Uploading Your Book to KDP to Publish on Kindle

This is episode five of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience, where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. Yes, you. I'm excited to help you let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share about uploading your book to KDP and how to publish on Kindle in this episode.

My name is Shelly Hitz.

I'm the author of over 35 books and the list keeps growing. I've coached thousands of authors through my books, training programs, online events, seminars and more. I'm best known for inspiring those around me to take action. So if you're an action taker, you're in the right place. I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine? It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight Training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you reach your audience in the best way possible. This particular episode is about Kindle Publishing. This is episode five titled Uploading youg Book to KDP to Publish on Kindle. It's also part five, the final part of my Procrastination to Publication series. I know this episode is going to bring you one step closer to getting your book published on Kindle. This episode the final step. So I'm excited for you and encourage you to be prepared to shine.

All right, we're at the final step and this is where you will publish your book on Kindle. I have a video tutorial that takes you step by step through the process that you can get@shellyhits.com Kindle tutorial and that will give you give you the version of uploading your book and publishing on Kindle. It literally takes five minutes. Once you have done everything else, it will only take you five minutes to get everything uploaded. And normally your book is published on Amazon within hours. Now, they may not send you the email that it's been published for 12 to 24 hours, but sometimes I get anxious to see my book on Amazon published. It never gets old. And so I'll go on Amazon and I will search for my book title and sometimes I'll find it there within a few hours after hitting the publish button. And Amazon does all the work for you. I love that they take the orders, they take the credit cards, they handle support and any returns they handle hosting and delivery. I mean, they handle everything. And with Kindle you can get 70% royalties. I mean, there's really nothing else out there that you can get that is this profitable with. And it's also this hands off. However, it is going to be important to do some marketing and to get some juice going for your book. But this is just one of the easiest ways to sell a product online and still make a decent amount of money. The last step after you publish and once it's live is to ask for reviews and to get some reviews. Normally I recommend to get a minimum of 10 reviews and I recommend that because, you know, otherwise it just looks like a ghost town. If you have a book with no reviews and I go to your page, I'm thinking, oh my, this book is not very popular. It gets, you know, some juice going in the algorithms. Nobody knows for sure what Amazon's algorithms are, but we seem to think it has to do with sales reviews and other things like that. So what I recommend is just asking your followers, hey, is anyone willing to read my latest book in exchange for a free copy? And what I have done and what works really, really well for me is when I ask people to do that, I create a separate list email list for them to sign up and that way I can email them when I have new books out or some people have created a private Facebook group. I don't think that works as well because a lot of people their notifications off on Facebook. However, they almost always will check their email. So what I do is I have a separate email list and then you can have a copy paste template. I like using canned responses in Gmail as well. You can see a tutorial I've written on that on how to use canned responses. But basically you can put your copy paste template into a text file or into your Gmail account as a canned response. And then when somebody replies and says, yes, I'm willing to review this book, then you simply paste that text with the link to your book and such and upload the attachments. It makes it super easy. When I give a review copy, I usually give a PDF and a Moby file.

You can download the moby file within.

Kdp.Amazon.Com when you publish or you can go back in after you've published and there's a place to download your Mobi file within there. What I've done is I've included a tutorial that gives you the step by step instructions on how to download and send those Moby files to your reviewers. I did ask Amazon and they did say it was okay to send them to professional reviewers and you could download it directly from their site and do it that way. So the Moby file can then be downloaded and they can transfer it to their Kindle. The other thing you can do is you can give gift copies on Amazon. And sometimes I will do this in the beginning I'll gift maybe 10 to 20 copies. I'll lower my book to 99 cents if it's higher than 99 cents normally and I'll just give out a bunch of those gift copies and what happens is I'll still earn royalty on it. For books that are between $0.99 and $2.99, you get 35% royalties. So that means I'll still get a little bit of money back on that, but it's not a huge investment. And also what it does is it counts as a sale. And so it can actually get your book into a best selling rank right away when you first release it. And then just some reviews or some resources for this we have an ebook, how to get Honest Reviews. It includes, you know, the templates we use and all of that that you can get. And then we have a toolkit that actually includes the source files that make it really super EAS to copy and paste and use the our exact system for getting reviews. So there you have it. We have covered so much information in this time, but you are now prepared. Write your book and once you get your system down, once you have your team of people that you're working with, you may then be able to write and publish your book within seven days. However, even if it's 30 days or seven weeks or even longer, you have a system that you can use that can get you more exposure, bring in more business for you and increase your credibility. So as a review, the system that I use is for step number one is to choose your topic and create an outline for your book. Step number two is to do the writing. And as I mentioned, there are three different options. You can speak your book, you can write your book, you in blocks of time, or you could hire a GhostWriter. Step number three is the editing. And like I said, you know, for most of the small ebooks, a self edit and using some software will be sufficient. You can also use proofreaders and a professional editor, especially for those print books or showcase books. Step four is book cover design. And it truly is important because you know, they say don't judge a book by its cover, but many people do. And so make sure you don't skim on that. Step five is to prepare for publication. This is where you're going to choose your keywords, categories, get your book description and your front and back matter done, but don't let these things stop you. I was recently talking to an author that has a book that she's written, but it hasn't been published yet. And one of the stopping points for her was choosing the right categories. And I told her, you know what, you can change those at any time. So you can change your keywords at any time, you can change your book description at any time, you can even change your book cover at any time and the interior of your book. So just get it done, make a decision and move forward. And then step number six, making the final corrections and edits and getting the formatting for Kindle and then finally publishing on Kindle and getting your reviews.

Lights, Camera, Action. It's time for this week's Take Action Tip. This week is the final step for publishing your book on Kindle. So my take Action tip for you today is to watch the video I have for you on how to upload your file to Kindle. You can find this video tutorial, no opt in required@authoraudience.com Kindle tutorial that's authoraudience.com Kindle tutorial also, make sure to get the show notes and all the resources and links from Today's episode@authoraudience.com 5 that's the number 5 authoraudience.com 5 Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Gain segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. The verse this week comes from Hebrews 12:1. It says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. As you cross this finish line of publishing your book, it makes me think about running the race. Running the race with Christ and running it with endurance so that we can accomplish all that God has intended for us and we can use the gifts he has given us. It's my hope and my goal that these episodes are helping you to reach your audience with Kindle Publishing so that you're able to let your light shine and use your God given gifts. I believe in you. I know you're working hard and I'm excited to see published author in your bio. If you've been getting value from this podcast and feel the urge to leave a review, I have a gift for you. Simply post a review and send me a screenshot and I'll give you my $47 course procrastination to publication for free. Simply send me an email@contactellehits.com and I'll send you this gift. Don't miss next week's episode where I'm going to interview one of my authoraudienceacademy.com members, Richard Lowe. He's been able to write and publish seven books in 30 days and he's going to share with you three writing strategies that have helped him to have so much success. You will not want to miss this.

Episode and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources and mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelly's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.