Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask The Geek,

Bugging you with another quick question you’re an expert on – a small ebook publisher contacted me wanting to contract me for a short 30-page ebook. I could probably hammer something out, but then it got me to thinking, because he actually wants me to sign a contract that gives me 8% royalty. So if I’m going to go to the trouble to write an ebook, why should I go through a publisher? How much royalty percentage do you make off your ebook on Amazon?

Signed, 
Publishing with myself

Dear Publishing with myself, 

Video response! I walk you through some of the reasons I think going with a publisher could be beneficial with regards to promotion, formatting, and credibility; why I think most authors can do ebook formatting themselves (or pay someone to do it for you), and then more on royalties themselves and what you need to consider when working with a publisher instead of doing it all yourself (and having complete control over pricing, royalties statistics, and content revisions).  Then I spend a few minutes talking about Amazon’s royalty structure and if 8% sounds like a good deal. Click through to the article to see the video if it doesn’t appear below.

Related to self-publishing on When I Have Time:

• My Amazon Author Page
• How to publish an ebook with Amazon Kindle in 7 steps
• Ask the Geek: How do I prepare my blog content to publish as an ebook?

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask the Geek, 

I see you are moving your blogs over to wp.com: does it work like an hosting service? I mean, if I move everything there I can stop using [hosting service]? What are the pros & cons of using WordPress.com?

Sincerely,
Platform-challenged

Dear Platform-challenged,

Video response! I try to share some thoughts on hosting on WordPress.com vs. self-hosted WordPress (available at WordPress.org). tl;dr: WordPress.com may not be the perfect solution for everyone, but it’s a great solution for a lot of websites and blogs. 

Disclosure: I work for Automattic (WordPress.com) but I also host several WordPress sites on other hosting providers. This video represents my personal thoughts.

Some points I cover in the video: 

• You can customize WordPress.com themes with custom fonts, colors, and definitely by changing the CSS using Custom Design. The new live preview for themes is pretty awesome and helps when switching between themes.
• WordPress.com is not just trunk/core WordPress; it’s a lot more! Many features which are built in would require finding & installing a plugin on self-hosted solutions. Our features page highlights a few of the many features.
• Try not to get swayed by “You need X plugin to have a great WordPress site” arguments. Make sure you identify the essential features or functionality your site needs, and then you can identify which solution is best for you. You should check out the first part of my presentation Tools for Entrepreneurs: Create. Collaborate. Communicate. where I delve into understanding your site’s purpose and functionality.
• Spend some time on Theme.WordPress.com to see which themes are available – there are more than 200 themes, both free and premium, and more are being released all the time.
• WordPress out of the box does 80-90% of the SEO you need. I haven’t seen any real proof additional SEO plugins and specifications really do anything for the majority of sites. You need good content first and foremost.
• You can map a custom domain on top of your WordPress.com URL, so I quickly mapped http://whenihavetime.com on top of my free URL, whenihavetime.wordpress.com.
• You can use the free version, or add upgrades like space, VideoPress, or other features from the WordPress.com Store. We have bundles which package some of these things, and WordPress.com Enterprise offers even more plugins our high-powered VIP clients use.
• One of the best parts about WordPress.com is being able to concentrate on what you do best: write great content. Leave the security, backups, and code updates to the WordPress.com team.

Things I forgot to mention: 

• You get some great Support documentation through WordPress.com.
• We’re expanding our advertising options on WordPress.com. You can turn ads off completely with the No-Ads upgrade, or you can be a part of the WordAds program and get paid for advertising on your site with select partners (this site is a part of WordAds). More on advertising.

It’s pretty easy. Here’s what you do, with appropriate links. You’ll be reading this to publishing on your mobile photoblog in the next five minutes!

1. Create a blog on WordPress.com (free!)
   
2. Choose one of the 220+ themes available on WordPress.com (Dashboard > Appearance > Themes). Many were designed with photography in mind, and the overwhelming majority are free!
3. Install one of the free 6 mobile apps for WordPress and connect your WordPress.com blog to your phone.
4. From your mobile, snap a picture, and Publish! Done!

To keep going…

1. Activate Publicize to automatically share each post with social networks like Twitter or Facebook right when you publish (free!)  - (Dashboard > Settings > Sharing).
   
