How to Publish Your Book to Amazon Pt. 2: Content
How to Publish Your Book to Amazon Pt. 2: Content
A Straightforward guide to getting your manuscript for sale on the largest bookstore in the world using KDP.
Good morning Mini Book Masters,
It is Mini Book Monday, time for our weekly deep dive.
I continue the series I started last week, “Publishing to Amazon”. Today is Part 2: Content.
This is a chapter from my upcoming book, Dam the Amazon: How to Self-Publish Your Book and Generate Demand for Your Business Using the Largest Bookstore in the World.
The previous post in this series is below.
Publishing to Amazon Part 1: Metadata
Let’s dive into uploading your content to Amazon.
Manuscript
This is the moment you've been waiting for.
You are now ready to send your manuscript to a publisher. In the case of Amazon, we upload our manuscript to KDP, and they will distribute our book to the world. Your manuscript should be fully finished, edited, formatted, and ready for the world to see.
Navigate to the 'Content' tab, the second one on the KDP platform, and get ready to upload your book.
Export
Start by getting your document out of your word processor.
If you are using Atticus, this is super simple. Head to "Edit Book Details" or go to the "Formatting" section of Atticus.
After that, hit export to save your manuscript in the correct format.
The software will then prepare your manuscript for download.
The process is different if you are using Google Sheets or Microsoft Word. For these, you'll click "Print" to save a PDF copy, or save your document as a Word Document; KDP will convert it to an epub for you. This will ensure you have both formats needed to upload your manuscript to KDP.
Once you have your manuscript exported, head back to KDP.
Formats
The format your manuscript needs to be in varies on the type of book you are publishing.
If you are publishing an eBook, you'll need your manuscript as an epub or Word Document format. (epub looks much better) When using a Word document, you must manually create a Table of Contents for Kindle to recognize chapters and provide a hyperlinked section in your eBook. With Atticus, this is automatically generated, saving you a big headache. That alone is reason enough for me to use Atticus.
These formats don't work for physical books.
For physical books, you'll need to have your manuscript as a PDF document. The eBooks need to be fluid and change based on the device, font size, etc. The paperbacks need to be exactly as they'll be when they are printed by Amazon.
Once you've got the right format, upload it by hitting "Upload Manuscript."
Preview
The KDP book previewer helps you avoid many headaches.
You’ll find the previewer below the Cover section on the page, but I wanted to highlight it here. Once your document is uploaded and processed, you'll want to load the KDP previewer. Click through your entire book to see what it will look like to the reader.
Watch for weird formatting issues.
If there are any changes that need to be made, head back to your word processor. Make the changes and then export your updated manuscript. Things to look out for are empty pages, images not formatted or sized properly, extra content you forgot to delete, misspellings. It might feel tedious to review your book in the previewer, but you'll be glad you did.
If you need to make changes to the manuscript later, you can do so and upload a new copy.
Cover
Creating a cover doesn't have to be an impossible task.
You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on it either. I now create all of my own covers and came up with a system that makes sure my covers look like professional covers. Anyone can do this, and I use Canva software to accomplish it.
Let me walk you through my QUICK Book Cover Model.
Creation
Your book cover reveals to the reader the genre, theme, and feel of the book.
Is it an empowering book for women, or a rugged, manly book like something Bear Grylls would write?
Letting the potential reader know will help them decide if this is the right fit for them, which increases the number of happy readers and the average rating of your review.
My framework for creating book covers is the QUICK Book Cover Model:
Q – Qualify what a good selling book cover looks like by finding three you like the feel of on Amazon.
U – Upload those designs to Canva or Bookbrush.
I – Insert the elements and recreate the book cover as close as possible.
C – Customize the cover by changing the title, subtitle, author name, images, and colors to match your book and brand.
K – Kindle ready, ensure your cover meets Kindle requirements and is ready for publication.
Let's run through these quickly.
Q – Qualify a Best Selling Book Cover
Head to Amazon and search the non-fiction best-selling books in a broad category like business or self-help that will match the big category of your book.
Find three books with hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews. These will serve as your bestselling models. Find titles that have a similar number of words as your title. Once you find a title that you feel you'd like the look and feel of something similar, right-click and save it to your computer.
U – Upload Designs to Canva/BookBrush
Take your three designs and upload them to your design software of choice, something like Canva or Bookbrush.
You're going to select an ebook cover as the template and dimensions. You'll use each of these designs you've downloaded as the background of your design. Simply lock it in place so you can manipulate things on top of it without moving it around. This will serve as something you can model after.
I – Insert Elements
You'll add text and images to recreate the book cover.
You'll need to determine the style and size of the font. Match the colors on the background, images, and text. Find images that match any on the cover.
Most book covers are simpler than you first imagine, so get it really close to the original, but don't stress if it's a little off.
C – Customize the Cover
Now you change everything to make it your book.
Change the words to be your title, subtitle, and author name. Change the images to be your own unique ones. Change the colors to match your brand and vibe.
