Kindle Direct Publishing For Absolute Beginners: A Guide to Publishing Kindle E-Books for Beginners

Book Synopsis: “Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners is a jewel to anyone who is about to publish or is thinking of publishing an e-book,” says Bil Howard of ReadersFavorite.com. “Sally goes a step further than most books on electronic publishing by including some marketing techniques and methods of increasing sales of your book.” This book was last updated in June 2023 to reflect changes at Amazon KDP and in e-publishing generally. Sally Jenkins is a prize-winning short story writer and many of her articles on creative writing have appeared in the UK press. She has successfully published several e-books including collections of her short stories and articles. Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners pulls together Sally’s e-publishing experience into a concise and easy to follow guide. Starting with the definition of an e-book and deciding what to write, through to running KDP Select promotions - Sally’s advice is sensible, friendly and easy to follow. Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners gives the novice self-publisher a basic introduction to the following topics (with links to more in-depth articles):

• What to Write - E-publishing is more flexible than traditional publishing
• Before You Publish - Tips to make a manuscript the best it can be
• Title - Use it to make your book discoverable on Amazon
• Front and End Matter - How to start and finish an e-book
• Formatting - Sally recommends Mark Coker’s ‘Smashwords Style Guide’ and adds a few tips of her own
• The Cover - Three ways to generate an e-book cover
• Tax - Information for UK authors on the tax payable on Amazon royalties
• Royalties and Pricing - The choices facing an author
• KDP Select - Advantages and disadvantages
• Creating the Product Description - Writing the book’s ‘blurb’
• KDP Keywords & Categories - Help people find your book
• Kindle Pre-Order - Generating a pre-publication ‘buzz’
• Getting Started with KDP - Entering tax and bank information
• Uploading a Book to KDP - Publishing your book
• A+ Content – What is it?
• Ad Campaigns - A brief overview of paid advertising on Amazon
• Sales Reports - How to view your worldwide sales figures
• Create an Amazon Author Page - Tell the world about yourself
• Obtaining Reviews - Encouraging others to endorse your book
• KDP Select Free Days - Run a ‘Free Days’ campaign
• KDP Countdown Deals - Run a ‘Countdown Deals’ campaign
• Writing a Series of E-Books - Keep the readers coming back for more
• What to Do When the Books Don’t Sell - Re-ignite your e-book sales
• Create a Mailing List - Keep in touch with your readers
• Publishing a Paperback through Amazon KDP – Tips from Sally’s experience of paperback publishing
• Creating a Box Set - Definition of a box set and the benefits of publishing in this way.

What the reviewers said about ‘A Writer on Writing’ - Sally’s collection of creative writing articles:

“A Writer on Writing is highly recommended for all writers.” - Danita Dyess for ReadersFavorite.com

“If you’re not raring to get writing by the time you’re halfway through this book then you probably never will be.” - SaraK.

Readers of Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners may also be interested in Kobo Writing Life Publishing for Absolute Beginners, also available on Amazon Kindle. N.B. In order for both of these books to be standalone introductions to the e-publishing world, there is some overlap in general content between the two books but each one also contains much information specific to the Kindle or Kobo platform respectively.