Any quick tips for publishing a book/ebook on Amazon?

Kindle Direct Publishing is your quickest option. But you need to make sure your document is formatted properly for Kindle - there are people on Fiverr who can do that for you.

Pricing is up to you and will depend on your market - do a search for similar titles to get an idea of the going rate and then test over time to see whether that's your best option.

Book cover should be "flat" rather than the 3D effect typically used in internet marketing. And it needs to work well at the small thumbnail size that you'll initially see in the Amazon results as well as a bigger size when they click through.

Sales copy - use most of the 4000 characters you're allowed. Personally I don't go for a sales pitch approach, closer to an editorial review.

Remember that you can't enrol your Kindle book in the Select program if it's available electronically elsewhere.

For printed books, go to CreateSpace. Formatting needs to be different but they handle the print on demand, etc.

Thats an interesting question because you already have the book selling on your site.

What price are you selling it at?

I ask because the Amazon market for ebooks has a very low price point - if you want to take advantage of the Amazon marketplace, then you might have to sell it for less than you sell it for on your own site. I wonder if that will piss off your current customers?

Also, the big advantage to Amazon (for most books) at the moment is being able to put the book in the KDP select program where you can offer it for free 5 out of 90 days and get paid when people "borrow" the book. Only problem is that, in order to take advantage of this program, you will have to stop selling the book from your website.

If you aren't going to use KDP select, then don't just put the book on Amazon, put it on B&N, Apple etc…

I don' know if anyone has a sales copy formula, but I would keep your sales copy (i.e. book description brief) - much shorter than the sales copy you probably have on your site. Look around at the best selling books in your category to see what their design and copy looks like.

You'll probably have to reformat the book and cover to look good on Amazon and then again for CreateSpace, but you probably already knew that.

I don't think there is anything else to be aware of, but you might ask yourself why you want to put it on there if it is already selling good from your site?

If you're selling it for $34 from your own site, you could probably sell it for a good price on Kindle. From my experience, it's best to test different price points. Maybe start at $19.95 and work your way down (or up), or even start at $9.99 and then raise the price every couple of weeks and track your sales.

For sales copy, just use what you have on your site for the book's description on Kindle. That should work just fine.

As far as getting paid, if you price it over $2.99 then you'll be at the 70% royalty rate. You'll get paid 60 days after the close of the month, so any January sales I get I'll get a check probably 3/29. Sounds like a long wait, but once you start getting monthly checks it's not so bad - just sucks the first 60 days.

If you enroll in KDP Select (where people can "borrow" your book for free) you can't sell it anywhere else. Based on your price range, I would NOT suggest using KDP Select. I have books selling for 99 cents, but get $2-2.50 per share. You'd get more money from a sale than a share, so I would probably stay away.

Just take a look at the requirements for the cover. I think the longest side has to be 1200px minimum (that might be wrong - be sure to check), so if you can take what you have an make it look good at their size requirements then just use that. Otherwise you might have to create a new cover at a better resolution to use for Kindle.

Good luck with everything!

Thank you for the great advice, BoomBlogger. I'll be looking to sell it on Kindle ASAP. I definitely don't want to stop selling it off my website so I guess the KDP Select won't work for me.

You definitely want to test everything. Don't even assume that the 70% royalty is better than the 35%...it depends on the size of your book because you pay a delivery fee at the 70% royalty but not the 35%.

Also, if you choose the 70% Royalty, you can only price your book up to $9.99 and not higher. If you want to sell your book for more than $9.99, you will be at the 35% Royalty.

Price your book at $9.99 and take advantage of the 70% royalty. You'd have to price your book at 20 bucks to make the same commission at 35% royalty. You'll sell more copies at $9.99 than you will at the higher price point. I've found the delivery fees to be minimal, even for books with a decent amount of pictures. I think the most I've had to pay for delivery was $0.30 cents a book, and that was for a children's book that was almost all pictures with little text.

Buyers on Amazon are used to seeing books priced in the $0.99 to $9.99 price range. Unless you're selling a textbook (which are all priced at ridiculously high prices) or something of exceptionally high quality, you'll more than likely make more by pricing your books in the 70% commission range and keeping the price within the range Amazon customers are used to seeing.

That said, don't be afraid to experiment. Some of my books sell better when priced higher than they do at lower prices. They also get less refunds.

Another thing you might want to consider is breaking your book up into smaller books and selling them as a series. I don't know if the topic your book is written on is able to be broken up, but if it's big enough you might want to break it into 3 to 4 smaller books that you can sell for 3 or 4 dollars each. Then combine the smaller books into a bigger book and offer it at a price point at the top end of the 70% commission range.

I'd be curious to see if the book sells for that price on Kindle. I think a print version would be really good to offer your website visitors. Many of my print books outsell my kindle books by quite a bit.

Since you won't be using KDP select, you should also put it on smashwords and have it distributed to all the other ebook platforms.

