When you have a story or information to share with the world, you want to get it out in the easiest way possible. Sadly, that isn’t by going through a traditional publishing house – and it’s not because your work doesn’t have value.
It’s because agents and editors are the gatekeepers of the traditional print publishing world, and it’s a business that’s based solely on a few peoples’ opinions. But, we all know those opinions can miss the mark.
An example of this is J.K. Rowling, author of the extremely popular Harry Potter series. She struggled to get any publishing house to take interest in her work and yet, her writing was top selling material.
So if you’ve been told no, or if you just want to see your work in print, there is a better way – and that’s by using Amazon’s Kindle publishing method. If you’ve always had a dream to write fiction, then you should go for it.
Life is too short not to chase after your dreams. Thankfully, Kindle is a wide open door that levels the playing field when it comes to writing. All you need is a little know how to get it done.
Of course, there are a few things you’ll need to learn about writing fiction if you want to have a successfully selling Kindle book, but plenty of authors have done it and are making a lot of money since they took that leap into the digital publishing world.
Fiction isn’t the only way that people can benefit by turning to Kindle publishing. There are plenty of nonfiction books published as a Kindle edition, too. The program is perfect for anyone who has some insight or wisdom that they want to share with others.
This is usually useful information that has a waiting audience willing to pay to get that information. It can range from topics like how to set up a garden to getting started in dog training and more. There are so many things that people want to do, but they don’t have the knowledge.
By sharing what you know, you can reach a greater audience, establish yourself as an expert and boost tangible or intangible sales. Going through Kindle publishing is the perfect venue for any would-be or established entrepreneur who wants to make money online.
It’s so easy that Kindle publishing can be used by beginners. But it can also be used by anyone who already has an established business and is just looking to expand. Kindle has all sorts of ways that their books are promoted and that’s half the battle – the marketing of it all.
There are so many people in the world who had their dreams dashed because traditional publishers said no. Here’s a little tip that you might not realize. The odds that the actual publisher ever even saw your work is slim.
That’s because in every single publishing house, there are assistants or interns who go through the manuscripts, or slush piles, as they’re called. These assistants, often fresh out of college and with very little publishing experience, decide if the work is worthy of being seen by the editor.
It’s the same setup at most literary agents’ offices. An intern will make the decision. While that doesn’t seem fair, the reason behind it is because agents and editors see hundreds of manuscripts each day.
Since they’re only one person, it’s only natural that they would need help. Knowing what goes on behind the scenes, it’s easy to see why your manuscript didn’t get the attention that it should have received.
So if you’ve been rejected, take heart. The odds are very high that the rejection had nothing to do with your work – but that the person who saw it wasn’t experienced enough to realize that it should have been passed on to an editor, or it just wasn’t that one person’s personal preference.
Publishing is a very subjective business. You have to have a thick skin and a mindset of determination to make it. That’s how Kindle publishing can be an answer to all of your dreams if you have the perseverance to go for it.
Self-publishing on Kindle simply means doing the work that a publisher would normally do. It means that you have complete control over the content of your book. When you go through traditional publishing, the entire event is a series of approval requests.
You have to get the approval for the manuscript from an agent or editor. He or she will come back to you with suggested changes. Some of these suggested changes, you’ll be urged to make.
Other changes will be non-negotiable. From there, the book will go through a round of edits. The editor and the copyeditor will get back to you with anywhere from a page to several pages of changes that you must make.
Most people assume that an editor or a copyeditor fixes all of an author’s grammar mistakes or content mistakes such as a plot problem. But that’s not true. Authors are given a list of what needs to be fixed and then it’s up to the author to fix them.
Some of these fixes, you won’t agree with. But more often than not in traditional publishing, you won’t have a choice but to make these changes. The rights that you sell to a traditional publisher gives them certain rights to make changes to your work.
It’s usually in the contract that you’ll work with these edits. Once the editing is approved, then you’ll move on to formatting. You won’t get a choice in the formatting style or which preferred grammar rules the publisher likes.
Next, it’s time for the cover. An author can have input on this, but again, he or she doesn’t get the final say. The reason is because the cover artist contracts with the publisher, not with the author.
So when it comes to opinion, yours will be considered lower than the editor’s opinion. If you happen to receive an advance from a publisher, that advance is paid toward earnings the publisher thinks the book will earn.
Some publishers will make an author pay back an advance if the author doesn’t follow the rules listed in the contract. The advance will also go to offset the author’s expenses in the event there’s a book tour set up by the publisher.
If there is a book tour, the author isn’t in charge of deciding this. It’s subject to approval from the publishing company. From start to finish, everything about traditional publishing takes you out of the driver’s seat.
With Kindle publishing, you don’t have to get approval for anything. You’re the one in control. That means that unlike traditional publishing, you get to publish your book with as many or as few pages as you want – even a short, 15 minute story is viable!
It means that you can publish as many books as you want, unlike with traditional publishing, which often demands a series – even if the author had no intention of creating an entire series.
