One million kindles.

That’s how many kindles Amazon was selling every single week over the holidays. It’s provided a huge boost to the self publishing industry as new kindle owners furiously seek to stock their new toys with content. Self publishing may have once been last resort of writers spurned by publishers and desperate to see there name in print but this is no longer the case, these days there is a lot of money to be made in self publishing.

Take for example writer John Locke who sold over 1 million eBooks or self published author JR Konrath who recently blogged that he made over a $100,000 in three weeks. And it’s not just a few writers at the top anymore. There is a steadily increasing group of self published authors who make good six figure incomes self publishing their own work.

And where does it all start? With self publishing your book of course.

Amazon has put a huge amount of money and resources into developing and promoting its kindle platform. It’s no wonder then that it has become so popular with readers and writers alike. This guide will show you how you can publish your own Kindle eBook are five easy steps.

Step One: Logging In

This first step assumes that you have already created your Amazon account. If you haven’t created an account yet simply visit the Amazon home page and click the tab marked “start here” at the top of the screen. The step by step instructions make signing up for your new account incredibly simple.

Once you have created your account you will need to access the Kindle Publishing Dashboard. You can reach this screen by clicking on the tab at the bottom of the screen which says “Independently Publish with us” you then select the “Kindle Books” tab from the left side of the screen.

Once you reach this screen you will be given the opportunity to log in with your Amazon account. Do this step now.

Step Two: Adding a New Title

You are now inside the Kindle Direct Publishing Dashboard. You will see that there is a yellow button which is marked “Add New Title” click on this to get started.

Step Three: Creating a Description

You are now at the heart of the Self Publishing Process. The next step is to fill out some information about your book. First enter the title of your book into the field marked “Book name:” If your book is part of an ongoing series (which is a good marketing strategy!) then you will want to click the box marked “This book is part of a series” you can then enter the series title and what volume your book is.

Once you have completed this step it is time to fill in a description of your book. If you have ever purchased (or even browsed) Amazon before then you will now that below any book is a description of your book. If you want to know what kind of information you should include here take a look at the back of a paperback book. This should give you a good idea of what kind of information you should write. Remember you are trying to sell people on the idea of trying your book so make the description interesting. You might want to include quotes from someone who has read your book and liked it (if they are well known all the better). Or you may like to include a short excerpt that draws the reader in. Have a look at some of the best selling books on Kindle and see what they have done to promote their books in the description. They are best sellers for a reason!

Step Three: Add your name

The next step is to add your name (or someone else’s) to the book. When you click on the “Add contributors” button you will be given a list of ways you can include the names and descriptions of people who were involved in the book. Here you can select author and write your own name. If you are writing under a pen name or if someone else wrote the book, include that name instead.

Step Four: Publishing Rights

If you are reading this article then this is probably the first time you have published your book which is great because it makes the next step really easy. You should now see a series of fields for language, publishing date, publisher and ISBN. If you haven’t published before you can leave all these fields as they are. Don’t write anything in these fields and move on.

Next you will need to affirm that you own the rights to publish the book and that it is not a public domain work (a book published by someone else whose copyright has expired). You can publish public domain books but there are special rules around it. If this is your own original work simply tick the field saying “This is not a public domain domain book and I hold the necessary publishing rights.”

Below the publishing rights you will find the Categories and keywords section. You are allowed to choose two different categories for your book. There are a lot of different categories so you will have to spend some time to find which are the most appropriate for your book. If you are publishing a fiction book make sure that you include it into the Fiction parent category.

Finally enter some keywords for your book. These are words that people might enter when they are searching for a book in your niche. If you wrote a book on tomato gardening some keywords might be gardening, tomato gardening and tomato gardens. Fill this space with up to seven different keywords.

Step Five: Upload your Book and Cover

Now its time to “Upload Your Book Cover” this is the section where you upload a graphics file from your own computer which will be used as cover graphic in the Amazon search results. You can choose not to include one but I wouldn’t recommend it. In fact having a good cover is one of the key things which will get your book noticed. You may write a great story but if the cover sucks then nobody is going to buy it.

There are lots of different options for creating a cover; you can use Photoshop or the open source alternative GIMP. Or you can pay some one else to design your cover. Visit Fivver.com and type in ebook cover and you will see a host of different designers willing to make your cover for only $5.

Once you have your cover you can upload it by clicking on the “Browse for image” button. This will then allow you to upload the graphics file from your computer.

