Ultimate Guide on How to Publish Your Book On Amazon

The nerves are high, and excitement is building.

You’re finally ready to publish your book!

Do you know what an absolute feat it is to even get to this stage? It’s quite the accomplishment. But we know you’re not just aiming for the sky. You want to be among the stars.

Writing and publishing a book is like running a marathon, and if you’re reading this, the finish line is probably almost in sight. 

We’re going to give you a metaphorical water bottle (in the form of this blog) to help you cross the line. Everything you need to know about publishing a book on Amazon is right here. 

What You Need to Consider When Publishing on Amazon

If you’re self-publishing on Amazon, you should know about the platform’s different services first if you want to get the most out of it.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

You can upload the ebook version of your book, free of charge, through KDP and still retain the rights to your book. Many prefer to publish on Amazon as this program offers 35%-70% royalties on the sales you make.

Top Tip #1: KDP prefers mobi as the format as it works on Kindle devices.

KDP Select 

With this option, Amazon gets exclusive rights to sell your ebook for 90 days and you receive higher royalties. Your book becomes part of Kindle Unlimited, which is essentially a digital library for readers to borrow books for free. 

CreateSpace

This is Amazon’s answer to print-on-demand services. You can sell paperbacks of your book directly through Amazon or createspace.com. 

The great part is you don’t have to pay for the printing, you just receive a commission from books sold. They even design covers if you don’t want to do it yourself or hire a book cover designer. 

Setting Your Book Up For Success Before Publishing on Amazon

The easiest part of publishing your book on Amazon is when you’re ready to set up your account and upload your book into their system.

The hard part is getting your book ready for that step. Here are the steps you need to get your book where it needs to be:

1. Write Your Best

This may be obvious but you need to write a really good book if you want it to succeed. That means going through many drafts and edits on your own to get the story that clicks with your readers. Need tips on how to improve as a writer? Check out this blog: 16 Proven Ways To Become A Better Writer.

2. Final draft

Nothing will hinder your book’s story more than bad grammar, typos, and plot holes. Hire professional editors and copy editors to help you spot all of these mistakes.

3. Book format

From eBook to paperback, your book format needs to be polished and fit the norms of your genre. Check out this blog for more info: How to Format Your Book To Perfection: Easy Guide.

4. Parts of your book

The title page, copyrights page, and table of contents might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you’re excited to publish a book, but nonetheless, they are important. If you want your book to look professional, check out this resource: Front Matter to Back Cover: Parts of A Book Essentials.

5. Book cover design

Your book cover is the first thing your reader will see, so make this first impression count. You can hire a designer or do it yourself – but make sure the design represents the atmosphere of your book.

6. Book blurb

This is the second thing readers will see, so make sure to sell them your story. We have tips on creating a captivating book blurb here: How To Write a Compelling Book Blurb (+15 Examples).

7. Author bio

Now it’s time to sell readers on you, the author. This bio will be on your Amazon page, book page, author website, and even the back of your book if you choose. Stumped on how to get started? Check out this blog on author bios: How to Write An Author Bio That Attracts Readers.

8. Author website

Speaking of, you’ll need an author website if you want to own your online presence. If a reader Googles you, having an author website show up first helps control the narrative.

9. Amazon author central page

Besides having an Amazon page for readers to land on to learn more about you and your books, having this account allows you to take advantage of features like editorial reviews, book trailers, Look Inside, etc. We have a blog if you want to learn how to improve your Amazon Author Central Page.

10. Keywords & categories

We’ll discuss this section later, but it’s important to do your research upfront to see what keywords and categories fit your book best. Having this information on hand will make the process of publishing on Amazon smoother and it’ll help your book rank.

11. ISBN

Unless you get a free ISBN from Amazon KDP for your book, you’ll need to buy an ISBN especially if you want to publish on other platforms.

12. Pricing

Have a look at what other books are priced at in your genre as well as your book size. Another aspect to consider is Amazon’s royalties system where you get 70% royalties if you price between $2.99-$9.99. If you price your first book at $0.99 for promotional efforts, or over $10 due to book size, you’ll receive 35% royalties. 

Self-Publishing on Amazon FAQs 

There are many questions surrounding the topic, so we thought we’d answer those first before getting into the technical stuff.

How long does it take to publish a book on Amazon?

Truth be told it doesn’t take that long – maybe a few hours! What takes months to a year to do is the preparation to get to this step. Remember those bullet points above? They take time to do!

Once the ball is rolling for your book, start setting yourself some deadlines and begin with your book marketing to give your book the best shot at success.

Top Tip #2: If you’re still in need of a plan of action for your marketing efforts, we’ve written a blog on how to market your book to the right readers, check it out here: Book Marketing For Beginners: Attract Readers & Boost Sales.

Getting your manuscript ready

This will also affect your publishing timelines.

