15 Sep Publishing on Amazon
As a quick test, I published a short story I wrote a few years ago on Amazon’s Kindle store.
It’s a very straight-forward process, involving converting your work from a Word document to the kindle e-book format using a free piece of software called MobiPocket Creator.
I used my existing Amazon account, and followed the “Self-publish with us” link at the bottom of the Amazon page.
There were a number of paths to follow on the self-publishing page, including real world options for paper books, printed on demand by CreateSpace. I registered for that service with the intention of taking a look later.
Back to the e-publishing option, and I clicked the “Get started” link to bring up the Bookshelf, where I got the opportunity to create my e-book.
There were two royalty rates to choose from; 35% and 75%. The 75% rate was only available for sales in the US, UK, and a couple of other countries. For sales in other countries the 35% royalty rate applies.
I would have preferred to choose a very low price like maybe 49 cent, but the lowest value available was 99 cent (on the 35% commission rate) which with sales tax added meant a final price of $1.16. Since it’s only a short story I thought that was a bit steep, especially looking at some of the huge compilations selling for exactly the same price, but hey, what can you do? If I had chosen the higher royalty rate the lowest price I could have charged was over $2, plus sales tax, which would have been way too high.
The verification process took about a day and a half, and then voila, the short story was there for the world to see. After publication, I got the option to set up an author page, which I did. This allows you to add a biography, and also a blog feed and your twitter stream. Setting up my details on Author Central had to be done separately for Amazon UK and Amazon US.
Here’s a link to the book in the american store.
No Comments