2. Add Sharing Buttons (free!) so people can share your post with their favorite sharing tool or social network (Dashboard > Settings > Sharing).
3. Add a Custom Domain if you want to have something like yourgroovydomain.com on top of your site (Dashboard > Store > Domains).

You can do a lot more with your WordPress.com site, but now you’ve set it up, you’ve connected it, and you’ve given your readers a way to share! You’re good to go.

And you can visit my mobile photoblog, too – sararosso.wordpress.com. If you’re following me on Twitter, you’re sure to see those pictures, too.

After a birthday last week, I find myself feeling reflective on life in general, and I remembered this post I had started years, literally years, ago (who else has WordPress draft posts older than some of your friends’ children?) and never published.

Please don’t mistake these observations as a direct reference to my present employer…it’s quite the opposite since I started writing this years ago! These themes are universal and have been consistently experienced throughout my work and employment history.

Know where your money is.

If you’re spending money foolishly, it’s carelessness. If you’re misplacing revenue owed to the company, it’s stupidity. How often do you review your billing and collection systems? Do you have a late payment policy built into your contract with the client? Do you have a procedure for contacting those who are late on payment? Are you ready to fire clients or pursue legal means to get paid?

The really interesting part of having a business is making cool stuff, and not everyone is interested in the details behind the operations of the company. I equate this to how I feel when I’m in the kitchen – I love cooking, I hate washing dishes. You should never ignore the dishes.

Tell your customers what you’ll do. But be sure to tell them what you won’t do.

Friendly agreements are fine until the relationship takes a bad turn, account managers and contacts change or leave the company, or communication lines get dropped. When a contract or relationship ends, have you protected your intellectual property? Your assets? Do you know how to get out of the agreement or if there are penalties? What services are you liable for in your agreement? Were there special favors you were performing because of the relationship which are now inappropriate (& unpaid for) now that things have gone badly?

Often telling people what you won’t do is as important as telling them what you will do. You know what they say about assume, right? Often the most “obvious” assumptions you make and those that your client make will contrast greatly. Write it out, in contest rules, contracts, and offers. The best thing about communicating an assumption is that you then have an opportunity to correct or modify it. The longer you’re in business, the easier these assumptions should be to anticipate and address.

No launches on Friday.

This is the mantra of many web agencies which sums up a very important lesson: Don’t make big changes (in life, in your products, in your service, in agreements) when you will be unable to properly check and/or follow through on the impact of those changes.

If a site went live on Friday, it was always at the end of the day as people trickled out the office door on the way to their non-work lives. As changes went online, fewer resources were around to troubleshoot, to make decisions, and to repair errors. Sometimes an entire weekend might go by with erroneous or drastic changes online with no one around. Give yourself enough time to do things the right way – don’t push something out the door so you can leave the office whether it’s an announcement, feature launch, or a new site design. And then give yourself enough time to make sure you didn’t do them the wrong way.

Your ideas are not always needed.

Just because you have ideas, doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to them. This is probably the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn because I feel like I am always getting ideas and spouting them off. But while I’ve been lucky enough to propose my ideas in most of my workplaces, there are many situations in which they are not welcome: 1) When you need to be listening, not talking. Period. 2) When you are not part of the “idea group” – this is a sad reality, but sometimes you’re not part of the idea group. If it that’s important to you, figure out how to get into the idea group, or get out.

Get ready to own your ideas.

If you have an idea about something which is not yours, decide carefully when to open your mouth. If you’re willing to open your mouth and voice an idea / criticism / improvement, be prepared for the ramifications of voicing that, which may end up with you owning the idea / criticism / improvement moving forward. It may sound like a good thing to have ownership of it, but if you end up with a lot of things, you can lose focus. You can also end up with things which you really aren’t as passionate about as you thought – that one voiced idea / criticism / improvement came in a fit of passion which fizzled, and now you are left holding the reins.

What do you think? 

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask The Geek, 

Do you have any suggestions for this job seeker? 

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask The Geek,

A small business recently asked me for the use of one of my photos on their website. I’m not a professional photographer, so I’m not sure what to do. Should I ask for compensation? How do I figure out what that is? Or should I just let them use it free of charge?

