Self Publishing With The Big Boys

I have self published on both Amazon and Nook press, (which is the electronic subsidiary of Barnes & Nobel, the biggest bookseller in the US). I will discuss publishing to Kindle on Amazon first and cover Nook Press and print books at a later date.  The actual process of transferring a manuscript form your laptop/PC or memory stick file is fairly straight forward. To start with Amazon you have to set up a user account on either or both Kindle Direct (Kindle downloads only) or Create Space (for print books). You will find both of these applications at the bottom of Amazon's main page if you click Independently publish with us. I opened a Kindle account first for an illustrated young children's book that I had created in Publisher.  I seemed to run into ta few problems when I tried to upload this book onto Amazon (it was mainly illustrations on A5 size pages). In the end I took Amazon's advice and downloaded their Kids Book Creator onto my laptop. The publisher file was then converted into a Mobi file in this programme and then uploaded easily onto the Kindle site. The Kids Book Creator is a free tool, offered by Amazon, by the way and once you have installed it on your laptop/PC you can just keep using it for subsequent titles. So my first self published book was a bit of trial and error.


Once you have created a Kindle Account with Amazon you log in and go to your book shelf and click on CREATE NEW TITLE.  There are a number of fields to complete about your book including the rights and pricing. After that you then enter the title information and upload and preview the book content.  The front cover has to be uploaded separately. You confirm publishing rights and enter pricing and royalty information and when you've entered your required information, select the check box to confirm you have all the necessary rights to publish your book and then click "SAVE AND CONTINUE".  It can take 24 to 48 hours for your book to be available in the Kindle Store. You can earn royalties of up to 70 percent and your book will be available to customers in US, Germany and many more countries.