I've been wondering how putting a book on Smashwords and selling it on a bunch of other platforms compares to the boost in sales you get from promoting a book via KDP Select. Has anyone tested this? I haven't tried it yet because a lot of my sales come right after a free promotion and I don't really want to miss out on the sales boost.

Thanks for the response.

I agree with you regarding CreateSpace. I post a lot of my books to both CreateSpace and Kindle.

For those of you thinking of using CreatSpace, you can sometimes double or even triple your sales by offering print versions of your books. Just be careful when posting short books. People get a little grouchy when they buy what they think is a book only to find out it's closer to being a pamphlet . . . and rightfully so. I don't post any books that I've written that are less than 75 or so pages on CreateSpace. A good test is to pick up an actual book and separate out the number of pages your book is going to be. If you'd be mad if you paid for a book (and for shipping of the book) of that size, then don't put it on CreateSpace.

You want to think about the strategy behind any of this...if you have a $34 ebook that is selling well then I would consider beefing that package up with some bonuses so you can maintain that price point and not offer the same product in hard copy for less (will be hard to get $34 from Amazon)

Think about your strategy...

1. Have a "mini" version of your book on Kindle for somewhere between $2.99-$9.99 to tap into the mass ebook marketplace - you want to have an offer in there to get people onto your list or upsell to back-end product

2. Work with Createspace to make your physical book available - likely at a price point of not more than $29

3. Put together an ebook package - the ebook, an audio version (get that done on Fiverr), a checklist or chapter summary sheet, etc... and sell it for $47

4. Consider a higher-end package that would appeal to your marketplace (bundle consulting, membership site, multiple ebooks, video series, interviews with other experts, etc...) that would sell for $97

By having this range you hit various levels of your market and can upsell to get the overall spend up within your market.

Jeff

Here's a post that may help answer some of your questions

My Kindle Failure and Future Plans for Success

This guy just went through the same process it's sounds like you are considering. He had a successful book selling on his site for $47 and published in on Kindle for $9.99 but it didn't do so well. There may be some good tips here for you.

Hmmm if it is doing well on it's current platform then I would probably avoid selling on Kindle. Just because Amazon has free Kindle software that can be downloaded for both Mac and PC.

So if you are offering it for a reduced rate on Kindle, some people that visit your site may just go over to amazon, download Kindle for PC and buy the book that way. Not only would you be losing money, you would then also need to share the royalty with Amazon.

So if you are selling it for 20usd, you lose 30% royalty to Amazon. That means you only make $14 per sale and could possibly be throwing a much larger profit away.

I really appreciate the tactical input from everyone. The information about royalties rates for different price ranges was an especially useful insight. I'll have to completely change the way I approach it now.

I think jbsmith had the best idea in making mini versions of my book and selling it in less expensive chunks. I don't want to cannibalize my website sales but also don't want to miss out on Amazon opportunities.

Has anybody on here already have books listed on Amazon that I can see?

KDP Select requires that the electronic version of your book is only available on Kindle for 90 days. So you can't put it as a download on your own website or on B&N, Smashwords, etc.

KDP Select is on auto renew in 90 day chunks and it's up to you to remember to opt out. If you do opt out, you're allowed one more time to opt in, then that's it. So you can't be dipping in and out of it.

I see a lot of people have opinions and that's great but I would like to learn from someone who has actually done it or is doing it currently. I have purchased every program under the sun and it seems I am just spinning my wheels as these guys are just selling programs and not really doing it themselves. I recently published a few books on amazon average pdf book size 25 pages or longer but I have not made any sales. I am not really sure about setting up my own site. I would appreciate some direction maybe some points of contact of people that set up these websites for a fee to help me sell my book(s). I am not looking to get rich or event thinking in that fashion. I am trying to supplement my social security. If you have done this or doing this I want to learn from you. My name is Patricia McDonald you can view my books at amazon. I would appreciate any feedback, points of contact, direction on how to proceed obviously I am doing something wrong or missing an important part as I have not made one sale on anything and spent a ton on various programs. Please email me at mondoux31@juno.com any information you think might help thanks again.

My suggestion is that you should publish your book in the Kindle version. You will earn 75% of the sells and Amazon will handle the rest. You could sell the book around $13 depending on the quality of the book.

If you think you're going to sell a lot of e-books, you should figure out a way to upload your file (book) directly to KDP and avoid using any sort of middleman or e-book "aggregator" that takes a cut of the profits.

If you're a true DIY person, you can create your own cover (though if you're not a professional designer, it's better to hire a pro) and format your e-book from a Word file using free software tools such as Mobipocket eBook Creator or Calibre.

I found Tim Ferris' (of the Four Day Work Week fame) recent blog post to be quite useful and interesting on this subject.
The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Look for the post entitled 'How to (Really) Make $1,000,000 Selling E-Books' which has some interesting insights such as the 2.99 sweet spot.
Some tips in here that are definitely working for me.