How to: Publish Your Book on KDP

Happy Monday, everyone! Today's post is all about how to publish your book on Amazon's KDP platform. Before we get to the meat and potatoes, I'm going to go over a few terms with you. Ready? Grab your coffee or tea, and let's get going!

KDP: Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon: The folks that own KDP
KDP Select: A program you can opt into where you agree to exclusivity with KDP (meaning you promise not to publish your books anywhere else)
KU: Kindle Unlimited (you're automatically enrolled in this if you do the KDP Select agreement--that's the only way to get into KU)
Bookshelf: Where you see all the titles in your KDP library
Matchbook: A price people pay for the ebook IF they bought the paperback through Amazon and used the same account to purchase
KDP Lending Library: You grant the ability to people to loan your book to a friend for a set amount of time (usually 30 days--you're automatically enrolled if you're part of KDP Select)
DRM: Digital Rights Management (so people that buy your book can't move it from one device to a USB drive or other media--this does nothing to prevent piracy, seriously)
.mobi: The file type used by KDP
Kindle: Amazon's reading device (reads .mobi files)
Countdown Deal: The ability to put your book on sale for a maximum of 7 days in each KDP Select term of 90 days (only if you agree to KDP Select)

Now that you have the lingo down, let's get going! I'm doing a screenshot video to make it as easy as possible. Cross your fingers for me! This will be a first.

Here's the link to get started: Amazon KDP

I promised to go over the KDP Select button, but the video was getting rather long-ish, so I'll leave it to you to explore the options available there. When you publish your book, you're automatically optioned to re-up to the Select program, so if you only want to be in there for one 90 day cycle, be sure and change that option from your bookshelf tab by hovering over the ... on the right side and selecting KDP Select Info. Uncheck the little box at the bottom.

If you want to get the .mobi file after Amazon creates it, I do a walk through with screenshots here.

Any questions? Pop them in the comments below, and I'll answer!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Beware the Distribution Arms if You're in KU

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I know I'm late, but I'm HERE, and that's what matters. My schedule fell on its head today. haha! But still managing to make time to get in here and blog. Today, I'm going to talk about something that happened to a friend of mine. We can all learn from it, so get your coffee and let's get going!

So, for a long while, my friend had her books wide (being distributed to all vendors everywhere). She decided to pull her books from wide and go all in with Amazon KDP Select. This enrolled her stories in Kindle Unlimited automatically, and she started getting paid by the Global Fund pot for pages read.

Everything was going fine for a good, long time, until one day, she discovered her titles had been pulled from Select. There was no email telling her why. Nothing.

She freaked out (wouldn't you?).

You see, this friend of mine is always on the up and up. She's done everything by the book and to the letter of the rules. So, when this happened, she was completely taken aback.

After a LOT of digging around, she discovered those titles that had been pulled to go into Select were available via one of the distribution arms of a popular distributor.

No, I'm not going to say which one. That's not what this post is about. I'm just issuing a warning here and showing you how you might want to delve more deeply if you're pulling from wide distro to go into Select.

Let's move on.

These books weren't pirated. Amazon doesn't yank your books for that. They were legitimate arms of distributors that simply neglected to remove a title that was no longer available.

Needless to say, she's still fighting it. No one at Amazon will get back in touch with her, and last I heard, she was planning to reach out to the distributor to see if they could help.

But the damage is, sadly, done. Her royalties for pages read have come to a screeching halt, and she doesn't know when or if she'll be able to get back into Select. When Amazon bans you, it's usually for at least a year.

So, there's one situation to be hyper aware of. If you pull your books from wide, be sure you check everywhere before clicking the "Enroll this book in KDP Select" button. She thought she did, and it's really messing up her money right now.

Have you heard of something like this? Anything strange happen to you?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo