The 13 biggest benefits of publishing a Kindle book … especially if you’re a first-time author!
If you’ve finished writing your book and you’re researching publishing options, keep reading. Having helped hundreds of authors since 2013 to publish ebooks (and paperbacks) on Amazon Kindle, I can highly recommend this platform. I’ve published many of my own Kindle books there too.
Creating a Kindle book using Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform has so many benefits, namely:
Ease of use
Setting up your publishing account, working through the dashboard and uploading your book to KDP for submission is relatively easy. You can also upload your book in a Word format and let KDP turn it into a Kindle-readable file for you. So there’s no need to mess around with mobi files, ePubs and/or HTML coding. Keep it simple. Who doesn’t like simple?
Free
You can set up and publish your book for free. No hidden costs. You don’t even have to buy an ISBN either as ebooks don’t require them.
Flexibility
Publishing on Kindle is so flexible. Even once you’ve published your book, you can still make changes. That’s such a relief, I find, to many of my authors who sometimes want to add extra content to the book, change a phrase or chapter title, that kind of thing. As long as no more than 20% of the book’s content is altered you can resubmit a new version without having to make a ‘2nd edition’. And if you want to change your cover, your book blurb, the Amazon sales description, the price, keywords and categories, you can!
Global audience
When your book’s uploaded you can make it available to countries all over the world. That’s a lot of pairs of eyes!
You can set up your Kindle book for pre-order
Generating interest and warming up potential readers weeks before your book’s launch date is an excellent marketing tactic that many of the best-selling authors use. And it’s great for making you commit to a deadline too. Nothing like a deadline for spurring you on.
Creative control
When you self-publish on Amazon, you choose what your cover looks like, how the formatting is presented, how your content is set out and which additional pages to include (think, About the Author and Connect with the Author pages). It’s not quite the same when you’re tied to a traditional publisher.
User-friendly interface
Amazon wants you to publish your book on their KDP platform because they have a vested interest in making money, just like us authors. That’s why they try to make every stage of the publication process as easy as possible for indie authors. Kindle Create is a special software programme you can download and work with to create your Kindle book in the easiest way possible.
Create your paperback version with ease
Once your Kindle book’s ready the additional details (blurb/Amazon description, author name, book title and sub-title, keywords and categories etc) are automatically put in place for you to start creating your paperback version too. Saves time and energy, and motivates you into creating the paperback and potentially tapping into another market area.
Earn money while you sleep
Every time you sell one of your Kindle books you receive 70% of the royalties (as long as your book is priced lower than $9.99). Amazon keeps the other 30% to recompense them for displaying your book on their shelves (all over the world) and sending it to readers wirelessly on your behalf. Compared to the royalties you receive from many traditional publishers (you can expect anywhere from 5-25% usually), this is a potentially lucrative income stream. One of my morning habits is to check my royalty payments on KDP to see how many books I’ve sold while I was sleeping. It’s very addictive.
Tools to help you publish on Kindle
If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to cover design, you can use the KDP cover creator. There are some great options in there, including some royalty-free stock images to form the basis of your cover. The other big bonus is that KDP won’t reject your cover for being a millimetre or two out, because you’ve actually used their cover creator. Saves a lot of time and frustration if you choose this option. You also get a chance to preview what your book will look like on a Kindle, a tablet and even a phone, before you commit and submit it to KDP. So there’s no need to worry about silly mistakes because you can preview everything before you press that ‘publish’ button.
Business owners can easily repurpose their content into Kindle books
As business owners, we create heaps of content (PDF downloads, podcasts, 7-day challenges, masterclasses, video series etc), but have you ever stopped to think about how easily they can be repurposed? Tailor the content and turn it into a Kindle book so it drives readers back to your website, blogs, subscriber list and into your community too. Publishing a series of Kindle books can do wonders for boosting your brand too.
Great SEO
Just like Google, Amazon is also a search engine – type a word into the Amazon search bar and watch the autofill spring into action. Amazon will index your book immediately once it’s published (just like Google does with websites that are submitted to them) and it will appear in internet searches, just as a business would. So your book will appear in front of potential readers while they’re browsing the Amazon store AND it will come up in general searches too.
Speed!
Submit your Kindle book to Amazon KDP and within anywhere between 24 and 72 hours, your book is on sale to the whole wide world! How’s that for speed? From experience, I know that the Kindle versions (compared to paperbacks) are always quicker to be accepted by KDP. So there’s another big bonus right there!
Pretty nifty, right?
When it comes to publishing on Kindle you don’t have to worry about the genre or the kind of content to write (fiction, non-fiction, business, self-help, inspirational, poetry are all in abundance on the Amazon bookshelves).
You don’t have to have a set formula – ie, it doesn’t have to be x amount of pages if you want it to be considered as a ‘real book’, whatever that is.
You can literally turn anything you like into an ebook – take a look through the Amazon shelves now (well, once you’ve finished reading this article would be better, actually) and look for the genre you would write in. Make a list of what’s in there now. I’m sure this could spark plenty of ideas for you.
If creating a Kindle book is something you’re interested in then make a start today! And if you get stuck or you’d like some help to work through it with you or you’d like it done for you, then I’m here. Just pop me a message.
Give it a try, make a Kindle plan and set yourself a new goal for the rest of the year. Who knows, it could be the start of a lucrative Kindle publishing business and fire you off into an exciting and completely unexpected new diversion?
Good luck!
Michelle
Self-Publishing Services for First-Time Authors
More Kindle Book Publishing articles
How to Publish on Kindle the EASY WAY! — Michelle Emerson ¦ Self-Publishing Services UK
Publish on Kindle – How to Get Your Book Noticed — Michelle Emerson ¦ Self-Publishing Services UK
Thank you so much. This is extremely helpful. Iam a first timer, wishing to publish my poetry collection. Although I am a technical writer by trade, this seems a new world.
You’re welcome! Really pleased it’s helpful.
Thank you so much, I’m working on my first book ever…no, a second after one, did one with my Grade 5 kids…isn’t really mine, is it?😊😊
Well done. No, it’s not yours. 🙂
Good luck!
I notice you say the kindle option is free but if I want to publish in paper copy also, do you know the costs? I can’t find this info.
Thanks so much
You can create a paperback for free too using KDP.