Not so long ago, the first hurdle an ambitious book author faced was overcoming gatekeepers. First, you’ll have to write book suggestions and sample chapters for weeks or months. Then contact some agencies to see if you are interested in pitching your book to international bestsellers. Most people will complain that your idea is unlikely to make a lot of money or that it “sounds more like a magazine article than a book.” At this point, you can stop the project, or if you’re really stubborn, submit your proposal directly to the publisher. If they don’t open the package and don’t return the package to you, they will send you a visa refusal letter or give you a low price quote. The various tools of vanity journalism remove these barriers for authors who prefer to do it alone.
Amazon’s suite of services for independent authors allows authors to bypass traditional publishers and helps reach international bestsellers. It provides book marketing. Amazon gives us the tools to create and sell digital books and give access to international bestsellers. Print and sell paperbacks on demand.
Publish Your Book in U.S. eBook Stores And Become an International Bestseller
Kindle Direct Publishing:
Known as KDP for short, the service allows international bestsellers to sell digital versions of their books on Amazon.com (or sites in other Amazon countries). Authors receive royalties from 35% to 70% of the sale price, depending on whether the book is sold at KDP or through another Amazon service called KDP Select.
Unlike most other international bestsellers, KDP uses a format called “Mobi.” This is the digital book file format used by Amazon and is available on all Kindle devices. You can upload your books to Amazon using the most popular ePub (the one used by Apple) and other formats described on Amazon’s website, such as HTML, Doc, and RTF. However, in my experience, it’s best to start with a Mobi file. This is because the formatting you create (images, charts, tables, etc.) remains the same.
Suppose you wrote a book in Word and wanted to convert it to Mobi. This can be done using the free software Calibre (available on PC or Mac). I’m using the Mac version, and it works fine if the Word document doesn’t have page numbers. For best results, you should include links to each chapter in the table of contents, formatted according to the Amazon specifications listed here.
One of the options is to pay one of the many international bestsellers or formatting companies that offer services to convert Word files to the digital format of your choice. Prices are based on book-by-book or word count. Professional services can cost hundreds of dollars to set up, format, and convert books from WordDOC to Mobi or ePub files. You can find cheaper services through Fiverr.com. But like many other international bestsellers, you usually get what you pay for, so look at your company’s portfolio and talk to some of their author clients before you keep your company.
You can also preview your Kindle book before it’s published on Amazon.com, so if you spot an error, you can make changes and reupload.
One of the advantages of KDP is that Amazon does not require digital exclusivity. As a result, authors can sell the same digital book elsewhere on the Internet through other stores such as The Nook Book Store and iTunes.
KDP select:
You can take advantage of Amazon’s marketing power by using this service instead of the regular service. To do this, you have to give them a monopoly on your digital books for 90 days. In return, KDP Select can pay higher royalties (closer to the aforementioned 70%) and make the international books bestsellers and part of the Prime member’s lending library. Pays authors a percentage of the total amount Amazon Prime members pay per book loaned.
As part of the promotion, KDP Select can also choose up to 5 days of free or discounted books. At the same time, it will appear on the Amazon.com sales page, attracting more people. You obviously won’t get any money from these sales, but it can help you establish the theme of your book when you sell it.
Many sites promote free or discounted Kindle books to large audiences and agree with the theory that offering books for free will eventually pay off, even for a short period of time. Bookbub has at most over 2 million subscribers. Large promotional sites like Bookbub charge advertising fees (from $40 for less popular categories to $400 to $1500 for popular categories). I think getting your book in international bestsellers is worth it.
According to conversations with other indie writers and posts on various bulletin boards and blogs, other writers also have great sales on days when their books are discounted and even more so on days when those books are free. You can see the download. This will result in higher-than-normal sales on the day after the sale (when the book returns to its normal price) and generally increases book awareness and makes them international bestsellers.
Create Space:
This is Amazon’s print-on-demand service for independent writers. It allows you to sell paperbacks of books on CreateSpace.com or directly from Amazon.com. Just upload the PDF according to the specifications and set the number of creations. (They give you a floor price; you make the public price higher.)
You can print a book without paying. You only get a commission on every sale. You are also responsible for the price and associated charges. When you upload your book, Amazon will tell you how much they cost—for example, a 150-page book costs $2.50. From there, you can price your book higher, say $9. In this case, for each paperback sale, Amazon holds $2.50 plus buyer shipping, and you hold $6.50.
The author designs the cover (or you can create a Create Space design for an additional fee) and uploads the content in PDF format. Once uploaded, you can download a “proof” copy, actually order it, or view it directly on the website. That way, if you need to make changes, you can make them before they’re available for sale.
Create Space also allows you to link Kindle editions of books to paperbacks. This way, buyers can choose the format on the same sales page. This is a useful customer-facing feature. All you need to do is upload the properly formatted Kindle version. If you’ve added the Kindle edition to KDP or KDP Select, Amazon will link the paperback to the digital edition on the same page of your website.
For most independent writers, print-on-demand works great because it’s hard to determine how well a book will sell. Also, ordering copies before they sell can be very expensive. CreateSpace removes these barriers. The current limitation, however, is the lack of hardcover options, and the binding and the spines printed through them have proven weak. Also, for book size, you need to use one of several options.
Conclusion
Amazon provides us with all the resources we need to generate and sell digital books, as well as access to worldwide blockbusters. Kindle direct and Create Space publication are amazing tools that will help you become an intentional bestseller promoting yourself the right way. Moreover, they give you a good royalty share.