Self Publishing with Amazon KDP

It's a lovely, sunny Sunday here in Florida. The light is streaming in on the back patio, and I can just glimpse the edge of our bright pink hibiscus in full bloom. But I'm inside, curled up under comforters on the daybed with an anxious cat trilling at my feet. Husband has just started playing League of Legends, so I think I've lost him until dinnertime. It's pretty much the perfect setting to write my first blog post.

I thought for my first post I would talk about the ease (and, surprisingly, the fun) of self publishing with Amazon. The Nephilim: Book One has been out for a few days, and I loved every minute of getting it ready and clicking "publish." Okay, maybe "love" is a bit of an exaggeration. Trying to figure out how to put in a live table of contents almost made me cry, but looking back on myself raging at the computer it's like "awww, baby Bridge, don't be so upset--it'll all work out!"

I decided I wanted to self publish for many reasons, chief among them that I don't like to wait. I also like the idea of people writing and publishing exactly what they want to say. This, of course, means the story will be much farther from perfect than if a couple of professional editors had their eyes and red pens all over it, but maybe it's just a little bit like when you buy something handmade as opposed to mass produced? A little bit more love and sweat and blood in there? Anyway, this isn't to say I don't love me some professionally edited writing. A typo or a plot hole or confusing dialogue can ruin the greatest of stories, and I know I've been guilty of these, but my impatience and romanticized notion of indie publishing won out. And who's to say a publisher would ever want to pick up anything I'd ever written? (Don't let me fool you--that's the biggest fear right there.)

So self publishing it was, and I have not been disappointed. Amazon makes it very easy. After you've got your content, you just need to format it, preferably in Word it seems, and they've got fabulous directions on how to do that. Husband's computer has Word Starter 2010 (not the for-realsies version), but it still worked out for me. Then it was basically inputting the information onto Amazon's website (which included reading the Terms and Conditions VERY carefully) and committing to putting my work out there for all to see. Yes, I almost hyperventilated, but yes, I'd do it again.

I found, after the book was published, that there was a Teen and Young Adult category, but when choosing my own categories, it wasn't available. I emailed customer services, expecting to not hear back for a few days and to get a nonsensical answer, but in less than 12 hours I had an incredibly kind response, and they'd moved my book into the category I wanted. I was shocked and thrilled with the service for something I wasn't really even paying for. I suppose Amazon profits from the book selling, so it's in their best interests to get it put in the right place, but they'll profit so much more from a billion other things that I was surprised by their helpfulness to little old me.

If you go the KDP route, you get a couple other great perks like 70% royalties, inclusion in a sharing program, much like a library, and access to the global market (the anglophile in me got all excited to see my book listed in pounds), but my favorite thing is easily the sales tools. You can list your book for FREE for five days every 90 days. That's fabulous access to readers, especially for a no-name like myself. I've used one free day already and will use the other four over the long weekend coming up, Valentine's Day through President's Day. It's just working out perfectly. Now, if only I could get a fabulous review up there before it goes on sale again! There are plenty of other great little advantages too like real-time reports on sales and the ability to edit details on a whim if you find a mistake. You get a lovely author page as well.

Of course, marketing is essentially all up to you. Your book gets the benefit of the "readers who bought this also bought" links below other titles which can be helpful, and Amazon reserves the right to market your work at any time, so there is the possibility they might throw you up on the front page, but if that happens you're probably already selling off the charts. I've only been doing my own marketing for a few days, but it's actually kind of nice. I love Twitter largely because it feels a little like a community, and I try to find other self published authors to retweet and get the word out about their stuff as well. And I'm hoping karma will pay me back in the long run.

No matter what the outcome of all this, I'm glad I did it. Publishing, well, just FINISHING a novel has been a dream of mine for as far back as I can remember, and now I've done it. Of course, it's just the jumping off point, but I consider myself incredibly lucky to be living in a time when we can self publish with such ease. Huzzah to the indie author!