The great thing about Kindle publishing is that you will be published in digital format. So people will receive eBooks when they order. But, authors also have the option of using Createspace so that their books can be print on demand.
That gives customers who prefer print books the option to buy, as well – so you reach a bigger audience. One of the most often asked question by writers looking to become authors is wanting to know when the process is complete. The answer is that the process depends solely on the writer.
You are the one who will decide if it takes you two weeks, a month, several months or years to see your publishing dreams come true. One of the things that will determine how long it will take is your writing speed.
Writing is like any other job in that you need to show up at a regular time every single day and make some progress. You’ll have to let go of the desire for perfection, which is something that causes a lot of writers to freeze.
Just get the words down on the paper or in the writing software. You can go back and edit and tweak, but you should always finish the story first. Remember that you can fix something that’s badly written, but you can’t fix something that’s never been written.
Some writers will sit down and start writing, allowing the words and ideas to flow from the action itself. Other writers can’t work that way. They need to warm up, so they do some prewriting first.
What prewriting does is get the creative juices flowing. It can jumpstart you into writing mode. Freewriting can also help. This is an exercise where you simply write about whatever topic comes to your mind in order to loosen up your creative thought process.
Brainstorming is a method that’s long been used by writers. This can help writers figure out all of the ins and outs of a plot. It can also be used to help when a writer has written himself into a corner.
When you use brainstorming, you think about your story. Some writers will simply write down their thoughts as they’re brainstorming – while others will type them into a document.
But the purpose behind either way is to generate ideas about your story. This can be a new idea or expanding on an idea that you already have. You can brainstorm to fix a plot hole or to help you reach a conclusion about the story.
If you’re writing and you feel completely blocked, brainstorming can help. If you do reach a point where you feel the story has nowhere to go, it means that you’ve written yourself into a corner.
You need to back up and see where the story veered off track. You can start thinking, instead of your characters doing or saying one thing, what if they did something else? Brainstorming can jumpstart a stalled story, but it can also lead to the creation of new ones, too.
That’s because this method allows you to look at your story from a different angle. Some writers choose to brainstorm alone, while others enlist the help of fellow writers. This can be helpful, because sometimes writers are too close to their own work to be able to see it differently.
When you submit your work to the Kindle publishing program, it won’t take anywhere near as long as traditional publishing. In traditional publishing, a manuscript that sells in March, is often not even released until the end of the same year or the beginning of the next one because of how it has to go through those approval steps in the publishing house.
Publishing through Kindle is amazingly fast. The guidelines state that your book will usually be available all over the world in as little as one to two days. However, it usually only takes a couple of hours until you receive the confirmation that it’s gone live.
If you don’t receive a confirmation, it means that something could be wrong with your book and needs to be fixed first. When you want to use the Kindle publishing program, you’ll need a great looking cover for your book.
You don’t want to skimp here, because a cover can make or break your book. How long it will take to have a cover made for your eBook depends solely on the cover artist that you use and how much customization must be done.
Many cover artists have pre-made covers that you can look through, and if you choose one of those, your title and author name are placed on the cover and the files sent to you. The more intricate work that you want done, the longer that it will take.
Ecover artists can use stock photos, which the author pays for as part of the cover price – and once the stock photo is chosen, your cover will be made. If you choose an ecover designer who’s in high demand, you may end up on a waiting list.
Many nonfiction eBook covers can be designed by the author himself as long as he has a good graphic program and a little bit of knowledge. But working with a fiction cover is different. You don’t want one that ends up somewhere on the Internet on a list of worst book covers.
You’re ready to publish your work once you’re done with the editing process. Go to the Amazon’s Kindle publishing link when you’re ready to publish. The link is https://kdp.amazon.com/.
You can build an author page using Amazon’s Author Central by using this link. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/.
This is a great marketing tool because readers like a personal connection. You can use your author page to put up a biography about yourself. You can include your professional author photo and link the page to your author blog.
Author Central is only a tool, so you really need to make sure that you have your own domain. The reason for this is that an author should have as much control over his work as possible.
So have your own domain name and don’t use a free site. This looks unprofessional and if someone complains about your site, it can be closed down while the owners of the free hosting decide whether or not your site should be permanently closed down.
Throughout the entire process, and as you grow your line of books and series on Kindle, you can publish your book using your vision – and get paid quickly for your efforts. You don’t get that same option with traditional publishing, where it becomes about someone else’s vision.
Sadly, so many writers think of traditional publishing as the holy grail of writing – that once they’ve had an acceptance at a big publishing house, fame and fortune are headed their way.
This isn’t the case. There have been numerous stories of publishers cheating authors out of money. You can check this yourself simply by doing a search on whichever publishing company you have in mind plus the word lawsuit.
Or you can type in the name of the publishing plus the words “not paying authors.” Another thing that can happen with traditional publishing is either a folding line or a resigning editor.