Thanks,
Sporadic Photographer

Hi Sporadic Photographer,

How much do I charge for my photos? What’s the best way to price my photos, or determine their value? I’m often asked this and it’s something I also struggle with when I sell photos directly (vs. selling through Getty Images).

This is such a delicate issue. For many, just being asked to use a photo is a compliment they hadn’t expected and is reward enough. But for many other photographers, they believe that allowing companies to use photos free of charge is undermining the entire industry.

I could write a book on charging vs. not-charging (spoiler: I lean more towards charging) and whether photos from non-pro photographers or pro photographers are worth more (spoiler: the answer is neither), but what I think you should definitely do is ask some questions about the usage of your photo, and whether you decide to charge or let them use it for free, the usage is detailed and the permission you give is explicit.

Here are some things you should be asking regarding usage of your photo:

• usage, medium (website, editorial, advertisement, billboard, print, royalty free)
• single usage or multiple usage (on both a website and print ad, only website, etc.)
• duration of use (unlimited, only a few months)
• placement and size of image (i.e., website: front page vs. sidebar vs. internal page; magazine: half-page vs. whole page, etc.)
• (file) size of image (pixel dimensions of the image they want you to deliver)
• exclusivity (do they want to be the only company/website to be able to use the photo? not very common, but ‘no exclusivity’ should probably be mentioned in the terms otherwise)

If you know those things, you can come up with an estimate either with a pricing tool (there are many online), or by your own instincts. Even if you let them use the photo free of charge, it’s a good idea to reiterate the exact usage of the photo, and that any other usage needs your explicit permission.

I’m not a lawyer, but in most cases their confirmation of your terms via email should be enough to establish an agreement, and it goes without saying to get the agreement to your terms before you deliver the image. Otherwise, you can pop the terms into a document and ask for a signature as well.

Do you have any suggestions for this sporadic photographer? 

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

On my food & travel site, Ms. Adventures in Italy, I also answered questions about moving to & living in Italy. I’ve since stopped; I’m not an immigration lawyer and most of the questions I was able to answer, I already have – which is what leads me to writing this post.

I get a lot of vague, long-winded, ridiculous, and desperate requests for help (across a variety of subjects) which lead me to believe the person has no idea who I really am and is probably spamming several people at once looking for those “magic beans” in the form of any answer which will magically save them.

Here’s an example of a request I find vague, inappropriate, and looking for magic beans:

I have found your website and blogs, very interesting. I am trying to promote our business more in the States / Canada. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for me? Hope to hear from you!

Sure! Let me set aside an hour or two of my time to craft a well-thought-out answer for you. Or not. So this post isn’t for those people. I can’t help you find the magic beans.

But what about you? You’re a normal, hard-working, thoughtful person and you have a valid question which you’d like to ask someone to answer for you.

Here’s how to ask for help, and get an answer.

1. Do your homework

Start by doing your homework. And I don’t mean the homework on your actual question – by the time you approach someone for help you should have put your question through the wringer and know it backwards and forwards. You should have definitely tried Google.com first.

What I really mean is to do your homework on the information the person you’re asking for help has already made available to you.

Here’s a crib sheet for you to help you do that homework on a helpful site:

• Categories and tags – If they use categories and tags, they’ve already grouped relevant information for you, the reader. Click through to the relevant pages and back-read all of their related articles.
• Recommended sites and books – they may recommend another site and/or book which can answer your question better than they can – check them out!
• Ebooks, downloads, and newsletters - the author may also have their own ebooks, articles for download, and newsletters you can sign up for to get more information. Make sure you look for these as they have pre-packaged some information just for you!
• Look for Popular Posts - Popular posts will probably tell you what other people have appreciated about the site’s content. Maybe some of that information will be helpful in an indirect way.
• Scour their Archives - I open the Archives page of any site and do a search on the page for keywords that might answer my question – you do the same! If they have a site search, that’s even better.
• Read their contact page - if they have a contact page, they probably have taken the time to let you know how to contact them properly, what things they’re interested in hearing about, and what they aren’t. Note this well. This isn’t mean, it’s a way for them to save time, and for you as well – don’t waste your time asking people for help who clearly can’t or won’t give it! If they don’t have a Contact page, check out their About page, too.

