I wrote a novel in 2010 entitled, Shattered and I am happy to report that I have finally published it. After a lot of research, I decided to publish it using Amazon. The reason? Because my novel would have the greatest exposure. When you publish with iBooks through Apple, you have to remain exclusive with Apple. And, while the iBooks audience is ever-expanding, iBooks are only available on Apple products. Amazon’s Kindle has a free app available for Apple products as well as distributing through its own brand of devices. So, I opted to publish through Amazon because of a greater range of exposure for my work.
I am happy to report that the process is very user friendly. The first step is to go to kdp.amazon.com (Kindle Direct Publishing) and log in with your Amazon account. From there, you can upload your pre-formatted book to your and your cover artwork to the site. You select whether you want a 35% or 70% royalty option. The biggest difference between the two is that the 70% option takes a fee for download based off of the size of the file. You include your bank information for deposit of your profits from sales and you are off to the races.
Like I said, it’s very user friendly. There are info bubbles throughout the process to assist through the process and help users successfully publish their books. My one criticism is that the pricing options/limitations are a little confusing. Amazon does a decent job explaining, but doesn’t give enough differences between the two royalty options.
I can recommend using the Amazon Self Publishing tool as an option for publishing. Not only is it easy to use, but it also reaches a large amount of Kindle, iPhone, iPad and iPod users.
