyers of your book can “lend” the copy to friends and family for 14 days. This option is automatically selected and locked if you choose to receive the 70% royalty cut.
- Terms & Conditions: This is essentially Amazon breaking down the ToS for submitting an eBook to the KDP platform. It might be a good idea to read this before publishing.
After entering your information, either save it as a draft or click to publish the eBook.
Amazon says it can take up to 72 hours before the book goes live. In my case, it was ready for purchase inside of four.
KDP Select
Personally, I didn’t enroll in KDP select because I wanted to be able to distribute the eBook to other venues. For example, I want to add it to Barnes & Noble and my own website. With KDP Select, you’re prohibited from doing this.
Although there are plenty of perks to KDP Select, it’s just not something I wanted to do with this first book. Especially since I want to see how the process compares on Barnes & Noble’s website.
However, I plan on enrolling one of my next books in the program just so I can see how well it works.
Submitting the eBook to KDP is the Easy Part
Out of the entire process of self-publishing, submitting the eBook in the KDP platform is perhaps the easiest. Everything else takes far more time, especially once you start getting into marketing the book.
Just remember that adding your book to Amazon doesn’t mean it’ll be an instant success. Don’t get discouraged if your first book only sells a handful of copies. Relish in the fact that you are now a published author.
Work to make your next book even better.
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