Alright, let's just start this off by coming clean and saying that I just published my first book on Amazon Kindle, and I'm pretty jazzed about it. Most of you, my loyal readers, are way more likely to check out a chapter of Wattpad 101, then a post I make on my message boards. I've attached it as the link for this chapter, so if you have $2.99 and any interest in supporting me or my work, I'd highly recommend you get it. It's based off of Hawtness, the book I did have up for free on Wattpad. Although if you noticed, it hasn't been up the last few days and I'm not sure if I'm going to leave the web novel up or not now that I'm trying to monetize it.
That said, if you have any interest in the field of self-publicizing, particularly through Amazon's Kindle store, either with the intention of making a buck or with the desire to just distribute your words for free to drive up a fanbase... then here are a couple of things I've learned about the process.
You Need To Create Manuscript!
If you're like me, then you have less of a Manuscript and more a collection of scribbles on various documents. Personally, each chapter of my book gets its own file. It makes editing, finding files, and protecting my work much, much easier. However, at some point, you're going to need to turn that word vomit into an actual manuscript.
It's going to be one document, and that one document is going to have every chapter of your book in it. How long should that book be? That's a hard question to ask. I've seen writers going as short as 10,000-word "books", and they can also go as high as 300,000 words depending on what you want to write. You can look at my chapter "How Long Should My Chapter Be?" if you want more of a breakdown on chapter lengths.
For me, I cut up Hawtness, which was a rather long, disorganized book exceeding 150,000 words, and delivered a 45,000-word novel detailing the first major arc and climax of the book. The way I see it, at $2.99 a book, by the time I sold the entire word count of Hawtness, it'd come to the ~$8.99 price of a standard normal novel.
However, I'm getting ahead of myself here, because when creating a manuscript, your pricing scheme really shouldn't be the thing on your mind. Instead, you should be thinking about other things. For example, the start of every chapter should have the chapter title. How else are you going to separate those chapters? Secondly, the chapters should have a page break at the end of every chapter. This forces the next chapter to start on the next page. This also means that when you return to the chapter and write more, it won't cause every chapter after it to be off center.
You need to create a book cover, but as a Wattpader, that shouldn't be foreign to you. Just be extra careful that the book cover you make doesn't use images that you can't legally use. That book cover does NOT need to end up in the manuscript, by the way. You kind of just have to trust it, but the final manuscript will have the book cover in it once it is generated.
However, it's a good idea to have a title page in the manuscript. The title page will just restate the name of the author and title of the book. It's a good idea to do this, trust me. It makes sure the name of your book is actually found within the text of your book, and it makes sure it's legible for everyone, you know, like people who use text-to-speech because they are blind?
The next page should be your copyright page. Unlike Wattpad, where copyright is a click away, you will need to have a page claiming copyright. It's just good practice.
Copyright © 2018 by Dorian T. Chase
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Released in the United States of America
Launched, 2018
Centerville, Oh 45458
Wattpad.com/elementalcobalt
Elementalcobalt.Wordpress.com
That's the wording I used. Officially, in the United States, this is sufficient. By all accounts, simply publishing your work implies copyright. The point of the copyright page is to provide people who have to deal with copyright (like a book reviewer) the information needed. That information SHOULD include a way to contact you.
How do they contact you? Do NOT give them your home address. Do NOT give them your phone number. I left my email (Omitted from the text above), but it isn't my main email, but one I created exactly for this purpose. A PO box wouldn't be a bad idea either if you're very serious about continuing on with self-publishing your work.
Any way you look at it... title page, copyright page, all of your writing properly page broke equals your manuscript.
Convert To a Proper File
Word documents just don't look like books. Books do all these fancy things. The chapter titles look big and cool. The page sizes are smaller. The first word in the first paragraph of each chapter usually is a giant fancy letter to start off your reading. It all just looks refined.
Now, you can pick your favorite book and you can make your word documents do that. It's perfectly possible to shrink the page sizes, create a title on the first page after each page break, even do the fancy lettering. You can make your book look like or close to the books you see already published. Do it... and then save your final publication as a pdf. Make sure to keep a doc copy for future edits.
