Publishing Kindle Books

“Why do you want to publish a book?”

Here are 5 good reasons to publish a book:

1. Royalties

2. Personal Branding

3. List-Building

4. Product Gateway

1. RoyalitiesThe chances of making big bucks on Kindle books are slim, but if you do want to do it for this reason, these are the books that make it big:

Big markets that sell well - • Non-fiction: health, weight loss, relationships, time management, personal development, beauty, religion, food/recipes (these in particular seem to sell like crazy...but they need to be niched)

• Fiction: thrillers, horror, young adult, fantasy/sci-fi, erotica

• Seasonal/Holiday: Halloween, Christmas, political books, fantasy football season

If you’re going to make money, you need to serialize.

2. Personal Branding/CredibilityYou’re not concerned with number of books that sell - you just want your book to live in the top 10 in your category...and you can claim the title of “best selling author”.

• Great for speakers and consultants

• The ultimate business card

• This is for credibility, not money (so no need to serialize)

3. List Building“If you like this book, find more resources on our website by visiting www.mysite.com...”

• These are your highest value subscribers because they’ve already bought from you

• You’re leveraging the exposure from Amazon to reach a much broader audience

4. Product GatewayPublish a how-to book, then sell products used in the process

• If you currently sell products, it’s silly not to publish a book about the processes the products are used with (e.g. “How to Make and Sell A Video Training Course In A Weekend” >> sell flip cams, green screens and lighting on your website)

• You can sell your own products or affiliate products

• Create a Guidebook and sell training on your site (e.g. Mom’s Guide to Paleo Diet For the Family >>> sell memberships for premium access to recipes, exercise videos, etc.

Choose a topic for your book

Shorter stories work best on Kindle: think of 5 80-page books vs. one 400-page book.

Set up your Kindle Direct Publishing Account

You can use your existing Amazon account, or set up one just for publishing purposes.

http://kdp.amazon.com/

Kindle Anatomy

The basic outline of a Kindle ebook is as follows:

•Title page1.Title of your book2.Subtitle3.Author Name4.Copyright5.Contact info (optional)

1.Table of Contents2.Call-To-Action Page3.Request for Review Page4.Other Books (optional)5.Preface6.Chapters7.Resources (optional)8.Index (optional)

Kindle Anatomy

Table of Contents: Write chapter titles as questions (from your index cards). Much more compelling.

Call To Action Page: Immediately following your table of contents should be a page where you ask your reader to take some action.

Ideally, use a video to capture attention - AND drive them to your website when they click to play! So, in the book, you’d paste in an image of your video as a placeholder. This will actually be a linked image that will direct people to your website page when they click to play it.

This video and the text on the CTA page can drive people to:

•Subscribe to your newsletter

•Watch a bonus video on your website

•Download a bonus report

•Download the bonus interview

Format your Kindle: On a Mac, use Pages to create your book document. Make sure your text and image (your video thumbnail) are properly hyper-linked. Then go to File > Export > ePub.(I imagine Word has this, too, but I don’t use Word to know how to guide you.)Or, go to Fiverr.com and pay someone $5 to format to Kindle (do a search for “kindle format”).

Login to KDP account and click “Add New Title”: Follow the instructions. Select to “Enroll in KDP Select”.

Format and Publish

Write a great description:

Use your primary keywords so that your description starts and ends with the keyword phrases you most want to rank for.

Open with a question you know your readers would want answered.

Include a bulleted list of benefits (could also be your Table of Contents).

Close with reviews/testimonials (once you have them).

Publish

Confirm your “Content Rights”. Select “Do not enable digital rights management”. That probably sounds strange, but if you have Amazon enable this option it will be significantly more difficult for your readers…legitimate paying readers…to consume your books outside of Kindle’s proprietary tools.

Upload your cover image and book file.

Select pricing.

Select to “allow lending”. Lending not only increases readership, you also get paid every time an Amazon Prime member “borrows” your book for free.

Wait 24 hours...and you did it!