Amazon also have some great tools including a previewer to check what your book looks like in different mediums.
Providing that the manuscript and cover are acceptable to Amazon it should only take you 2-3 hours to provide all the information and then load it all up. Amazon normally need 24/48 hours to check your book and publish it. You can though fill in all the information as you go along and before you publish. All work can be saved.
ISBN
I would recommend you purchase your own ISBN – they can be purchased direct from Nielsen
Amazon will tempt you with a free one however you cannot use the Amazon ISBN to sell your book anywhere else creating a massive headache (trust me!).
Cover
One issue that I came up against was the cover size. First – make sure that you have your cover designed in one of the standard Amazon sizes. I use 8.0’ x 5.25’. Second – the quality of interior paper you use will have an impact on the thickness of the book that will in turn impact the spine size. This is another benefit of having a professional cover designer, who can alter it quickly and send it back to you. Amazon will not let you publish until everything fits ok for printing.
I would also recommend that you order a proof copy to check that everything is in the right place before telling everyone your book has been published. The last thing you want is your customers writing awful reviews because the book is full of formatting errors.
KDP Select
Once your book has been published for a month or so then why not sign up for KDP Select?
This allows you to run price promotions quarterly (see countdown below) and to reduce your book to say 99p/99c and then increase it, over a week or a weekend, back to full price. This is a great way to create interest and get your book in front of new potential customers
KDP Select also allow your book to be part of Kindle Unlimited. This means that those people who have a monthly Kindle Unlimited subscription can read your book for free and you receive a small amount per page read. Now this might seem a bit unfair and there are definitely positives and negatives.
Both my books are in the programme and I’ve found that people who would never have discovered my book have given it a try and then written great reviews and even purchased the paperback. In my opinion it is well worth it and great marketing.
Amazon advertising
Amazon advertising is great if used well but that’s a vast subject and I haven’t time to write about it here. Basically you choose key words (Amazon suggest them too) and pay per click for people to see your book when they search for that topic.
It has worked really well for me particularly in the UK and other countries. Care needs to be taken not to spend too much though and you need to monitor it regularly. Again – lots of training available on YouTube.
Monitoring your sales
Wondering how many books you’ve sold or how many pages have been read on Kindle Unlimited? Amazon have a reports page which you can check whenever you want. It’s constantly updated so will give you a pretty much up to the minute idea of sales. There is nothing better than waking up in morning and discovering overnight sales of your book while you slept.