Hey everyone and welcome to today's video. So you've created your book cover and
you've created your book interior. Well, now it's time to upload both
of those files to Amazon hit that publish button and
get your book published. Now I'm going to be using
this book cover and this lined notebook interior, which I
created in my last video. Now, if you've not yet created your first book
or you're new to this whole business, then I suggest going to watch that video, which I'll leave a link to
in the description below, that'll walk you through step by step, the whole creation process of a
lined notebook, or journal. Now, the process I'm gonna show
you today can be applied, whether you are publishing a line
journal, a low content journal, such as a coloring book,
puzzle book, or log book. And also if you are publishing a
written non-fiction or fiction book, and you want to publish it in
paperback or hard back version. So the first step, we've got our two files downloaded
onto our computer for the cover and the interior, we then need to
go to our KDP dashboard. Now it's free to open an account
at KDP and relatively simple. All you need is a bank account
to which Amazon can send your royalties. And we want to
click on bookshelf, at the top. So this then takes us to our bookshelf
page, where we upload our books. So just click on create, then
click on, create paperback. The steps I show you today are exactly
the same for a hardcover as well. So, first of all, in language,
I leave that as English, as the paperbacks primary
language. Ignore this box here, where it says list helper. That's just because I've got a
plug-in installed on my browser. So we come to the book title. Now your book title has to appear
on the front cover or spine of your book. Now, the book I created
has notebook written on the front. So that is going to be my book
title. Very adventurous, I know. Now the subtitle, I treat this as a kind of mini
sales header and mini description of the book. And I normally
split it into three parts. First is an alternative description, and I normally use different words here
than what I've already used in the book title. So I'm going to call this
a cool stamp themed journal, comma. Then I usually just do an additional
short descriptor for this. I'm going to just put 120 pages. Then I normally write in who the
target market is for this book. So I'll write something like
ideal for mom, dad, kids, and stamp lovers. Now what the subtitle isn't for
it isn't for a place to stuff lots of keywords into. It's
something I see all too often. The problem with that is that it looks
awful when it's published and it does put customers off. I understand
why people do it. They try to cover loadsof different search
terms that people may put into Amazon and hopefully get a click.
That doesn't happen. Also, make sure you do get your punctuation
and capitalization of your words correct? Okay. Onto the
next section, series. This doesn't apply to the type of book
we're publishing nor does addition number. So we can leave those alone.
Now, when it comes to author name, this can be your own name. It can be a
pen name you've made up or a brand name. For all my books I tend
to use a brand name. What I suggest doing before you
use it is just doing a quick search for the name or brand name you're
going to use just to make sure it's not being used by someone
else. Okay. So for this, I'm just going to make up something
on the fly and call this simple cool press. Doesn't have to be three words.
It can just be two. If it is two, then delete that one in
the middle. Contributors. Here you can add the name of someone else. If they've maybe helped you
create the book in this case, it's just me creating it. So
I'm going to leave that blank. Now in the description again, I describe the book in a
bit more detail and again, who the target market is for. So I'm
just going to again, keep this simple, just for an example, a stamp themed blank lined notebook, 120 pages, six by nine inches. Perfect for mom, dad, grandma, granddad and stamp collecting enthusiasts. Okay. The next box
publishing rights. I click on, I own the copyrights and hold necessary
publishing rights. The other button, this is public domain work. This mainly applies to
publishers who are publishing written work, nonfiction and fiction
work that's in the public domain. Next, we come to the keywords. Now here I put in
alternative words that people may be using when they're
searching for my book. Now it does take a bit of research. It does take a bit of thinking and
brainstorming to think up all these alternative words. Now I have done a video devoted to
these seven keyword boxes, which again, I'll leave a link to down below
in the description. Basically, when filling out these, you've
got two options. One, in each box, you could put a search phrase. So you could put something like
by a stamp journal and then do a similar search term in
the second box and so on. Or you can put individual words. And you can put more than
one word in each box. And I tend to use this
approach. So in the first box, I might write something like
notepads, pad, book. Again, I tend not to repeat words that appear
in the title and subtitle of the book. I might put additional words for
the target market, pop, mom, boy, girl, grandson, etcetera. Then I might put in some reasons why
this book would be bought. Gift, present, birthday, Christmas. And
these extra keywords, just help your book get found when
people do their searches on Amazon. Now, categories. There are reports this may be changing
soon and there may actually be a box to tick specifically
for low content books. In terms of picking two categories. There's no easy way around this
other than to go through these lists of options. So I'm just
going to go through nonfiction, gonna click on antiques and
collectibles, scroll down. I think we've got stamps there.
I'm going to click on that. And I'm also going to click on
crafts and hobbies and click on general. So that's my two categories.
There are some tools that can help. I think on Book Bolt
and Tangent Templates, they do have a category search tool, which you can put in keywords related
to your book and we'll suggest some categories. Adult content. Well, it's
just a line notebook so we'll click on no. Save and continue next.
