How to Sell Your E-book on Amazon Kindle? (Part 1)

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Given its huge customer base, authors, established or new, all covet the idea of their books being listed on Amazon. Besides Kindle is the most popular e-reader in the market. Amazon is a big company and it is still growing. So, let’s look at how you can utilize their marketing and customer base and publish your e-book with Amazon.

How does it work?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Amazon itself provides you the platform. It is called Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Amazon launched KDP  in 2007. If you use this platform, your e-book will be available on all Kindle devices and on free Kindle apps. Your book appears on Amazon within 24 hours. It will be available to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and more.

What about formatting? What file formats does KDP accept?

They convert all the accepted formats into their own format. Well formatted EPUB works best for submitting to Amazon. Apart from that Amazon recommends doc/docx and html.

They also accept

  • MOBI (MOBI)-  Only MOBI (.mobi) files created with Amazon tools such as KindleGen are supported and recommended.
  • Rich Text Format (RTF)
  • Plain Text (TXT)
  • Adobe PDF (PDF)- Although KDP accepts and converts PDF, it is not a recommended format to upload. Because of the basic technical nature of this format, even the best conversions to e-book formats are not good with PDF.

Also,  your cover has to be uploaded separately. If you don’t have a cover for your book, you can use their KDP Cover Creator. They accept two types of files for cover images

And their Requirements for the size of your cover art are

  • The ideal height/width is a ratio of 1.6.
  • A minimum of 625 pixels on the shortest side and 1000 pixels on the longest side
  • For best quality, image should be 1563 pixels on the shortest side and 2500 pixels on the longest side

And don’t forget, by using InstaScribe you are covered, all of Amazon’s file specifications and requirements will be met.

How about  the price of your book ? That’s important.

Who decides the price of your e-book??

You determine the list price. Amazon may sell it at a lower retail price due to its price-match policy.

And how about royalties – what can you expect?

You have two options. You can choose either a 35% or 70% royalty percentage.

With the 70% royalty

For the 35% option

  • It is a percentage of list price you select.
  • No deliver costs are subtracted from your royalty.
  • Applies to most International markets

Which royalty option should I choose?

With the 35% option you do not pay the delivery charges. If your book has a lot of files and images, a lower percentage works, because delivery charges are based on file size. While uploading your book, you can compare both options. For most text oriented books, delivery charges are less and 70% margin works best.

We hope it has been helpful till now. In the next part we will cover the tax withholding on royalties and marketing opportunities with Amazon KDP.

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  1. Pingback: 4 Popular Platforms to Publish your E-book | InstaScribe

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