Hooray! You have finished writing your book and you are getting ready to publish it! Your cover is ready, your book is formatted (either by yourself or by using Kindle Create), and you just have to get it uploaded!
While it is pretty straightforward, there are a few things I wished I knew before I tried to publish my first book, so let me guide you through the process!
1) On your bookshelf, you will see a section like the one above. It doesn't really matter which one you do first, since, if you are publishing in both formats, most of the information will automatically save onto both. I will show you using the paperback, since it has a bit more too it than the kindle.
2) As soon as you click the Create a New Title, you will be led to a page with these things at the header. I will go through each one with you, but you must know that you can't do the next page (as in the paperback content) without finishing the one you are on.
3) The first thing you will input (which, I know, is simple and noticeable) is put in the title of your book as well as the subtitle, if you have one.
The series button is only important if you are adding a book to a series. If your book will be in a series in the future, make sure you add the series details now.
Edition number is only needed if you are republishing the same book with a lot of edits. If there are just small edits, you can just leave it blank.
4) Now it is time to put your name in the author slot!
If there are two authors, a major illustrator, or the like, you can add them under the contributors section. Make sure you select what type of contributor they are!
Underneath these, you can see the place for your description.
You used to have to add coding for your bold type and things like that, but a recent update has changed that to make it easier for us!
Blurbs for the book are not my strong point, so I suggest reading these posts if you need help:
There are many more blogs about this subject, but these were a few of the ones that significantly helped me. If you have an easy time writing your blurb, then you are incredible!
5) Now, the last few things in this section are: the Publishing Rights, Keywords, Categories, and Adult Content.
Publishing Rights is quite easy to complete, since you simply have to mark if you own the copyright, or if it is public domain. (A public-domain book is a book with no copyright, a book that was created without a license, or a book where its copyrights expired or have been forfeited.)
Next are the Keywords. This is one of the most important things for you to do in this section, because it is what helps people find your book. Here are a few sites that will help you with keywords:
The KDP link will not only show you there article on keywords, but will link you to specific places where you can look at more of them.
I have heard of an app called PublisherRocket, but I have not tried it and don't want to talk about what I don't know.
Now, the Categories section is also very simple. All you do is select which categories your book is under. Click on Choose Categories and then scroll down and open up the broad categories. As an example, my book would be under Literature and Fiction > Historical Fiction > Medieval. You can choose two categories for your book and, I suggest, that you don't do the broadest category there is. Because I went all the way down to Medieval on my first category, my book will appear in all three of those categories. Just make sure your categories actually fit your book!
Finally, adult content. I am pretty sure you are smart enough to decide if your book has adult content, so I won't even bother expounding on this.
So, now your done with page one! Out of the three sections, this is in the middle when it comes to difficulty. The next section is the hardest, depending on how you formatted your book. I will be covering the next two sections on my next post.
I hope this has been helpful to you! If you have any questions, or have noticed any oddities in my post, please contact me and let me know!
Hannah