How to Publish with KDP: Part Ten

/ harmonykentonline

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Hello SErs. Harmony here.  As promised, here is  part ten in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links at the end of this post.

So, here’s Part Ten: How to Upload Your eBook File.

Access your KDP dashboard. You will see something that resembles the image below >>>

At the top of your list of books (if you have any here yet), you will see two options:

  1. + Kindle eBook
  2. + Paperback

Select the first option: +Kindle eBook.

The following ‘edit eBook’ page will open >>>

 

This page is where you input such things as the language of the book, the book title, a subtitle if it has one, set a series number if it is part of a series, the edition number (which is optional), the author name–along with any contributors, the book description, keywords, categories, confirm that you own the copyright, and the reading age. At the very bottom of the page, you can choose to release the book immediately or set it up on a pre-order.

The pre-order option allows you to put it on sale for up to three months before the book’s live on sale date.

Once you’ve input everything, you can either select ‘Save and Continue’ or ‘Save as Draft’.

If you save as draft, Amazon will save the information and return you to your dashboard.

If you save and continue, Amazon will take you to the ‘edit eBook content’ page >>>

This page is where you will upload your eBook file, and then you will upload your book cover file.

Click on ‘Upload Manuscript’. When the dialogue box opens, select the file you wish to upload.

I prefer to have a Mobi file ready to go, but as we covered in earlier posts, Amazon will accept:

  1. Microsoft Word (Doc/DocX)
  2. Kindle Create (KPF)
  3. HTML (Zip, HTM, HTML)
  4. MOBI
  5. ePub
  6. Rich Text Format (RTF)
  7. Plain Text (TXT)
  8. Adobe (PDF)

Once your file has uploaded, Amazon will convert the file and then do a spellcheck.

Now it is time to upload your book cover.

Amazon requires a jpeg file to the following dimensions:

In Pixels:

Height: 2560

Width: 1600

Resolution: 300 pixels per inch (as a minimum standard)

Maximum file size: 50 MB

Select ‘Upload Your Book Cover’ (Or launch cover creator). Once the image is created, you will need to preview it using Amazon’s online preview screen.

Now you need to preview your eBook. At this point, you have the option to preview your book using Amazon’s online previewer or downloading a file to view on various devices such as a phone, ereader, or computer, etc. (More on that in later posts.)

Once you’re happy with how the book looks, you can once again either ‘save as draft’ or ‘save and continue’.

The next page is the ‘Kindle eBook Pricing’ page, and this is where you will set your book price, enroll it in KDP Select (or not), set the markets (countries) where you want it on sale, allow book lending (or not), and read the Ts & Cs (good luck with that!).

If you’ve enrolled in KDP select, then the minimum price for your book must be set at no less than 2.99.

Top Tip:

Make sure your book file size is not too large. If it takes too many megabytes of space, then Amazon will charge you for delivering the file to a customer. This could end up costing more than the royalty you receive from the sale. Check out an older post of mine on this subject HERE.

 

Once you’ve input all the information, you can either select ‘Save as Draft’ or ‘Save and Publish’.

Take great care here! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve hit publish when I wanted the book to stay in draft mode for a while, lol. And once you’ve hit that ‘publish’ button, it goes into a queue for Amazon to review the file for quality, and you cannot undo the publish.

That’s it from me for today. I hope you’ve found this post useful. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, and I’ll see you all again on Friday, June 26th, where we’ll be taking a look at how to preview and review your eBook on different devices.

Past posts in this series:

Outline: https://wp.me/p7OGru-29c

Part 1 (Software for Writing) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29t

Part 2 (General Formatting Necessities) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29J

Part 3 (Ebook Conversion) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2ah

Part 4 (Paperback Formatting) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2eS

Part 5 (Image Software for Making Book Covers) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gi

Part 6 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gQ

Part 6 B (Making your own ebook cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2hQ

Part 7 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for Paperback) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2jY

Part 7 B (Making your own PDF book cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kf

Part 8 (Setting up your KDP account) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kF

Part 9 (An overview of your KDP Dashboard) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2lq

 

To make it easy to browse back and forth, I’ve set all links to open in new tabs. As this series progresses, I will update the links for you so that each post includes links to all past posts in the series.

©Harmony Kent 2020

(If you're reading this post on or after June 26th, 2020, then here's the link for Part 11 in the How to Publish with KDP series: https://wp.me/p7OGru-2qc. Please note, the link won't work until June 26th, 2020.)

54 thoughts on “How to Publish with KDP: Part Ten”

  1. I used to upload mobi files, Harmony, but have been having trouble with them now as “something” isn’t compatible with kindlegen. And I can’t seem to get around it. So I started producing epub files which seem to work fine. Ugh. I should probably watch the kindlegen tutorial because I can’t figure out how to make it do what I want it to do. LOL. If there’s a way to have trouble with technology… I’ll find it! 😀

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  3. Wow, glad I saw Marcia’s post and popped over for part 10 lol. I’m going to bookmark in my Evernote every part. Thanks for this as I haven’t published a book since Createspace closed for paperbacks. Two years! Oye! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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  4. Thank you, Harmony. I’ll go back to read the formatting and eBook conversion later. Since my book is poetry and I formatted it myself, I had the most anxious time in my life. I could have centered all the poems but I didn’t. I also didn’t know about any indent tricks. By the time I finished formatting the book, I injured my arm because I used the index finger to hold the mouse to do precise indentation. I went to see a specially, had gone through physical therapy and my arm was still in pain for almost a year. Due to other situation, I took a break from blogging and was hardly use the computer for six months, the arm kind of healed.

    I wasn’t too nervous about hitting publish, because I found typo after hitting it, so I made correction and reloaded it. After I reloaded the manuscript a few times, I was not afraid of hitting publish.

    I would link your post to a few friends who are still thinking self-publishing. 🙂

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  8. This is the exciting part after all the hard work. I’ve hit the wrong buuton before too and I know can’t.take it back, but hitting that final publish button reminds me of finally going down the hill you’ve been climbing it on a rollercoaster:)

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  11. Reblogged this on The Write Stuff and commented:

    So you’ve got your manuscript all edited and set to go, but haven’t a clue how to upload it to KDP. Not to worry! Harmony Kent’s instructions in her Story Empire post today will walk you through it step by step. And even if you’ve done it before, you’re likely to learn some new tips. I did. Check it out, and then please consider passing it along so others can learn, as well. Thanks, and thanks to Harmony for another job well done! 🙂 ❤

    Liked by 1 person

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  12. This is the best step-by-step guide to uploading an eBook to Amazon I’ve ever read! Thanks, Harmony. I believe I’ve got it all covered now, but it was a process of trial and error for a while there when I first started publishing. This is going to be a real boost to folks new to the process. AND, I’ve never set up a book for pre-order, though I’ve been thinking about it. I’m happy to see you’ve covered that, as well. Great post! Sharing! 🙂

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  13. I’m curious about your next post. Previewing is always a tension point for me. Don’t know why. I like the mechanics with graphics here. Looks like some newer authors weighed in, and that’s pretty cool, too.

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  15. Is it still true that you can’t change a file once it’s set as a preorder? (Or was that ever true?) I feel like one of my publishers had a problem with that before.

    Another post with great examples, Harmz.

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