In the end, you'll have something that you drew inspiration from but doesn't look exactly like the original cover, like the ones I did for my friend Jeff below.
K – Kindle (KDP) Ready
You'll need to make sure your cover is ready to upload to Amazon's publishing service called KDP:
1,600 x 2,560 pixels
Under 50 MB
JPEG file type
Download your file, make sure it meets those requirements, and you have your book cover DONE!
Physical Books
I recommend creating your physical book after the digital one, as it transfers all the information, making it over halfway done.
Now you'll just need to design the spine and back part of the cover. This isn't hard, and I have a template I use to make it much easier. It changes slightly based on the size of cover you are creating.
There are only two sizes I typically use to create books.
I use 5x8 for mini books and 6x9 for legacy non-fiction books. (typically anything over 15,000 words)
Inside of KDP, you'll select your book trim/size, ink and paper, bleed (ignore if you are using Atticus), and finish of the cover. I personally like KDP's Matte covers better, but that is just a personal preference. These options do affect the costs you'll have to pay before your revenue split kicks in.
Costs per book can increase significantly if you decide to color the interior.
Once you've selected these "Print Options," you'll upload your PDF manuscript and then move onto the cover size calculator.
It's just a hyperlinked text above the cover upload, but here is where you'll find the template for creating your physical book cover. Click the link, and it will open their calculator. Fill out the information about your book, then click "Calculate," and the "Download Template" button will appear.
The download will be a zip file that you need to right-click and 'Extract'.
It includes an image and a PDF file.
Head to Canva and create a new design based on the dimensions provided in your calculator. Add the template image file as the background of your design and lock it so you can't accidentally drag it. Layer your digital cover over the front and design your spine and back over the template.
Any elements in the red are subject to getting cut off during the printing process if they overlap into the red zone of your template.
To check that all your design elements are within the safe zone, make the background color transparent to see the template, and ensure text or key images aren’t in the red zone (it’s fine if colors bleed over).
Check out my example in the image below. I've simply made my background white with a rectangle shape I make cover the entire background and then in this image I've moved the transparency of that shape to "0" so I can see through it to make sure all my text is in the "safe zone."
Once you are happy with your design in Canva, export it as a Printable PDF and upload it to KDP.
Preview of Physical Books
The preview of physical books is more important to review than the preview of digital books.
While the digital books are formatted to fit the device and the words move around to fit the screen, a physical book is printed exactly as the previewer shows. Once you upload your manuscript and the cover, KDP will require you to review your project in the previewer so you can approve it.
Go through the entire book page by page making sure everything looks like you want.
If there are any issues, head back to Atticus or whatever word processor you are using to fix the text, or Canva to fix the cover, and upload the new versions to KDP. Do this until you are satisfied.
Then hit the "Approve" button while inside the previewer.
ISBN
The ISBN is the social security number of your book.
Every book has one. Amazon will generate one for you for digital books if you don't have one. I recommend you purchase an ISBN yourself and not use Amazon’s because the ISBN Amazon gives you can only be used on Amazon.
Where to Buy an ISBN
You buy ISBNs from Bowker Publishing Services.
Head to myidentifiers.com to get registered and purchase the number of ISBNs you want. They charge a lot per ISBN if you don't buy in bulk, so if you plan on creating more than one book, grab a pack. One ISBN is $125, but I purchased a 100-pack for $575, and you can purchase 1,000 for $1,500.
All sales being reported from your book are being reported with that ISBN.
If you publish your ISBN to Amazon and other bookstores, the sales counts will be linked if you use the same ISBN at all the stores.
I tell you this simply for your knowledge. It never really affected me or changed what I did. It is important though if you are trying to make any lists that require you selling so many books.
Your ISBN is your book's unique fingerprint, ensuring every sale counts wherever your book is sold.
When to Use a Different ISBN
Every format of your book requires a different ISBN.
If you publish a digital ebook on Amazon, that is a single ISBN. If you publish a paperback, that is a different ISBN. Same with audiobooks and paperbacks, they require different ISBNs.
You can also use a different ISBN on Amazon (for Kindle format) and one for all the other bookstores as an (epub) format. (which is not required, you could use epub for both)
For each book I publish, I count on at least 3 ISBNs.
One for my digital, one for paperback, and one for audiobook. If I decide to publish a hardback, that will be a fourth ISBN.
Just use this information to influence your decision when purchasing a pack of ISBNs.
Setting Up an ISBN
Once you’ve finished entering the information, click 'Submit,' copy the ISBN number, and input it into the ISBN section of KDP.
Setting up an ISBN is similar to setting up your KDP page of your book.
You'll input the book’s details, upload a file of the cover, add your book description, author, contributors, and set your price. Just note that the price set here is just what it's listed for in library and bookstore catalogs if they consider buying your book.
This price won’t show up on any digital bookstores. I recommend you put the price you'd want to see it for sale as on the bookstore shelf. I may be mistaken in how I approach this, but it is how I've always done it.
Once completed, hit "Submit," copy the ISBN number, and input it into the ISBN section of KDP.