When a line at a publishing house folds, if your book doesn’t fit into any of their other lines, it’s shelved. But because you signed a contract, that doesn’t mean that you get to take your book elsewhere.
It means that because you sold the rights to your book, they can let it languish there, unpublished and there’s not a thing you can do about it unless you have a clause in your contract that reverts the rights back to you.
Most publishing houses will revert rights to the book back to the author after a certain number of years. So say that you received an advance of $75,000 but the line folded and you can’t get the rights back for five years.
That means that advance that looked pretty good for one year just became $15,000 per year. Not even poverty level. And if the editor leaves, it’s up to the company to find you another editor – one you might not want to work with, but will have no choice – because of the contract you signed.
Most authors who are with traditional publishing houses still work a full time job. Not because they want to, but because they have to in order to pay the bills. For every book that’s sold, the profits are divided and the author is the last one to get paid.
The publishing company takes the lion’s share of the profits. The author gets what’s left over after the publisher is paid. How much the author will get paid will depend on the royalty break down in the contract.
For example, some authors earn 8% of the cover price of a book that’s placed in bookstores. So a book that costs $3.99, the author only sees about .32 cents. This royalty payout changes depending on whether the book is in hardcover or paperback.
Digital copies are paid differently as well and usually at a higher rate because the publisher’s overhead is less. The royalty payments are also determined by where the book is sold.
Books sold in the United States earn a different royalty rate than books sold in foreign countries. Kindle is a good business model to add to your online marketing efforts for several reasons.
Not only can it help brand you as an expert, but it creates a stream of passive income for as long as your book is for sale. And you get control over the money in a way that you don’t have with traditional publishing.
Using Kindle to self-publish fiction or non-fiction books can fulfill your dreams, help you increase your income, and lead to other opportunities that leverage your expertise, like speaking engagements.
When you’re ready to use Kindle publishing, there are some specific things that you’ll need to decide. The first thing that you need to decide is whether or not you’re going to write fiction or nonfiction.
One thing about choosing one or the other is that there are writers who do both. However, while there are some similarities between the two, such as making sure that you research if you’re mentioning a real place or event, they are very different animals.
The next thing that you need to so is to pick a genre. A genre simply means a category. It’s where the book will fit. For example, horror is a genre. Suspense is a genre. So is chick lit.
Some advice about choosing a genre is to pick one that you personally enjoy, ones that you read. If you love to read horror stories, then you’ll enjoy writing about them. If you absolutely hate romance novels, you won’t like writing them.
And you want to choose a genre that feeds your passion, because writing can become a fulltime career. There’s a lot to be said about the actual writing process. You’re going to hear a lot of conflicting advice about which process is the “right” way.
Here’s something that you don’t want to forget. The right way is the one that works for you. If it helps you get the words down, then that’s the one that you should use. If the process causes you to be unable to write, then don’t use it.
There are two main methods that writers use. They either outline or they don’t. Either one of these methods is correct. Your personality will be a determining factor. If you’re someone who enjoys making lists and you like knowing where you’re going and having bullet points and subheadings, then using an outline would be good for you.
In fiction, outlining is just another word for plotting. There are plenty of authors who plot. Then there are those who don’t. Authors who don’t plot or outline write off the cuff. Another word for that phrase you’ll run across is the word pantser.
It means writing by the seat of your pants. You have no idea what’s going to happen next in your story because you haven’t looked ahead at the plot. With that type of writing, the author is often surprised at the way the characters will behave.
Some authors like writing this way because they don’t want to know how the story ends. They want to be like the reader and learn the story as it unfolds. There are valid writing pros to both methods.
If you have an analytical mind, it’s highly likely that you’ll find writing off the cuff more difficult. All writers must have the time to write. If you don’t make time, you won’t find it. You need to learn to treat writing as a job, with times that you’re supposed to show up and produce a word count.
It takes a lot of discipline to sit down every day and write. You need to have a goal. If you want a book done in thirty days, then take your projected word count and divide it up by 30.
That’s the amount of words that you have to write every single day. If you miss a day, then you have to double up the next day or divide the count that you didn’t get by the remaining days and tack those extra words on.
An editor is an absolute necessity. The person who thinks they don’t make mistakes writing is only fooling himself. When you’re writing, it’s easy for the mind’s eye to add words, thinking that you wrote them in.
It’s easy to transpose letters. These little mistakes pull a reader out of the book and reviewers expect a book to be edited. Books that go up unedited often receive the harshest reviews.
Make sure that you get a professional ecover made. If the ecover is ugly, it can turn away potential readers. The ecover reflects the book. If readers see a bad cover, then they’ll often think that the writing must be equally as bad. Always make the best impression with your book that you can make.
Once the book is edited and you have the ecover, check the formatting for any last minute issues. Sometimes, writing programs will add an extra blank page between chapters and you’ll need to take those out.
Once you’ve gone through all of that, it’s time to submit your document for publication. Then, you can take a deep breath and start on the next book. Have a little celebration for your publishing event and keep your momentum going.