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How To Self-Publish a Book on Amazon: Complete Guide

February 27, 20215 min. Read

When it comes to becoming a self-published book author there are many different avenues you can take. With the world of internet publishing though, and the rise of massive companies like Amazon it’s easier than ever before. You can learn how to self-publish a book on Amazon in just a few easy steps.

Self-publishing on Amazon is a great way to get your book out there for potential readers to find. Of course, you’ve got to consider the pros and cons of self-publishing on Amazon before jumping in. So let’s have a look at Amazon’s self-publishing costs so you can decide the way forward.

At Palmetto Publishing we’re all about empowering writers. We offer self-publishing authors services to help get your book out into the world! Don’t forget to check out how we can help you get started with self-publishing on Amazon.

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How To Self-Publish a Book on Amazon

Self-publishing on Amazon starts with having your book ready. Not just written, print-ready. Meaning you’ve had a few edits done to your manuscript and formatted everything. You’ll probably also want to make sure you’ve got a great cover and maybe some illustrations. Don’t worry if you’re not at this step yet Palmetto Publishing can help.

Now once you do have this book ready to go out it’s time to get into how to self-publish a book on Amazon. You’ll have to decide whether you want it to be direct to Kindle, in other words, a digital book, or if you want to publish your book to print. (If you need help converting your manuscript to an ebook, or are thinking of print and want the highest quality printers in the United States make sure you look at our printing services).

Self-publishing on Amazon

Self-publishing on Amazon requires only four steps really. You need to have your manuscript formatted and all of the information before starting. Once you’re ready just:

  1. Set up an account
  2. Fill in your book details (including your book description and keywords to help readers find it)
  3. Upload your formatted manuscript and book cover design
  4. Decide on rights and pricing

If formatting is a challenge for you, the self-publishing tool on Amazon is actually a great tool that will assist you. However, editing your actual content is much harder and it is often noted by first-time authors that hiring an editor is one of the best investments in their manuscript.

This is easy enough and how long it takes depends on how complete your book is. If it’s done, then this process can be done in a day as opposed to the years it can take with traditional publishers. We’re not traditional publishers. At Palmetto can take as little as 6-8 weeks or potentially even sooner.

Self-publishing on Amazon Pros and Cons

Comparing the self-publishing pros and cons of Amazon’s is quite straightforward. The ease of getting your book published is a major pro. Also, your book will be searchable for potential readers to find on a major platform. However, there are costs involved on a per-book basis.

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Pros of Self-publishing on Amazon

How easy is it? Incredibly so. You can write and upload a Word document as your eBook and it’ll look fine on Kindle and other platforms. If you want to get a bit fancier with the formatting you can save your Word doc into an HTML file and upload it.

Not only that, but it’s cheaper to self-publish since there are no publisher fees or printing costs. Overall you’re looking at very minimal costs of $20-50 for cover design, $20-50 for a proofreader or editor plus anything else you deem necessary.

Once it’s out on the market, you can start earning money quickly. Also, did you know that if you price your book between $2.99 and $9.99, Amazon gives you 70% of the cut? A sweet deal to use their publishing technology and massive platform to promote it. But aye, there’s the rub – will it sell in a sea of similarly marketed books?

Cons of Self-publishing on Amazon

One of the negatives of self-publishing on Amazon is the limited up-side. You pour a ton of work into something that’ll sell for very little if you can even get it to sell. Publishing is not even half the battle; Marketing/selling is the majority of your work which you need to be prepared to or else pay somebody to do it for you.

It’s hard work to get your book noticed or even to get those first couple of book reviews. This is why promotion matters so much. Except for a few best selling authors who typically offer multiple books in a series, you’re not going to earn a ton from your eBook sales on Amazon.

You may get an initial burst of income but, sales fade fast as Amazon tends to favor newer titles. If you look in some of the best seller categories you’ll notice that the vast majority of books listed near the top were published recently. Unfortunately, this means your success might be short-lived unless you follow up with another title soon.

Amazon Self-publishing Cost

Notably, it’s free for self-publishing on Amazon direct to kindle. However, there are royalty fees involved. These can range for eBooks and print as well as depending on options selected. In all, it ranges anywhere from 35 – 70%.

This is a good moment to note at Palmetto Publishing all of our services are for a set fee and we never take a cut of your royalties. Why? Because we strongly believe that your work is your work, so we take 0% royalties and you retain 100% ownership. We just want to provide independent authors with the services and tools you need to succeed and have been empowering independent authors to publish their works for 30 years by assisting you with all of your publishing and marketing needs.

Chat to one of our team members to find out how to self-publish a book on Amazon with our help!

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