2. Limit your questions

While I love hearing the stories behind a question that comes to me, if I see an email which goes “past the fold” (beyond the viewable part of my screen) and is peppered liberally with question marks, I can assume that the person hasn’t done some homework in #1, they are asking me to take on the majority of the homework part, or they don’t really know what their question is.

Limit your questions. One is best. Two or three is pushing it depending on the context, and any more than that is probably asking too much. Limit your questions, so you can be respectful of the other person’s time. If they want to continue helping, they’ll ask their own questions, or ask you to give them more information.

3. Be specific and realistic

Since you did your homework in #1, you know what information this person has already shared publicly with you via their site. You’ve narrowed down your question and your introduction/background in #2 and now you need to do a reality check – is my question specific enough this person can answer it, and am I being realistic by asking them to answer it?

• Is your question something this person can answer? (i.e., If you have a legal question, are they a lawyer?) 
• Are you asking for a specific piece of information / advice? (is it a yes/no question? Have you narrowed down the question enough so they can give you a single answer or starting point?)
• Can the person answer you in just a few minutes? (don’t ask someone to write you an answer that requires a book, or even a blog post. Keep it short and sweet.)

4. Tell me why ME

This is #4, but it might as well be #1 in order of importance. Why are you writing ME? Why do you think I’m the best person to answer your question?

If someone is going to help you, they’d like to think they’re not one of the many people you’re spamming in the hopes of getting a response. Why not let them know? Was it something you read on their site, in their biography, or was it even somewhere where they wrote they’re open to these sorts of requests?

And secondly, in choosing this person, how sure are you they are the correct person to answer this question for you, out of all the resources available to you?

Hopefully in the process of answering this for yourself, you’ll realize that the person really is the right person to ask, and make sure you let them know you’ve done your homework. But if not, think about not sending that email.

5. Limit your follow-up

If the person never answers you, they might not be interested in answering you. It’s probably not personal (they most likely don’t know you!) They also may be super busy, they may not have seen your email, or your email may have gone into spam (it does happen).

Depending on the urgency and content of your email, I would say you should wait at least a week before writing them again. And write them only once more, with the contents of the first mail and a short 1-sentence note introducing the mail which might have gotten lost. No more than that. Don’t rewrite your entire story in hopes that it will be more appealing (wasting the person’s time as they try to remember where they just read a similar story like this), don’t email them multiple times, don’t bug them via other social networks if you send that second message.

If the person still doesn’t answer, move on.

6. Offer to pay for the help

This last step isn’t a last resort. Rather, it’s a reminder that other people’s time is valuable, too. Make sure you take advantage of any free resources available, and also utilize those paid resources when you really need some good answers.

Hopefully in step 1 you’ve discovered if the person offers consultation on a paid basis, and what that entails. If they do offer paid consultations, seriously consider working with them. If they are the best person to answer your question, why not pay them for their time? If the answer is valuable to you, then the time spent putting together the information is valuable, too.

Not everyone can answer questions for free, or their free answers may seem short because they are purposely limiting their time allowed to respond for free advice. Again, don’t take it personally, and respect their time, too.

What about you? Can you share some tips about what makes you actually want to answer a request for help?

Here are three other articles on email etiquette and asking for help which I found inspiring:

• How to Ask Better Questions – Erika Napoletano
• Help Create an Email Charter - TED’s Chris Anderson
• Be the E-mailer you Wish to See in the World - Alexandra Samuel
• How to Ask for Business Help – Design*sponge
• How to Approach a Blogger (great for everyone) – Pret a Voyager

Photo by Dimitri N

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask The Geek,

I’ve been blogging for seven years and I have a lot of popular content I’d like to republish in an ebook. Should I do this? Are there any tips you can give me for preparing my content?

Thanks,
Budding eAuthor

Hi Budding eAuthor,

I’m a big fan of ebooks, this is no secret. And publishing your content in an ebook format, even if it’s been available online for years, can still be really appealing for many readers. Some people prefer the longread format of books vs. interlinked web pages, and the portability when they’re offline can’t be beat.