However, if that sounds too much like a pain, Amazon has already released an App just for you. The Amazon Kindle Create will convert your word document into a novel. You can then do the changes you want, and seemingly with the click of a few buttons you can assign chapters, change fonts, and do other "novel-like" adjustments with ease.
I have to say, I found the program to be a buggy pain in the arse. However, Kindle Create probably isn't the only novel converter software, so I recommend you look around and find one you like. Remember, you can do it with Word, or you can do with some other software. Upon publishing Kindle Create you end up with some kind of obscure format that only works for uploading the novel to Kindle. Any other programs you use, I recommend the output you're looking for should be pdf. Pdf will give you what you want to see.
Make Sure the Novel is Polished
This should come without saying, but as a general rule, your novel should be pretty darned polished. And, as much as it might pain you, it needs to be polished as a novel, not as a chapter. So, it doesn't matter that you've been through each individual chapter a dozen times. The story isn't going to be read as a bunch of stand-alone chapters. The story is going to be read as a book.
That means you need to read that book from beginning to end. You need to take the whole story you're telling and be able to edit it as a whole. There shouldn't be a single squiggly line under any word when you're done. Even if you disagree with some of the things Microsoft Word has a problem with, you should then right-click and hit ignore. The document should be absolutely cleaned and every potential problem checked.
Word's grammar and spelling, sure... but also a run through Grammarly maybe, and a run through something else like Hemingway App wouldn't hurt either... and don't leave it just to those two. Find an editor if you can. Make sure you get their input and fixes. A polished book should be polished.
Don't desperately cling to a phrase you used. If it doesn't sound right, it doesn't sound right. If it even sounds weird to you the author's ears, how do you think others will feel? Delete the sentence and rewrite it.
I'm actually in the process of writing another chapter on editing where I'll give you some more advice on this, but you can also look elsewhere. Your story should be gone through with a toothpick. My Editing 201 chapter, every single issue I mentioned should be checked. If you can't trust yourself to catch them on a read through, then pull out that find function and verify every mistake the long way.
Amazon is not Wattpad, and while yes, you can self-publish a book with remarkable ease, it will quickly accumulate low stars if it is not a well-polished, easy-to-follow novel.
The Actual Steps to Publishing
So, let's say you have a completed manuscript, it's polished, and you have a book cover ready to go. You're going to need an Amazon account. You're going to need a bank account (although I believe you can set it up to work with PayPal). You'll sign in to the kdp.amazon.com website . After signing up and in, you should find yourself in front of a Bookshelf where you can start uploading your own book.
That's where you can create your books. A Kindle ebook (we'll stick to Kindle for this explanation) can be created by clicking on the + sign for Kindle eBook (go figure).
The Kindle Book can be completed in three easy steps.
Kindle eBook Details, Kindle eBook Content, and Kindle eBook Pricing.
Kindle eBook Details is where you set the book title, the series information, the author name, the item description, categories and the keywords. The keywords should not match any words you used in the title of the book or the description. Amazon's search engine will already look for any words you chose to use in the description, so that is a place where you pick the keywords you don't want to specifically mention in the description.
This means a second thing too, that is that you should include as many buzzwords as you humanly can in your description. If you story has werewolves, it might be advantageous to find a way to write a description that has the word werewolves, also werewolf, were wolf, were wolves, wolf transformations, teenwolf and any other variation of the names you can possibly think of, so that no matter what search term someone uses, your book still shows up.
By the way, this same principle works with Wattpad... but where Wattpad lets you have a good 20 keywords, Amazon only gives you seven. So, with only seven hidden words, make those descriptions count.
The eBook Content page is a little easier to stomach because it really just contains the upload for the manuscript and the cover, followed by previewer. Make sure to preview things properly so that the cover page and manuscript loaded properly. If it looks good, it looks good. If it looks bad, fix your manuscript and then re-upload it. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a very clear upload, so the newest upload is what counts, and the previous upload just disappears... seemingly. So, also keep backups on your PC, because Amazon isn't giving them.
