How to Publish a Book on Amazon a Complete Guide?

We all know a writer who decided to publish a book on Amazon, only to run away yelling, "It's a jungle out there!" You can't blame them; putting out your own work is scary, especially when you're in charge of everything. Even authors who are excited about the freedom of self-publishing can be afraid to start the journey without someone to warn them of the risks.

So, we put on our khakis and loaded up the riverboat. We're ready to lead you through the jungle, starting with how to literally publish a book on Amazon. Authors who aren't afraid to take risks, get prepared to confidently hit the "publish" button.

1. Create an account with KDP

You will need a ticket to get on this Amazon Express cruise before you can board. Setting up a KDP account is what we mean. It's easy, quick, and free, which is great! Go to Kindle Direct Publishing and sign in to your Amazon account or create a new one to get started.

Then you'll need to fill out your KDP account information, which includes:

Details about the author and publisher: Even though this sounds scary, it's just your full legal name, address, and phone number.

Payment information: The name and number of your bank account so you can get your sweet, sweet royalties.

Tax information: Just a quick tax interview that helps you gather the information you need to establish your tax identity.

Once everything is ready to go, you can get on board. Here's where all the fun starts

2. Give it a new name

You'll see right away on your KDP dashboard that there's a section called "Create a new title" with two options: Kindle eBook or Paperback. For this tutorial, we'll only talk about setting up an ebook, but the process for paperbacks is pretty much the same. We also have a whole post about how to publish your books using print-on-demand services, if you're interested.

Once you choose what kind of book you want to make, you'll be taken to a page with three tabs for all the information about your book. We'll talk about those soon. For now, stay on the first tab and put your book's title and language in the first two fields. You're done!

3. Type in the description of your book

Fill in all the information about your book on the rest of this first tab. Among other things, this will include:

if it belongs to a series the range of ages you think your readers are, and any other people who helped with your book, like a book illustrator.

But your description is the most important thing you'll need to add.

The book descriptions on Amazon are pretty much the same as the blurbs on the back of paperbacks. I won't talk about how to write a book description here (just read that post! ), but once you know what you want to say, take a moment to dress it up: Take advantage of the fact that Amazon lets you use bold and italics to make your description look good.

Best-selling traditionally published books often have a catchy headline, a hook, or social validation, so there's no reason not to do the same.

4. Choose your categories and keywords

Choosing your categories and keywords can feel like wading through a swamp full of crocodiles on your way to self-publishing success on Amazon. But with a little time and the right research methods, these nine or so words can be a simple and effective way to improve your chances of success.

A lot of the research has to be done by hand, in the end. The best way to find keywords and categories that seem like a good fit for your book is to look through the Kindle store and find information about similar books that have sold well.

But our Bake My Book Learning course on understanding Amazon’s algorithms and the posts in this guide about keywords and categories has helped a lot of authors get through the process quickly and easily. So don't get stuck in the muck and be left behind!

When you publish a book on Amazon, it's easy to add keywords and categories once you've found them. KDP lets you choose two categories and up to seven keywords for your book. Choose the ones you think best describe your book. Keep in mind that you can change and add to these later, so don't be afraid to try out a few.

5. Put an epub file of your book on the site.

When you get to the next tab, you'll have to upload your book to your KDP account.

To get started, just click the friendly-looking yellow button that says "Upload ebook manuscript." Choose the last version of your epub file and click "OK."

Amazon will accept a variety of file formats, but epub is the best format for your file. Putting in a Word document and trusting Amazon to do the rest is never a good idea. Readers can tell if a book was formatted by a professional or not, and taking shortcuts will come back to bite you. Hiring a professional formatter will pay for itself over time, but if you're an author on a tight budget, you can export a beautifully formatted ebook using a free tool like the Bake My Book Book Editor.

After you choose your manuscript, you'll see a message that says your book is being processed. Don't reload this page or leave it! Amazon may need a few minutes to upload your book and check that it is correct.

If you've formatted your book in a way that Amazon likes, you'll soon see a little green message that says your manuscript has been uploaded successfully. Take a moment to celebrate, but don't get too distracted. There are still a few very important steps to go.

6. Upload your cover as a jpeg or tiff file.

Without an interesting cover, a book won't sell. Your cover designer should have given you a 1,000 x 625-pixel jpeg or tiff version of your cover. To put it on Amazon, just choose the option to use a cover that already exists and click "Upload your cover file." Choose your cover file and make sure the ebook version is uploaded.

This can take up to a minute, just like when you uploaded the book itself. You'll get another green message when it's done.

You can use the "Ebook Preview" tool to see how your ebook will look after you've uploaded it and its cover. Take a minute to make sure everything is right: that the whole cover shows up, that the inside looks the same as when you open the file on your computer, etc. If something is wrong, check your files again and try to upload them again.

Then you move on to the last tab.

Price it between $2.99 and $9.99.

When deciding how much to charge for your book, the first thing you should know is that Amazon gives a 70% royalty on ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 and a 35% royalty on anything else.

As you set the price, Amazon figures out how much you'll make in royalties. It takes out a small "delivery rate" based on the file size of your book and then tells you how much you'll make per sale.

You can also make the pricing section bigger so that you can set different prices for each country you want to sell in. You can set it to auto if you don't care about international sales, but you'll get much better results if you do it yourself.

Selling internationally can really help you make more money, so we suggest that you keep an eye on your international sales trends and help the ones that grow. You will learn everything you need to know about how to do that in our free course.

8. Join (or don't join) KDP Select

Now that you have everything you need for your book, it's time to think about a few important programs that could help your book reach even more people.

KDP Choose

We already wrote a whole post about KDP Select, so we won't say too much more about it here. But basically, the program gives authors who want to sell their ebooks two main benefits:

Being part of Kindle Unlimited, and Kindle Countdown deals and free book promotions can help you market your ebook.

Whether or not you sign up will depend on what you want to do with your writing and what kind of business plan you have for it. For example, is a big part of your marketing plan to sell box sets through Apple Books or Google Play? Or do you want to take advantage of regular price discounts (or even "free" weekends for your book)? The KDP Select post linked above and the quiz just below will help you decide what to do. From there, all you have to do is check or uncheck the box that says "Enroll my book in KDP Select."

9. Press the "Publish" button

You've been waiting for this moment! But before you jump in, make sure everything is set up the way you want it to be by going back through the tabs. Even though you can fix a mistake after you've published, it's better to make sure the information is correct before you hit that button.

If you're not entirely done, there's a "Save as Draft" button that lets you come back and finish it later. If everything looks good, however, all you have to do is click "Publish your Kindle ebook."

You did it, so congrats! You should now know that publishing a book on Amazon isn't as scary as you might have thought.