I know you’ve already read my article, How to publish an ebook with Amazon Kindle in 7 steps. So, here are some suggestions I have for preparing your blog content for a book:

• Continuity of content and creating a story
• Images and delivery costs
• Links

Continuity of content and creating a story

Your blog is probably set up to be read in chronological order, and/or divided into categories. It may come instinctively to publish your content exactly as it is, in a chronological fashion, and depending on your blog, it may work that way. But it doesn’t always work, and if you sit down to read the content from end to end, you may find some gaps and disjointedness.

I think to appeal to a wider audience, you might want to think of grouping your content differently. You’ll definitely get a lot of readers from your existing network, but if you package the content a bit, anyone who stumbles upon it will get something out of it even if they haven’t been reading your site. This may mean finding common threads among your blog posts, creating a journey or storytelling through your content, and being selective about what to include and exclude.

Are there stories, characters, or people you mention in your blog that won’t be understood by first-time readers? Make sure you orient them well, and take a little extra time to make sure you’re making your blog content into a book with a start, middle, and end.

Images and Delivery Costs

Content on the internet is heavily powered by images. In ebooks, it doesn’t always have the same impact. Many of your readers will have different devices which interpret and format the content differently, and a post with 20 pictures may lose its effectiveness when the reader has to page-forward, page-forward, page-forward continuously.

The first thing you should do is download all the related images locally and see how heavy your book will be if you include them. The size of your ebook file can affect your royalty! At least, with Amazon Kindle, it can. If you price at $2.98 & under, this doesn’t matter, but if you want the higher royalty rate, you’ll be charged for the delivery and your book’s file size will affect that. This is something you can evaluate as you get closer to publishing (KDP will estimate the delivery cost with a final version, before you publish), but it’s worth keeping an eye on which images are essential, and which can be eliminated or are a bonus.

Above all, since you’re now selling the content, you might not have permission to reuse a few of those images, even if you give them copyright attribution. If the images aren’t yours, make sure you spend some time understanding their copyright so you be sure if you’re using them correctly. If you’re using Creative Commons images, make sure they are licensed for commercial use.

Links

Interlinking content is also one of the Internet’s greatest features. In a book, it doesn’t always work well. Most ebook reading devices are unitasking, which means they won’t have your book in one tab, and all the links they click on in other tabs. If they click on a link in your book, and the link is elsewhere, they’ll be taken there.

I think this is a pretty disruptive way to read a book, even more so if the person is offline and opening that link in a browser will not return any content. But I do think linking in your content is something worth doing.

Here’s where I’d do it:

• Links in a resource section 

If applicable, create a section of your book towards the end with links for people to find out more about the subject which are all external to your book.

• Links in your author bio

Link back to your websites, your social media presence, and other books you’ve published, so people can go check them out. Remember to set up that Author page on Amazon, too!

• Footnotes & Appendixes

Footnotes are old school, but I think really powerful when used correctly. I love being able to jump to a footnote in an ebook and then right back without losing my spot. Just remember to add the jump back to the book content in your code!

Appendixes become powerful as well, especially when you have something like a pronunciation guide or similar that instantly adds value to what the reader is reading.

Do you have any suggestions for this budding eAuthor? 

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

I’m also a big fan of TED conferences (their slogan, ‘ideas worth spreading’ is given tribute in the title of this post) and the conference videos which they make available for the entire public. I included Sheryl Sandberg’s TED video in my post, Stop Sabotaging Your Own Success, but I’ve been watching, sharing, and processing those videos for a long time now.

So it’s no surprise that I would instantly fall in love with TED’s new venture, the TED Radio Hour, an audio podcast produced with NPR which focuses on a single theme. Each episode brings together both the TED presentations and new, follow-up interviews with the presenters and other experts on the chosen topic.

The best of both worlds.

I really enjoy the TED videos, and a great way to discover other great TED videos is by clicking on one of the tags like happiness, creativity, or business, and watching all the videos associated with that theme.

But the TED Radio Hour takes it one step further and curates that content into a single theme per hour, with about 3 segments, and includes a dialogue with the speakers (and other experts) that is lacking in the original TED presentations.

So far they’ve only done two episodes, but they’ve both been great, and I can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

I thought I’d pull out two points from the first two episodes that I think will resonate with all of you.

