These are your words, this is your story a tale of pathos and woe, heartbreak and longing, action, violence, sex, death and transformation. Its overarching message will no doubt resonate deeply with the reader. 
Except, to have readers, your work need to be published. Fortunately, this is now straightforward to do for practically any person. Where when writers had to rely upon agents and publishers to consider their operate, anybody can publish their novel, essay, or non-fiction masterpiece on Amazon’s Kindle platform. 
Why Pick Kindle?
The Kindle is a series of eReaders and tablets supplied by Amazon. In parallel, the organization has also constructed an whole eBook publishing platform that permits authors—any author—to attain potentially much more than a billion readers about the world.
Along with the Kindle device, a Kindle app is offered for almost every major web browser, smartphone platform and for both Windows and Mac-primarily based computers.  Publish your function when by means of Amazon’s “Kindle Direct Publishing” platform and it immediately becomes accessible via the Kindle app on almost any individual computing device.
Another purpose to publish with Amazon’s Kindle platform is the fact that Amazon dominates the “eBook” marketplace. 
Lastly, even for these with minimal computing skills, publishing on Amazon’s Kindle platform is fairly pain-cost-free. 
With these benefits in mind, here is the step-by-step guide to self-publishing your own performs with Amazon’s tools.
1. Sign Up To Publish
At the bottom of Amazon’s house page is a link to “independently publish with us.” Click the link. You are ready to publish to Kindle. 
2. Create Kindle Publishing Account
Click “Get Started” to commence. 
You will require to use your current Amazon account or develop a single. Note: You may be essential to offer additional details, like your banking info, as Amazon will wire your royalties to your account on a quarterly basis. 
three. Add Title
With an account created, Amazon takes you to your “Kindle Dashboard.” This is where you will add your performs and access reports on book sales. 
If your operate is prepared to be published, click on “Add New Title.” 
four. Enter Your Book Details
Here, you supply Amazon with specifics on your book, including title, authorship, book variety, pricing and far more. Note: You do not need to have to have an ISBN code when utilizing Amazon.
5. Book Category
Amazon encourages you to add up to two “categories” for your book. This can incorporate every little thing from “Body, Thoughts & Spirit” to “Dystopian Fiction.”
Recommendation: Chances are your book crosses a lot more than two categories. Search Amazon for the book(s) that you believe is most like yours. In the specifics page, Amazon consists of the categories chosen for that book. Use those. 
You can also add up to seven keywords and phrases.
Recommendation: Believe of the words readers might use to find your function in a search string. Select those words. If it is a book about Steve Jobs, for instance, you may contain: Steve Jobs, Apple, iPhone, Macintosh, Silicon Valley, Ashton Kutcher, iPad. 
six. Give Your Book A Cover
Even an eBook ought to have a cover, even though it is not necessary.  
Amazon gives suggestions for uploading cover pictures and also contains a rather restricted tool to produce your personal cover.
Recommendation: I strongly encourage you to hire somebody to create a visually attractive cover for your perform if you do not have the skills for this. Solutions such as eLance can connect you with graphic designers at inexpensive prices. 
A poor cover image is likely to turn away possible buyers.
7. Time To Upload Your Book
Now comes the entertaining-scary component: uploading your book! 
Fortunately, Amazon makes this rather easy. 1st, it asks you to decide on if you will enable digital rights management (DRM) or not. If you allow DRM, this makes it tougher for other individuals to share your perform and potentially harder for it to be copied and sold without having payment.
Odds are really higher that you will never ever drop sales (or income) because your eBook did not have DRM enabled. My recommendation is to go DRM-cost-free. Click “do not enable digital rights management.” 
Now upload the book from your personal computer.
Amazon accepts the following formats:
Word (DOC and DOCX)
HTML
ePub
Text
PDF
eight. Formatting and Previewing
If your function has minimal formatting requirements—it looks like a normal function of fiction or non-fiction, for example—Amazon’s upload service is extremely excellent at retaining your formatting. Nonetheless, you should nonetheless preview your operate even soon after effectively uploading it. 
If your operate consists of numerous photos, for example, and/or charts or other particular formatting specifications, you may require to use a specific system for that and then save the document in PDF format. Amazon’s upload service must retain the correct formatting.
Recommendation: It really is still greatest to often bear in mind that an eBook is presented on a screen. Screens come in many sizes – from iPad Mini’s to iPhones to a new BlackBerry and several other people. Operates that contain a number of graphics, say, could merely never appear as good on a electronic screen as they do in print.
Right after uploading your function, use the “On the web Previewer” hyperlink to see how your book will appear on different devices. Then, from the drop down list, Amazon lets you see what your book will look like on choose Kindle devices, iPhone and iPad. If you wish to see how it will appear on other devices, or in a browser, you will need to have to download the “previewer” tool.
9. Set Your Cost
Amazon lets you set practically any price you wish for your book. Nonetheless, there are two distinct royalty options: 35% or 70%. Certainly, you want the 70% royalty.
In almost all situations, deciding on the 70% royalty is the smart selection. Know this, however:
If you value your book under $ two.99, Amazon will only offer the 35% royalty alternative. 
In some smaller markets, Amazon only delivers the 35% royalty. (The 70% selection is accessible in the U.S., Canada, UK and most larger markets.)
When you choose the 70% royalty choice, Amazon also deducts a small “delivery charge” for each book sold. This is their additional fee for wirelessly distributing your work, and is primarily based on the file size of your function. In the U.S., this fee is presently set at 15 cents per megabyte. (A Word document of about one hundred,000 words and with minimal graphics is typically no more than 1 MB.)
There is no delivery charge with the 35% royalty option. 
As a result, if you charge $ two.99 for your perform and select the 70% royalty alternative, your royalty for every single book sold is most likely to be:
$ two.99 x .70 = $ 2.09 just before delivery fee
$ two.09 – .15 (delivery fee) = $ 1.94. 
You earn $ 1.94 for each and every book sold. (Authors are solely accountable for paying taxes.)
You can designate your book for sale in only specific nations, or worldwide. 
10. Completed!
Congratulations! You are no longer just an author, but an author whose book(s) is accessible across the planet. Of course, it generally takes Amazon about 24-48 hours ahead of your book is actually accessible for sale.
As soon as accessible, I also advise you produce an Amazon author web page – a free of charge service that hyperlinks your bio with your book listing.
Some final notes. All through this procedure, Amazon somewhat aggressively promotes their “KDP Pick” plan. With KDP Choose, if you agree to publish your operate on Kindle—exclusively—for 90 days (this can differ) and enable Amazon buyers to borrow it for free, Amazon will spend you a little charge each and every time the book is borrowed. Generally, this fee is close to the royalty you would have received had the book really been purchased. 
Amazon certainly desires absolutely everyone to have their operate available exclusively via Amazon. 
Offered Amazon’s market share, you may possibly want to join KDP Select. Of course, this does preclude these who prefer to use Apple’s iBooks service, or other platform, from purchasing your work for 3 months. 
Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.