Order proof copies of your book to test how the content looks in the flesh. Every time new changes are made, make sure to order a new proof copy to verify that everything is still in order. 

We suggest proofreading your ebook version before even opening Amazon to publish your book to save time in edits if something is wrong once it’s live.

Getting your book cover ready

It’s just as important to get your book cover right. You need the font and focal point to stand out on Amazon. 

Your book cover will look like a thumbnail on the storefront, so it needs to stand out even at that size. Besides ordering proof copies, get mock-ups of your book cover to test on Kindle and Amazon.

How much does publishing a book on Amazon cost?

It’s free to publish on Amazon. But editing, proofreading, book cover design, book formatting, and typesetting can cost you a varying amount if you hire these jobs out. Consider your budget and the level of expertise you want on each of these jobs.

Should you hire help?

Some authors have design backgrounds or editing capabilities and some can learn these aspects of publishing too. But if you want professionals at the helm of your publishing ship to help you get a polished book, there is no shame in it!

Having a well-edited and sleek book with good marketing strategies to match, will likely lead to higher sales and better reviews.

eBook only or Paperback?

Besides targeting readers in your genre and niche market, you’re also targeting readers with preferred platforms for reading. Some prefer physical copies, some prefer ebooks.

Expanding to both allows you to market to both sets of readers. But your needs vary on your genre and your budget.

Keep in mind that ebooks are cheaper to get published, but only going with eBooks will be closing yourself off to readers who prefer to read paperbacks.

How to Publish a Book on Amazon 

Finally! On to the main event, which is actually the easiest part of the whole process. Make sure you have your manuscript, book cover, and other metadata ready, then get started!

1. Create account

Use this link to land on the page shown above: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/ 

Click ‘Join KDP’ if you don’t have an account already.

On the next screen, you’ll type your first and last name, your email, and a password. 

Click ‘Create account.’ Then read the terms and conditions, and if you agree, click the orange agree button!

2. Complete account information

Before you get off to the races on publishing your book, you need to update your information. Click on ‘Your Account’ which is a link highlighted in blue. First, you will be asked to set up a 2-step verification with your phone number. 

When that’s done, you need to fill in your personal information like date of birth, ID number, and bank account details. This information gives Amazon a place to send your royalties. There’s a tax interview for you to complete too.

(We don’t want to dox ourselves so no screenshots for those pages, sorry!)

Once you’ve filled in all the fields, you can press ‘Save.’ Continue to the Bookshelf tab to begin publishing your book on Amazon.

3. Create new title or series

We’re back to the first screen now. Click the big yellow ‘Create’ button to get started. 

Note: In the white box you’ll find blue text with some linked resources. You can learn more about Amazon’s publishing resources if you have any questions.

After clicking ‘Create’ you can choose the version of your book you’d like to publish: Kindle eBook, paperback, hardcover, or you can create a series page if you’re building on a series that’s already published on Amazon. 

We’re focusing on eBooks in this guide to keep things simple, but the others are not much different! For the purposes of this tutorial, click ‘Kindle eBook.’

4. Enter Book details

Remember all the metadata you’ve compiled earlier? You can open those up and set it on the side. It’ll help you fill in these fields quickly. 

First up, choose the book’s language that it was written in then input the book’s title and subtitle. 

Although it says that the subtitle field is optional, it can’t hurt to provide more information about your book. For example, stating that your fantasy book is ‘An Epic Dark Fantasy” in the subtitle can help draw in readers of that genre. 

You could also put the name of the series in the subtitle to make it easier for readers to find your series among your other books. Speaking of series, if the book is part of a series, make sure to add that under ‘Add to series’ and add an Edition Number if needed.

There are plenty more fields to go, so strap in. You’ll be asked to fill out the following information:

• Primary author: This is you! You can use your pen name if you’re not using your real name.
• Contributors: This could be your co-authors or editors who have significantly impacted this edition of the book.
• Description: This is where you add your book blurb. Make use of bold, italics, and paragraph spacing to make the content easier to follow. 
• Publishing rights: Specify if you have publishing rights. 
• Primary audience: Your audience matters to your book’s success. Here you should specify the reading ages for your book and indicate if there’s explicit content.
• Primary marketplace: If you have a plan to distribute your book in many countries, you can use this field to state the main country you’re selling in, for example, amazon.co.uk or amazon.com.

This page isn’t done yet, but we felt the next few fields deserved their own step.

5. Choose Categories & Keywords

This section is important to finding the right readers for your book. As we know, your book sells the best when it’s targeted toward the readers that will most resonate with it.

So in this section, you need to pick one broad category, as you can see above we chose Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It asks you to pick 2 more subcategories that best fit your book – it’s best to pick one subcategory here.

These aren’t set in stone! You can change these later if you feel your book fits in other niches better than the ones you initially chose.

Amazon says this is optional, but for us, it’s a must! Next, you can pick 7 keywords here to represent your book. This helps your book show up for readers searching for certain phrases. 