Episode 1, Our Buggy Brain, delves into how our brain perceives value, makes us happy, sad, and even justify cheating. Especially worth listening to is segment 3 on Episode 1, when Dan Gilbert about our “psychological immune system,” which talks about synthetic happiness vs. natural happiness, and how we have the capacity to generate synthetic happiness even when we don’t get what we originally wanted.

“We have a belief that synthetic happiness is not as real as natural happiness…I want to suggest to you that synthetic happiness is every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”  - Dan Gilbert

He delves in further about how constantly questioning your decisions when there’s still opportunity to change them can also lead to more dissatisfaction, rather than making a decision and moving forward as if it were unchangeable. Your mind reacts to and will rationalize the outcome towards acceptance / optimism, rather than agonizing and doubting yourself before the decision has been made or while it can still be changed.

Sound familiar? Do you agonize over making a decision, or doing or not doing something, rather than making the decision and figuring out the next step? As a procrastinator, I can say that I use deadlines to help push me towards these decisions which then I live with, but I also hate to have ambiguity – I will force myself to a position, even one that could later be wrong, so I don’t continue to second-guess myself. Gather enough information / put in enough effort to do something decently, then make that step. Send in your application. Turn down the job offer. Ask for something you’re afraid to ask for.

Episode 2, The Pursuit of Happiness, delves further into happiness and the impact of choices and regrets on our happiness. The segment on regrets is especially interesting, and comes back to episode 1 on how we deal with not getting what we want. Kathryn Schulz talks about why we should embrace regret:

“…if there’s something to alleviate the sadness (of regret)…failures of self-knowledge are so important…these gaps in our self-knowledge are what enable us ultimately to learn, to change, to become new people…to have new self-knowledge available to us.” – Kathryn Schulz

The content of TED presentations is often ideas which apply across industries, careers, and interests. It’s often inspirational,  and it always makes you think.

Check out the TED Radio Hour’s website, or subscribe directly in iTunes.

Disclosure: I get a comment or two that sometimes these posts seem like paid content because I’m so praising. The comments & opinions are my own. If it’s paid, I’ll definitely let you know, as I state on my contact page re: disclosure. For the record, this post is not sponsored.

Today I’m only going to talk about publishing ebooks, and specifically Amazon’s KDP program – Kindle Direct Publishing. Right now the ebook market is very hot and growing, and you can get your book in front of a worldwide audience who can buy it and start reading it in seconds. What’s not to love about ebooks? (If you want to learn more about ebooks, check out my Guide to Ebooks series.)

So here are 7 macro-steps which I’d like to highlight for getting your ebook from idea to published on KDP. Hopefully in the future I’ll go into more detail on each one. Note: this is for people wanting to do it all themselves. There are conversion services out there for payment who will do the majority of the work for you, too.

1. Sign up for KDP. 

It’s free to sign up for Kindle Direct Publishing and you actually don’t have to have a book ready to publish when you sign up. You’ll want to get in there well before as they have a lot of resources and tips to share for the preparation of your book for publishing.

So sign up at http://kdp.amazon.com and get started in the Help section. You also have access to the KDP Community which is a series of forums. I’ve heard they are very useful but luckily I haven’t needed them myself.

2. Format It: Prepare your manuscript / novella / ebook & format it for KDP

If you have a story / subject to write about, great! If you don’t have an idea/story, stay tuned for a future post which talks about writing inspiration. Once you’ve got your written material ready to publish, this is what’s next.

I don’t want to rewrite all the good help out there & I’ll round up some good books / sites for the future, but let’s look at what KDP makes available for you starting out:

• The KDP formatting guidelines (link to PDF) are free and are obviously a must. Start here and read it 2-3 times. It’s 55 pages but think of it as a small manual to self-publishing! The guidelines are listed under Prepare your Book > Instructions for a Mac but they don’t seem Mac-only.
• There’s also a simplified formatting guide which is pretty basic and much, much shorter.

If you like and enjoy working with basic HTML, this will give you more control over the final product. Since both of my books have started with some HTML formatting, I decided to continue creating them that way. I used a text editor (TextWrangler) because I don’t mind getting in the code and formatting it myself.

