How I Self-Published My Own Book On Amazon
Have you ever wondered how hard or easy it is to self-publish your own book?
You heard of Amazon but never really gave it much thought or explored it as an option. You’re probably still thinking from a traditional standpoint, which is to find a publisher to help you with the process.
Or maybe you thought of doing it on your own but with all the work of printing books and stocking them, you searched for many printeries that can print your book for you.
Well I am here to show you that you do not need any of that, not even a cent or a team to help you publish your own book. I would recommend that if you are not a designer to invest in at least hiring someone to design your cover and pay someone to proof the book for you but other than those two costs you need little to no money to do this.
This is the beauty of the Digital Age, the information age, the age that we live in today. So much is possible with little to no upfront cost and then as the money comes in you can reinvest it and build from there.
This isn’t quite a tutorial but I walk you through my process and I will link to a specific to tutorial for getting started with the KDP platform.
In a nutshell I will cover:
Writing the book
Creating your KDP (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing) Account
Getting Your Book Cover Edited & Formatting
Publishing, Approval and Creating Your Author Page
This book, or workbook I should say came about by pure chance. I had created three workbooks over the summer to support a Branding course I was in the process of creating. A course that would walk solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and small business owners through the branding process and package up all my knowledge on branding that I use with my clients into a workbook.
But then, life happens and that project went on pause. It was only a few weeks ago I realized I have so much material just sitting here, that I am going to take all this work I already made add more material to it and make it a complete branding workbook. Who knew these three workbooks would have today formed three chapters in my workbook today. And that’s how this journey began.
So let’s get to my tips on actually writing the content for my workbook.
Here is my published book “Go From Basic to Branded: The Fundamental Guide to Discovering and Building Your Business for Success” by Cassia Marina
Writing the book
Most people get stuck on the writing part, and this is completely normal so here is my tips for getting started. Open up a document in Google Docs (it’s free) or Microsoft Word if you have that, and just start writing the content. Just start. The hardest part is starting. You can always come back afterwards and reformat, proof and edit. Just get everything out on those digital pages. Once the book is written the rest becomes easier. Oh but before you start writing, write out and brainstorming the outline of your content, this is super helpful for organizing your thoughts on the subject you want to write about.
As for the title you can figure out the title as you go along. Remember the title of your book is like a headline, so look at similar books in your subject area on amazon and do some research on the books that sold the most observe their title and book cover design. These are the two things that market your book. The packaging matters. Because truth be told, we judge a book by it’s cover and how compelling the title is. Think of your title as your headline, it should get people intrigued.
Create your Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Account
KDP is now Amazon’s platform for both publishing eBooks/ Kindle Books and hardcopy printed books. Previously they had a separate platform called Createspace for publishing printed books. The thing and I love and is truly a benefit of publishing your book on Amazon is that you remain the rightful owner, you keep your royalties for yourself and not have to share that with a publisher, no upfront cost, and your books are printed on demand. On demand meaning as needed basis.
When your book gets purchased on Amazon by either you (Author Copies) or by a customer on Amazon’s website, the book is then printed, packaged and shipped to your customer. This also means you do not have to worry about the logistics of fulfillment of orders. You don’t have to organize printing, packaging and shipping. Whew! I just got tired writing all of that. Haha
So go ahead and create your KDP account at the link here. For me I just follow the steps and figure things out as I go through the steps and you can too as it’s pretty straight forward. But if you would like an overview of the steps so you know what to expect you can check out this link here for that. I would most likely follow up this blog post with my own step by step tutorial, so if you are not on my email list you should probably do so to get blog post updates delivered to your inbox. Click here to join the VIP list.
Get Your Book Cover Edited & Formatting
I would recommend getting your book content, you know the content you wrote in Google Docs edited. Simply what I mean is you can hire someone or ask a friend to proofread your book for you. I would recommend paying, when you ask friends they are more than willing but take forever to get back to you and I am all about getting things done and least obstacles I can go through to bringing a creating of mine to life the better.
You can use a sites like Reedsy or UpWork, to get someone online to proof your manuscript for you. Your Document file is called your manuscript. So for me since my book is a workbook I kept it simple. I kept my file format to 8.5 x 11 so you have lots of space to write and it was just simpler to export my google document to a pdf file to create my transcript that I will now uploaded to KDP’s uploader.
Designing Your Book Cover
Not to be bias, I would recommend getting a graphic designer to design your book for you. Packaging you book is super important from a personal branding perspective, business brand perspective and from a making your book appealing perspective. I don’t want you to get stuck on this but I don’t want you to overlook your book cover design.
As a designer, I would have used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to design mine myself but you can use Canva for self design. You can design your cover yourself and have a design friend audit and give you pointers to get you to a final product. But again not everyone has enough design “common-sense” to design an appealing cover for the risk of making your wonderful book look amateur.
Publishing, Approval and Creating Your Author Page
So there you have it in a nutshell, once you have these things, you are now ready to head over to your KDP account, upload your transcript, your book cover, input your ISBN( if you already have one) or Amazon will assign one to you for free, this is the option I went with.
Follow the steps as prompted in KDP, and don’t worry, you can always save as draft if you need to pause or come back and change anything before you hit publish to have your book approved and listed. Also, even after you are listed, you can come back and make changes to your book or listing.
One thing I want you to take away from this blog post is to just get started, start writing, create your KDP account, get familiar with it and get going! A little bit each day will get you further than not having started at all.
I hope you enjoyed this break-down and I always enjoy hearing from you. Definitely leave a comment on the social media post where I shared this blog article, reply to my email or simply leave a comment in the comment section below.