Whether you are a new author looking to get your foot into the door or a one time author who wrote an interesting and useful manuscript, publishing your work for sale on Amazon.com tailored for the Kindle format is a nice and easy way to go. One of the major benefits of doing this is the huge market share that Amazon has; your book will get more notice being for sale on Amazon.com than any other outlet available.

Amazon recently announced an effort to help authors publish books in their tangible form. This service is called Amazon Encore, its release date is not yet known. This post will be focusing on self publishing for the Amazon Kindle format.

Another benefit of publishing your e-book for use on the Amazon Kindle is the very low startup costs to do so. You are not charged anything to do this. You simply create an account, enter the details along with a description of your e-book, and afterwards you upload it and set a selling price for the e-book.

There are certain types of formats that Amazon can use to convert for viewing on the Kindle. The best way to do this is to use Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, or DTP. There, you can upload one of the below file formats and Amazon will automatically prepare it for the Kindle.  Read the next section for another option.

• Microsoft Word
• PDF
• Text
• RTF
• HTML, XHTML
• Amazon Kindle (.mobi/.prc/.azw – all 3 extensions are equivalent)
• IDPF format (also known as OEB (.opf) or EPUB)

Note: once you have uploaded your file and Amazon has accepted it, it is highly recommended you check to make sure the conversion process did not negatively alter your work in any way.

Creating Your E-Book

Creating an e-book is more complex than just typing it out, adding some photos and graphs, then uploading the file. You need to have a well laid out table of contents. This will allow readers to navigate to certain portions of your book with ease, I wouldn’t consider publishing a book without one.

Another thing to keep in mind is the use of images in your e-book. Although the Amazon Kindle uses black and white coloring, you should let it do the work to convert the colors to the many shades of grey it is capable of rendering. Also, if you are viewing the e-book on an Apple i-Phone, the images will be in full color.

One of the best software programs available to properly format an e-book for compliance with the Amazon Kindle guidelines is the MobiPocket software. It is recommended by Amazon. This software also has the capability to emulate an e-reader for testing purposes.

Get the MobiPocket Software Free

Preparing Your E-Book for Sale

After you have written and properly formatted your e-book, you are ready to start getting it ready for sale on Amazon. You will need to create an account with the Amazon Digital Text Platform. It will ask you for your basic contact information, bank account information, and tax information for payment processing purposes.

Then you go to the”My Shelf” tab and choose to add a new item. There you can enter:

• The Title of your e-book
• The Description
• Author Name
• Publish Date
• Category
• Keywords
• Product Image

Then you will be asked to enter the price at which you wish to sell your e-book for. One point on this, Amazon really touts that “most” of the Kindle books sell for $9.99. There have been a few examples of mass boycotts of books selling for over that amount in the blogosphere. I would not recommend selling your e-book for more than $9.99. More on this figure in the next section.

Here is the Official PDF instruction manual for using the Amazon DTP service (PDF)

Making Money with Your E-Book

Some authors may have just written a manuscript for fun and do not expect to earn any or very little income from publishing their e-book for the Kindle. Often times people and businesses write e-books as a tool for promoting their website or business. (there are some good promotion like e-books out there, however some are quite “scam” like)

Other authors would really like to make some extra dough on the side using this publishing platform. This is quite possible. The way the payment proceeds work is quite simple. You earn 35% of the sale of your E-Book. Just like that, and Amazon gets the rest. They will send you a payment once you have earned at least $10, and you will receive it 60 days after the calendar month in which you earned that threshold. Example: You reach $11 in sales at the end of June. You will receive your payment via direct deposit into a US bank account 60 days after the end of June, or approximately September 1.

There are other ways to sell e-books online, many other ways. I recommend you use them also. However, as I touched on before. Even though Amazon gives you a paltry 35%, Amazon has a huge customer base and is able to sell more effectively than any other online business out there.

Note: Any income garnered from the sale of e-books on Amazon is taxable and should be reported on your IRS tax return, most often on Schedule C or C-EZ. Amazon may not send you a 1099 to report this income unless the amount is $600 or more.

Rights and Copyrights

One thing I was really glad to read in the Digital Publication Distribution Agreement that Amazon has you agree to before allowing you to publish your e-book, is that they do not take your published work as theirs. The allow you to retain full custody of the copyright, allowing you to continue to distribute it in any way you like. However, hey do ask that you do not charge more on Amazon than your other outlets of choice.

Publishing anything on the internet does have its risks. Even though the Kindle format is a relatively safe way to publish your work, it is still susceptible to being duplicated or distributed freely. They do not hold themselves liable for this, and there is very little you can do about it.

For further reading on the copyright agreement and your rights as an author read:

Digital Publication Distribution Agreement

Thank You,

Kindle Tank

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