The last and most important step is to upload your content. You don’t have to do anything to tricky to upload your file. A doc file is perfect. Simply write your story in a simple font and stay away from fancy features such as graphics and bullet posts. To upload the file click on the “browse” button and find the doc file on your computer. By the way if you don’t have Microsoft Office you can use the free open source alternative Open Office.

Congratulations you are now a published author! All you need to do now is promote your book and get some readers and you too can join the ranks of self published authors who are making a good living doing what they love.

Learn how to write your own best selling self published book at http://www.SelfPublished.info a Free Ezine for Self Published Authors. Join now and you will receive a Free Special Report on “How to Choose a Kindle Topic That Sells.” John Savage is the editor of Self Published Ezine. When he’s not reading and writing on the Self Publishing industry, he is publishing his own work making a full time six figure living writing online.

Author: John A Savage
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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*The succeeding article is about Cost efficient book marketing, Book Marketing Strategies, Inexpensive marketing techniques, Economical book marketing and many other useful tips about book marketing.

A recession-proof marketing strategy is characterized by the sustainability of the book marketing plan through these uncertain recession times and well into economic growth and betterment in the near future. The marketing strategy is not so much affected with the cumulative displacements of the predominantly difficult economic situation, as much as it adapts efficiently and functionally through it.

In simple terms, the marketing strategy should be clear, feasible and practical. Take a hint: a recession-proof book marketing strategy is something that is long lasting, something that will transcend the ongoing recession. Thus, a good book marketing strategy also makes the book publicist work smarter, not more.

Here are some recession-safe book marketing activities that are guaranteed to spare you from lots of promotional troubles caused by the far reaching consequences of the ongoing recession:

Market the book’s value rather than its price. In a time of economic recession, consumer spending behavior becomes prioritized and rather selective. For this, convince your readers why they should care at all in being engaged with your product, and for this purpose, you have to be an effective marketer without sounding too commercial.

Value your customers as you do prospects. No favoritism here, treat them equally because you are about to establish a crucial mass readership that you can rely, and who may just purchase your succeeding works as well.

Maintain an effective yet inexpensive web presence. The Internet provides authors and publicists with plenty of cost saving marketing tools that are just as effective as offline book marketing campaigns. The online marketing techniques include advertising at free ad listing sites, blogging to genre relevant sites, registering at social networking sites, requesting and arranging for virtual book tours, uploading book “video-mercials” to video sharing sites, and sending online media releases.

Write and submit online articles with free reprint rights on a topic that is book genre relevant. This inexpensive marketing tool builds up, slowly but surely, an author’s credibility and expertise of the given subject matter. It also provides the author with a web marketing presence that both online researchers and book readers will appreciate.

Market your books to non-traditional sources to get closer to your target readers. Do a research on companies, clubs, associations, organizations, foundations and/or similar groups that are book genre specific and see if there is a gold mine somewhere for marketing. It is recession safe because you don’t have to spend a great deal of money promoting; what matters is for you to show to them the many benefits they will gain by purchasing your book.

Send emails with book excerpts to your relatives, friends, acquaintances, school alumni, and neighbors who have email addresses. Never underestimate the power of email to generate word-of-mouth marketing-even from among those whom you are already familiar with. From a marketing context, they are your “loyal audience”. Follow it up by asking them to please send related emails to people they know who could also be interested in your book. You see, building a marketing pyramid-but without the fraud-can start in this precise manner.

Consign your book to relevant local shopkeepers and retailers. For a minimal consignment fee, your book is prominently displayed and instantly recognized. So you have a book about pet care? Your local pet shop is just around the corner. Have an illustrated book about flower varieties? The local florist may be more than willing to accommodate for a shelf display, a perfect compliment indeed for your book.

Promote your book to school libraries. Regardless of your book genre, you can actually market to local or state level libraries, if you are able to determine which schools are regularly updating their catalogues with new book purchases and acquisitions. If there is favorable action to your proposal, offer a reciprocal arrangement for the book acquisition, like volunteering for free book reading sessions and creative writing discussions.

Be consistent with your marketing plan. To save precious time, money and effort, study what works for your book subject; know your target market well by determining what’s important to them and what influences them to make a purchase. Learn the success factors of fellow authors and analyze the recessional marketing trends to establish a well researched marketing plan. Decide early on whether your manuscript is promising enough for publishing houses to consider or you would rather self publish. Also, don’t do social networking publicity online unless you’re really motivated to do it. Don’t do marketing stuff just because you think you’re supposed to; you might end up wasting hard earned money and resources in this manner.

Learn more about the dynamics of economical book marketing, inexpensive marketing techniques, book marketing strategies and many other useful tips about online book marketing.

Author: Jake Olvido
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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