Saturday, March 19, 2011

Kindle Info-For Those Interested in Publishing E-Books

The following article was written by Nancy Hendrickson, a contributor for eHow.  If you've ever been interested in selling your book on Kindle but wasn't sure how to go about doing it and what format your e-book will need to be in, this article will provide you with some clarity.  I've provided both links to the article and have pasted it below for those lazy people out there ;)

How to Convert E-Books to Kindle Format




If you're an author who owns the digital rights to his novel, non-fiction book, how-to manual or e-book, you still may be missing the opportunity to sell to a new and growing audience: Amazon Kindle users. Kindle, Amazon's wireless device, can access and download more than 150,000 digital products via Amazon's Whispernet wireless network. Industry analysts predict that Amazon will sell from 500,000 to 750,000 Kindles in the next year. Learn how to convert your e-book or digital product to Kindle format and reach a whole new reading audience.


Better than the Bookstore? Format Your E-Book for Kindle Readers

Prepare your digital document for Kindle conversion. To make it easy for readers to find you online and learn about your other books, be certain to include in your document links to your website, blog or author pages. Create a title page, a copyright page and a page with your full name and any other pertinent information, such as your email address and publisher. It is recommended that you include "First Kindle Original Edition, xxxx (year)" on your title page.

Save your manuscript in one of these Amazon-acceptable file formats: Microsoft Word (.doc), HTML, Adobe PDF (.pdf) , plain text (.txt) or Mobi (.mobi or .prc). Mobipocket Creator is a free software program that converts documents to several formats that can be read by the Amazon Digital Text Platform.

Go to Amazon's Digital Text Platform site and open an account, or log in if you already have an Amazon account. Because Amazon will be paying you a percentage of your document's sales, you'll need to provide information so they know where to send your share of the proceeds. Information requested will include your name or business name, as well as electronic payment information.

Use the navigation tabs to click "My Shelf," then "Add New Item." You'll be asked to provide details about your book, including keywords, ISBN (if you have one), title, subtitle, description, publication date and content category. Be sure to select the correct content category, as this will help readers find your book. You'll also need to upload a cover image. When finished, click the "Save" button.

Once you're satisfied with all of the information you've given about your book, click the "Upload" button. Uploading generally takes only a few minutes. Once it has been uploaded, preview the book once again for any formatting errors. During this process, Amazon will work with any of the allowable formats (above) and convert them to a format that can be read on the Kindle.

Set the price for your book. Typically, a Kindle book sells for 1/2 to 1/3 the price of a hard copy. The price is entirely up to you. Other Kindle documents range from 99 cents up to more than $100. Your profit will be 35 percent of the list price you set. Once you click the "Publish" button, your book will be live within 12 to 72 hours.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Highly informative article. I plan to go the query route first, then, if all else fails, try Kindle. In the end, I really don't care about fame and fortune. I just want to write a good story that people will want to read. If I make money, fabulous. If not, great. At least I can say I pursued my dream with viligence. Thanks for posting this article!

Sara Furlong-Burr said...

Not a problem. I'm getting jaded very fast with the whole gatekeeper thing. I'm not saying that I've closed the door completely on it, I just think that I'm really not what they're looking for right now.