We come to the ISBN. Now this is something that may
also be changing quite soon. I think some people may have been
messaged about this. I haven't. So I can't give you any further
details. When I have further details, I will do a video to update you
on that. But apparently what, what may happen is that you have a
choice between either providing an ISBN number that you've paid for
or not having an ISBN number at all on your book. At the
moment as we stand here, we can get a free ISBN number off KDP. So I'll just click on that
and click on assign ISBN. Publication date we can leave
blank. Now, print options. We've got these options here. The most common you would choose is black
and white interior with white paper, which is what we're going to choose
today. But we've got other options here. You could have a color interior
and also premium color interior. Now in terms of trim size, the book that we're going to be
publishing today is six by nine inches, which is actually the most common
size for lined notebooks or journals. If you want a different size, you just click on select a different size
and you've got all these options here, or you could enter custom
numbers. Now, bleed or no bleed. This causes a lot of consternation.
Again, I've done a video devoted to that, which I'll also link
to in the description. Basically with this particular
book that I'm publishing the lines, go from one edge of the page to the other, which means this book has bleed. So we're going to click on bleed. And
in terms of paperback cover finish, that's entirely up to you. I tend to create books with a
matte finish cause I like the feel. I like the look of them, which is
what I'm going to do today. Next, we come to our manuscript, which
is the interior of our book. So I'm just going to click on
upload paperback, manuscript. And you just upload your interior. Next,
we click on the button where it says, upload a cover you already have. Then
click on upload your cover file. Again, find where you've downloaded
your cover and select it. Once that file is uploaded, which may take a few moments you'll
notice that this button here turns orange. So what you need to do is just click
on that. This will take a few moments. So we'll jump into it when it appears. And then you are presented with this
page where it will tell you if there are any issues or errors related to your book, cover or interior. So,
if there are issues, you'll find that there will be the
occasional little red triangle, either on the cover or if
there's issues with the interior, they'll be normally located
around this dotted border area. And also in this left hand side column, there'll be information which will tell
you more about what the issues are with your book. So we can see, there are
no issues here on the left hand side, we don't have any little red warning
triangles. So our book cover looks okay. And then have a look
at the interior pages. Now you can flick through
all 120 pages if you want to, but during creating this book, all
the interior pages were identical. So I don't anticipate any errors. So I'm not going to go through all 120
pages. Next thing to do, bottom right, click on approve. You'll notice here at the bottom right
of the page it will now tell you your printing cost. So next we want
to click on save and continue. And we go to the final page.
Next, in terms of territories, I normally leave this as all
territories, worldwide rights. Primary marketplace, I
always pick amazon.com. You can pick one of these
other options if you so wish, particularly if maybe you are publishing
a book in a different language. Next, we come down to the pricing. Now for most line journals,
I price my books. $6.99. You will find a lot of people
do publish their books at $5.99. I always stick to $6.99. In fact, I
had a book that was selling very well. I think the best sellers rank was
around 15,000 and as an experiment, I reduced the price from
$6.99 down to $5.99. Guess what happened? The
number of sales also reduced. And I think one of the issues is people
see a book that's cheaper and think the book is cheap and they see something
slightly more expensive. And. Especially if they're buying it as a gift, they'll choose that slightly
more expensive option
because they're perceived, they're getting more value. So
all my books I sell at $6.99. Now Amazon will then according to the
US dollar price will give all these suggested prices for all the different
markets in the different currencies. Now you could leave those as is, or you could go and change those to
whatever you want. So you may think ooh, in the UK, I want to charge slightly more. So you could put something like £5.87. And also on the right hand side here,
you can click on expanded distribution. Now for some books, especially
books like these line books, I don't think they'll allow
the expanded distribution. I'm gonna leave that as is for the moment. I always see books published and
sold via expanded distribution as a, just a little bit of extra icing on the
cake. I don't get too worried about it. The amount of royalties you
get per book, a lot lower. You don't sell too many of them. So it doesn't make an overall
impact on your income. It's just nice to have that little bit
extra. But don't get too worried. If you, if you find that the type
of book you're publishing, isn't allowed to be published on
expanded distribution. So that's it, you've now priced your book. And the next step is to hit
that publish your paperback book and congratulations you've now published
your book. If it's your first book, congratulations, you're
now an Amazon publisher. I find there's a great deal
of satisfaction to be had
from publishing your own books and with a bit of luck and a
fair wind you may make some sales, or you may make a lot of sales depending
on the type of book you've created, how good your cover design is,
how good your interior design is, how good your keyword research has
been and your use of keywords in the titles and subtitles.
Now, as I said earlier, if you haven't yet published your own
book, I suggest watching this video next, where I run through the whole process
step by step of creating the cover and creating that lined interior. And
it's a great way to get started. Thank you very much for your time.
It really is very much appreciated. Don't forget to hit the subscribe
button and until next time, goodbye.
