Hello everyone, welcome to my how to self publish a book series. I will be sharing my steps to publishing a poetry collection; and you can use this guide for short stories, essays or any type of work that is 100 pages or less. So, I recently dropped my first book and it was a very long process because it was my first time doing it and there was a lot of trial and error. Today to start I want to talk about Why You Should Self Publish On Amazon KDP

Before I decide on KDP I had tried different ways that just didn’t work, but once I came to understand the pros and cons with KDP I knew it was the best choice for me. And after publishing my book Needy: My Break Up Song. I am already beginning the process of getting my next poetry collection out. I have taken some time to analyse all the different things I did that worked and didn’t work on my first try. And I have put together 9 steps I am hoping will help me get through making and preparing my second book much easier.

The outline for the next couple of weeks is to:

– Write: Decide what you want to share and start writing 

– Manuscript: What pieces and ordering them onto a document.

– Design: Font, Simple designs and Illustrations

– Wrapping: Name, Front cover, and Blurb

– Signing up KDP: Upload and order proof copy 

– Break: Walk away for 4 weeks and forget about it

– Final Edit: Make changes to manuscript

– Publish: Re-upload and set the book to LIVE 

– Marketing: Promote your book

These steps will act as a guide, and will be a good way to keep track of my progress.

Why Self Publish?

Before I started my self publishing journey I had to ask myself why. It is important to understand your intentions for your book and your goals.

My goal for my books is about being creative and sharing my work with a community that will appreciate it. That is what kept me pushing through all the stress of putting my book together. The main reason to self publish is because you can’t help yourself but want to share. I think if you are simple with your intentions it will help you create a sincere book.

If you are thinking to get into book publishing to make a lot of money, then you are going to be very disappointed. I make 40p per book sale. And honestly I am more than happy with that because I was aware of the industry. Self published authors need to make money through other ways apart from their book sales.

Now if you want to make a lot of money that’s fine, but you need to be amazing. Only best sellers, which is over 10,000 copies of a book being sold will make you a sufficient amount. The pressure now comes down to how entertaining and unique is your work and can it sell to many people. To become a best seller intentionally you have to write based on what people want to buy. 

Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to make money without being a best seller, but it will be more like a top up and not a main source of income. 

So once, you figured out your reason, either for the freedom to create or the money incentive or something else. You need to decided how you’re going to do it.

Why KDP Is A Good Choice?

The first thing about self publishing is that it is easy and hard; there will be different parts of the process you expect to find easy or hard based on what you think your strengths are. For example the idea of writing a manuscript can seem easy. Once you get into the flow writing and finishing a manuscript is do able; it can be hard some times when you have writers block or the piece doesn’t read like you but you are a writer and this is your element. This is the part of the process that you expect to be easy. And then there will be some parts you expect to be hard. The reasons being when you are self publishing you take on other roles in order to get your book out; you are administrator, editor, designer, marketing lead and so much more. Becoming a jack of all trades you will be aware that there is only so much you can do.

And the biggest role you need to figure out which can hit level 100 on the scale of difficult, is how and where you will sell your finished book. This means where will people find your book and how will it be printed and shipped. Some new authors make a deal with a local printing company and pay to have a bulk order of their book. With this they can maybe put some of their books in stores or sell it themselves online. This can work if you are willing to invest your money and time to be in charge of customer service and logistics.

I was not in a position to do that. I knew I needed some sort of print on demand service. And so I looked at a few websites who offered to print books and ship them. The options are very few, less than a handful. And then the option to do that will no upfront cost, as in to publish my book completely for free left me with Amazon KDP. 

And so quickly the con of KDP is that you have to fit your manuscript and front covers designs to their specifications. This is fine if you started the process knowing, however I had to change a lot of my manuscript and front cover to fit their format. Literally that is the only con for me anyway. I honestly think Amazon have thought of everything. Once I understood what I was doing, publishing was such an easy process.

In terms of having my book on the platform I don’t pay anything upfront. The only time I paid was to order proof reads and then finally my author copy.

But of course, when I do make a sale they take their share.

When my book is sold profit is split 60:40. And then from my 60% royalties the cost of printing will be deducted. And the cost depends on the what you choose, for example I chose a glossy front cover which I knew will increase printing cost a little but it was fine.

In terms of distribution, my book is only available on Amazon; but there is the options to expand it to other online retailers and book sellers. But that would bring my royalties down to 40%. And at the moment with 60% I make 40p so if yeah I don’t think I should make any less. And I’m good with just selling on Amazon.

Self publishing through Amazon, means that I am able to start working on my next book immediately. I don’t have 100s of copies that I am desperate to sell. When someone wants to connect with my work they can grab a copy whenever. I still have to work on marketing my book as of course I do want to makes sales and grow a community. But I am being very chill and relaxed. I have achieved my gaol which is to become a an author. I have finally brought out a poetry book that I’ve wanted to share for over 2 years. Check out my book Needy: My Break Up Song to look at my first attempt at self publishing.  

The next part of the series I will talk about writing and putting together a 1st draft manuscript. Thank you for watching, if you enjoyed this video and want to follow me on my journey to publishing my next collection using my 9 steps. Remember to like, comment and subscribe, ringing the notification bell so you know when I post.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

0:48 Before KDP

1:42 My 9 Steps To Self Publishing 

2:23 Why Should You Self Publish?

3:08 How Much Money Can You Make?

5:40 Why Is KDP A Good Choice?

6:12 Jack Of All Trades/ Ordering Bulk 

7:15 Print on Demand

8:18 KDP Costs/ Royalties 

9:08 Next Book

10:37 Outro

11:09 Subscribe/Watch More