If you’re planning to self-publish your book, congrats! It takes a lot of dedication and work to finish a manuscript and publish it. Some people don’t know where to begin when it comes to publishing their book on Amazon. As someone who has done this over 16 times, let me guide you on how it’s done! 🙂

#1 Edit and revise your completed manuscript

Once that first draft has been completed of your story, you’ll want to go over it a few times (or 20!) to make sure it’s as polished and well-written as possible. I tend to self-edit 10-20 times depending on the book. A lot of indie authors hire a professional editor once they have done a few self-edits. When you’re happy with the final product of your book, I recommend doing one more proofreading sweep to ensure you catch any typos or errors. If you’re new to writing, having a beta reader or editor might be helpful so you can pinpoint where you can improve (It’s totally up to you though!).

#2 Get a great book cover

If you’re good at graphic design you can create your own cover. Otherwise, you can hire a pro cover designer or browse pre-made cover designs. I like getting mine at thebookcoverdesigner.com ! You’ll want one cover for the e-book and another for the print book (If you decide to have a print book). A designer can create a print book cover that wraps around a book – just make sure you know what size of book you’ll have (I.e. 6×9 or 5×8) so the designer can create one that will fit properly. What I normally do is have one cover for the e-book then let Kindle Direct Publishing create a print book cover from that. You can do this by using the “Cover creator tool” and uploading the ebook cover – you can then choose which template of print book cover you prefer from there.

#3 Format your book

Once your book has been edited and revised, it’s time to format it to KDP’s specifications. This means putting in page numbers, margins, headings, etc. This will all depend on the size of your book and how many pages it has. You can refer to the Kindle Direct Publishing forums for help with how to format your book or you can hire a formatter (Once I hired one and they cost me $100).

#4 Add a title page, copyright page, an acknowledgements page, about the author page, etc.

Make sure you have a title page and a copyright page added at the start of your book. You can also have an “about the author” page and an acknowledgements page at the end of the book to personalize your manuscript. Readers will often want to know more about you and it’s nice to thank anyone who helped you on your writing journey.

#5 Get your book on Amazon!

You do this by creating an account on kdp.com. Don’t worry – it’s super easy and user friendly! It walks you through step-by-step on what to do next. From there, you can start filling in all the information needed about your book, It will ask you to write a book description, choose the genre, etc. Then you will upload your story file and cover file. You will also have the chance to set your price range and distribution reach here. Once the ebook is downloaded, you can then upload the print book.

#6 Your book is published! Time to promote it now. 🙂

Within 12-24 hours, your book will be live on Amazon after you’ve completed the submission process on KDP. You’ll have a dashboard in your account where you can run promotions, advertise, and see your sales. Now is the time to start promoting your book on social media so people know it exists. Good luck!

I hope you found this helpful. 🙂 If you have any questions, please let me know.