I achieved my goal of publishing my first book on February 1st. Wow! You won’t believe all the success I’ve gotten!!!! Zero! Why? Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is not cooperating for me! And of course there’s no phone number so I’m waiting on them to email me back.  This is so much fun – not! I’ve tried Googling a solution and there’s nobody that’s having the difficulty I’m having so aren’t I special? The issue is that in KDP once I click on “save and publish” it says it’ll be in review for about 12 hours. No biggie. However when it’s out of review it goes back into draft form. When I click on that then it says I need to “save and “publish” and now the whole process starts all over again! This has been going on for me since Sunday. Ugh! I’m waiting to hear back from Amazon.

Well I decided to take matters into my own hands this morning by self-publishing on other sites as well. I’m not sure if I’m being redundant or being counter productive, but I really want to get my book out there! All I can say is that I am trying!!

How to Publish an eBook

First write a wonderful book – I used Microsoft Word

I formatted mine in 14 pt in Calbri body

Insert a table of contents

Make sure someone edits it for you

 

Kindle Direct Print
(Amazon, Kindle)

1.  Sign up for an account at Kindle Direct Print

2. Upload your document

3. Design a cover using their cover creator

4. Proof it

5. Click save and publish and it will stay in “review” for about 12 hours

6. Cross your fingers you don’t have the issue I have about it going from “in review” to “draft” in a continual cycle

 

Create Space
(Amazon books in print & stores)

1.  Sign up for an account at Create Space

2. Upload your document

3. Design a cover using their cover creator

4. There’s a checklist on the left hand side, make sure you complete every step in there!
I received 2 notifications I read but they didn’t go away. When reading the notifications, scroll down the the bottom and click on “I fixed the problem”
Also my book was showing up as “Awaiting order proof” and I finally figured out that although it said my proof was checked off, I hadn’t competed the review in their system.
Click on proofing options and select “View a Digital Proof”

5. Then you’re book is complete and live instantly on their eStore and will be on Amazon.com in about a week

6. I then clicked on their marketing channel and began studying up

 

Lulu
(iBookstore, Nook, etc.)

I researched another websites to self-publish your works when Amazon wasn’t working and I liked the reviews for Lulu.com. I also wanted a source to get into more than just Amazon distribution. You actually get your own “author spotlight” on Lulu that you can use to promote yourself and your products.

1. Sign up for a free account at Lulu

2. Upload file

3. Design a simple cover

4. Enter payment and tax info

5. Publish!

6. Once it is live in your “My Projects” tabs, click on promote to the right of the item. That will give you the code you can paste onto your website to put a direct button to buy your book (you can see my button on the right side of my website). Copy and paste that code into a text widget.

 

 

GumRoad

I found this site when I wanted to see if there was a way I can directly sell my book. This site is really cool and you can see ANYTHING! (Reviews said it could take over PayPal!) This is because it’s a great way to directly sell anything digital as well as services. Pretty cool!

1. Create a free account at GumRoad

2. Select the file or service you want to sell

3. Put in all the details

4. The hardest time I had was creating the link to my site. I researched and even downloaded a GumRoad plugin but couldn’t get it to work. It ended up being really easy. Just click on your product, then you’ll see edit, options, and timeline. Click on timeline and then you’ll see the overlay code below the share buttons. I just copy/pasted it into my text widget below the Lulu button.