But this is not for everyone. You can easily use a Word Processor like Word or Open Office (open source! free!) to prepare your manuscript with some basic formatting. There’s even a free Kindle book available for you from Amazon if you’re using MSWord: “Building Your Book for Kindle.”

I think the rule of thumb is: the less formatting (read: special text styling / placement), the better. Remember, unless you have a ton of complicated images & placement, your book should be fluid and be able to be resized and rotated as the reader dictates.

I can give some more options for formatting your content in a future post.

3. Test It: Download & Install Kindle Gen & Kindle Previewer & Kindle Apps

Amazon gives you two powerful tools to create and preview how your Kindle book will look – get them both as they serve different purposes. Kindle Gen will package up all the things (images, Table of contents, XHTML) into a file ready to submit to KDP. Kindle Gen will require typing a few things into the command line (a bit techie), but there are instructions and forums to help you master it.

Kindle Previewer will simulate what the book will look like on a Kindle after you’ve run it through Kindle Gen, from your PC/Mac. This is helpful if you don’t have a Kindle (like me – I have a smart phone & iPad I test them on and Kindle Previewer).

Both the Kindle Previewer and Kindle Gen are available on KDP under Prepare Your Book > Tools and Resources.

You should have the Kindle App for every device you can test it on (there are a lot)! When it’s ready, you can move the ready-to-submit file over to your smart phone / iPad via the Kindle App so you can preview what it looks like. Plan to do a full read-through on at least one of these devices.

Trust me, no matter how many times you read the material while writing & formatting, if you read it on your iPad/Kindle prior to publishing, you will find errors you can fix.

4. Create a Cover

Your ebook may have no pictures inside, but you’ll definitely need a nice image and well-thought-out text & font for your cover. Buy a stock photo for your cover, use a Creative Commons image (make sure it’s licensed for commercial use!), or use one of your own images. If you’re not handy with Photoshop (or open-source GIMP), consider asking a friend to help you out. Or pay someone to do it – it’s an investment, and though a book’s touch & feel aren’t important with an ebook, the cover is critical and will definitely influence sales.

Make sure you read the KDP formatting guidelines for your cover – you’ll be able to upload an image for the cover prior to submitting your book so you can see what it looks like.

For more on ebook cover design, check out The Book Designer. Note: I won their non-fiction cover design award in February for my cover on How to Order an Italian Coffee in Italy!

5. Submit your Book’s Details, including pricing, & publish!

Now you’re finally ready to submit your book. The KDP guidelines will walk you through the information which will be needed for each step, but probably the most important step is deciding the price. Take some time and think about the price you’ll set before you’re ready to submit so you don’t agonize when clicking the submit button. Luckily, you can change price often on KDP so it’s not set in stone.

After submitting, depending on your language (as of this writing, English-language books are processed faster), your book will start appearing in Amazon stores (they say 12 hours for English books, up to 48 hours for non-English books).

6. Set up an Amazon Author Page

You’d think by submitting your book through the KDP you’d have an author page, but you don’t. I believe this is so publishers stay separate from authors. So head on over to Author Central and set up an author page. Have a little bio and picture ready, along with links to your websites or Twitter if you want to add those.

Strangely enough they don’t include a link to your website directly, but they will let you insert a blog feed…so that’s a great reason to have one! You’ll also get access to additional sales information not tracked in KDP.

You also get to personalize a short Amazon Author URL – mine is http://amazon.com/author/sararosso.

7. Get the KDP newsletter and follow @AmazonKDP

The great thing about the ebook industry is things are growing and changing fast. I suggest following the KDP newsletter (monthly) which has some recent news, Amazon formatting updates & changes, and is worth keeping track of. Here’s a recent issue of the KDP newsletter.

Also follow @AmazonKDP on Twitter – they don’t Tweet often but they do share helpful articles (many which aren’t even written by Amazon) about publishing & self-publishing.

Don't leave the cover image selection of your #KDP book to the last minute. bit.ly/r5Rry9—
Kindle Direct Pub (@AmazonKDP) April 02, 2012

So there you have it!

Those are the seven macro-steps I think you should take to publish your book on Amazon Kindle!

Who’s self-published their own book? Any tips to share?