Finally, you'll set your pricing. It has a beta version that looks at the size and keywords of your book and gives you an estimate of what you should sell your book at. Mine just froze when I tried it. So my pricing was what I set myself. I also needed to give personal information like an SSN and a bank checking information. If you're not cool with that, you might be able to do a PayPal thing (although I believe PayPal accounts require checking information and an SSN). So yeah, if you plan to conduct business online, at some point you're going to have to put up personal information.
That said, once you're done editing things to your preference, click submit.
You should get an email saying that it will go live within 72 hours. Here's the catch. If you still have the book online somewhere like Wattpad, then you will get another email saying that the book was declined because of copyright issues. If that happens, you don't need to pull the web novel down. However, you do need to resubmit it. Everything was saved so you don't need to re-upload the files, just click through and resubmit. This is Amazon's means of forcing you to commit and confirming that you're claiming copyright. I responded to the email too asserting as much, but I don't think you need to do that. If you got the book somewhere out there written, you need to submit twice.
How quickly does it go live? They say 72 hours, but I found the turn around closer to six hours. Adding to that the fact I had to resubmit, that means that it took about twelve to go from nothing to live. And boom, I was rolling in the money!
You Won't Be Rolling In the Money
They typically take about 30% of the money. There are two types of ways they cut the money, a 35% model and 70% model. Simply put, Amazon "really" wants all their eBooks priced between $2.99 and $8.99. If you price your book within their desires, you get a 70% cut of your money. If you feel your book is worth more than $10, they'll cut it down to 35%. Most publishers only give you 10%, for comparison, so even 35% is a decent cut.
So, for a $3 book, my take home is $2. Most people who profit off of Kindle books do two unique things. One: They release VERY frequently. And Two: they cater to a very niche group of interests. $2 a book might not seem like a lot, but if you start publishing two books a month for 2 years, suddenly you have 48 books for sale. Someone who likes one of your books might start picking up the others. You can actually start to make a pretty respectable income that way.
And what do I mean by niche? Robot Dinosaur children. You can be the guy who writes stories about robot dinosaur children. Different stories. Different dinosaur robots who happen to be kids. But out there, somewhere, in the webosphere, are a group of people who just LOVE robot, dinosaur kids, and will love the CRAP out of any story written about their particular interest. You write enough books about that subject, and you become THE guy on that subject.
That's niche writing for you. And some of you ask, how could someone possibly write 2 books a month for 2 years? The answer is simple. The books are only 18,000 words or less. They only sell them for 2-3 bucks. I can tell you I've written 18,000 words TODAY. (I've been on a role guys). It's really not that difficult to pump out a derivative niche book in 2-3 days and then spend a week editing it. Even professional authors like RL Stine was pumping out a book monthly in his good years. And many people consider his books actually nostalgic and worth reading.
However, if you aren't looking to make a career our of rapidly publishing cheesy kids horror books or fetishist novels, there is no clear road to becoming Amazon famous. Even Amazon novels selling at the top of their game only bring home a couple hundred dollars a month. A single best-selling novel self-published on Amazon isn't going to support you.
And that's best-selling. Yours probably isn't going to reach that point. Amazon's self-publishing service is saturated with books, exactly like the twice a month guy I just mentioned above. Your book will likely get the same treatment. It will get lost in the muck. You can do a little. Use social media to convince your fanbase to buy your book. (points at link). But at the end of it all, your book is one in a billion. You can keep writing, keep releasing more books, and one day you might find that one book that just hits writing gold and gets all the purchases.
I mention with this very Wattpad 101 book, after three years of writing chapters, it all comes down to my "How Long Should My Chapter Be?" Chapter for 90% of this book's success. More people have been driven to Wattpad 101 by that single chapter that apparently hits google search questions just right. Your Amazon success will be the same way. Keep publishing books. Publish them for years. Get 20-30 books out there, and then you'll find one book might suddenly just get a ton of attention. It'll trickle down to your other books, just as that chapter leads to people reading other chapters in this book... but yeah, that is the harsh truth of it.
And for your information, I released the book two days ago, and I just checked. I've made 1 sale. I think it was my dad. You could make it 2. 😉
Good Luck, and Happy Publishing!