Make sure to pick keywords not already mentioned in your book title, subtitle, and description so you throw your net wide. 

You can also choose to have a pre-order date or have it ready for sale immediately on Amazon. Pick the right option for you.

Now, you’re done with this section! Click ‘Save and Continue.’

6. Fill in eBook content

By this stage, you should’ve had some printed copies checked for errors and even read an eBook format of your book to see if everything looks as it should. Readers don’t always notice those copyright pages or pay much attention to how you number your pages. But if it’s not done right, they can tell immediately.

You can make adjustments after this step to your book cover and manuscript, but it’s better to spot issues yourself than have readers leave a bad review to bring it to light.

• Book manuscript

If you’re happy with your book manuscript, you can upload it. Since this is the eBook process, your manuscript should be in a format that suits Kindle. Mobi is the best format for Kindle books but ePub is also accepted. If you’re not sure how to format your book, you could hire a professional.

• Book cover

Next up, it’s time to upload your book cover. Amazon does have the option to create a cover there and then, but we suggest creating a book cover beforehand that has different versions for Kindle and paperback. 

Stick to Amazon’s specification for ebook covers: 2,560 pixels in height and 1,600 pixels in width.

Top Tip #3: If you need some inspiration for a great book cover, check out this blog: The Best Book Cover Ideas For 2024.

The manuscript and cover may take some time to upload, so don’t fret if it takes a few minutes. Don’t refresh or click off the page while Amazon is doing its thing.

After it’s uploaded, both the fields will have a green message letting you know that your book is good to go! If it doesn’t, you’ll need to make further adjustments to meet their requirements. But hopefully, you’ve done enough preparations to avoid that hassle!

But you’re not done yet!

• AI content

Now, you can confirm if you have AI-generated content in your book manuscript. This includes your book cover, images or illustrations, or parts of your story. 

The reason Amazon wants to know is to ensure quality books are on their platform and to provide their users with this information upfront. Anything less than that could go against their terms of service or worse make consumers less trusting of the platform. Which would hurt Amazon and you as an author. So, be honest!

• Do your checks

Next, you can do an extra check by previewing what the book will look like on Kindle. Make sure the cover fits the page correctly, and the interior looks exactly how it should. If there’s an error, you can try uploading again or reformatting the page sticking out from the crowd.

• ISBN & ownership

Lastly, there are 2 optional fields. You can provide an ISBN if you have one, although it is optional for Kindle books. You can also mention who the publisher is. If you’re self-publishing on Amazon, buying an ISBN will enable you to register as the publisher and retain ownership of your book.

Using a free ISBN from Amazon for your eBook means if you want to sell it on other platforms you’ll still need to get an ISBN. 

Complete these fields as it suits you and click ‘Save and Continue.’

7. Kindle eBook Pricing

This is the last section! 

• KDP Select & territories

Firstly, you get to choose if you want to be part of KDP Select. To give you a refresher, if you want your book to be part of promotions like Kindle Unlimited, KDP Select will be a huge benefit for you. 

But if you plan to publish your book elsewhere, going with KDP Select prohibits you from publishing on other platforms for 90 days. Choosing KDP Select will mean closing yourself off to Apple Books, Google Play, etc. 

Your marketing strategy will inform this decision. But choose wisely!

Next, which will also depend on your marketing strategy, you can choose the territories where you have rights to distribute your book.

• Book price

And now for the pricing. 

As we mentioned before, how you price your book will dictate your royalties. There are many aspects to consider, for example, the amount of money you spent on services to help publish your book, your promotional strategies, and how much royalties you’d prefer to receive.

Before typing in your price, select the royalty plan of choice. Amazon will fill in the prices in other territories based on the first price you use. We suggest doing some research so you remain competitive in those markets. 

After inputting the prices, Amazon will calculate the delivery rate and show you how much money you’ll make per book sold. 

• You’ve made it!

The time has come to do your final checks.

Once you’ve chosen the prices, you can go back through the tabs to check all the information. When you’re certain all the details are perfect, click Publish!

Note: It can take up to 72 hours to have your book available on Amazon for sale.

Next Steps Once You’ve Published…

And just like that, your book is out there for readers to discover and fall in love!

But it’s not as simple as publishing and watching the sales come in, unfortunately. Publishing a book on Amazon is easy, but making your book successful is another beast on its own. A lot of time and effort will go into selling your book – it’s the life of an author.

We have one tip to elevate your authorship and help you control your branding: an author website. It’s a hub to grow your readerbase, showcase your books, and promote your work with ease. 

Creating one can feel like too much of a hassle, but any serious author will tell you it’s a must if you want to be a professional author.

Lucky for you, we have experience in building epic websites for authors who were promoting their debut as well as authors who’ve sold millions of copies. We know what you’re going through, and want to help you succeed.

Fill in this inquiry form and let’s see how we can help your author dreams come true!