Looking to Self-Publish Your Book? Go for it—with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing!
- Shirley Jobson
- Nov 13, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 3, 2023
Publishing my first book was something I had only ever dreamed of and never got round to doing—until October 2020, that is!
Writing has always come naturally to me. Expressing myself vocally is, in many instances, not my forte. But, when I sit down to write, the words flow so naturally and easily that I can always convey exactly what I want to say. At school, I always looked forward to writing essays, and I remember my parents telling me how they were often asked by my teachers if they had helped me with my homework. As I grew older, I found myself frequently penning short stories, using my fertile imagination to describe fictional worlds and create the colourful characters who lived in them.
Being also an avid reader gave me a good grasp of the English language and expanded my vocabulary, and my family and friends urged me repeatedly to use my proficiency in the written word to compose a book. I was always more adept at writing short stories rather than a whole novel. And so, I tweaked a few essays which I had already written in previous years, wrote a few new ones, and finally came up with a suitable collection of ten short stories, which I decided to self-publish one October day in 2020.
Amazon is one of the best platforms for writers to self-publish their book!
Self-publishing your own book is not something you can do without putting in some effort, especially if, like me, this is your first foray. It involves a huge leap of faith that requires you to trust in the success of your book, because you do not have an agent giving you advice and showing you what works and what doesn’t.
Furthermore, you need to promote the book yourself and discover how you can reach a market which goes beyond your immediate circle. Social media can help you immensely with this, but you still need to do the work yourself. However, if you are confident that your book will be well received, then I believe you should take that step and share it with the world.
It might not become a bestseller, but you will never know until you try!
Through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon gives you all the tools and resources you need to put your book out there in a tailor-made format that can be achieved in a few simple steps—and without any fees. It took me just one afternoon to upload my book, edit and review it in both Kindle and paperback format, and publish it. Within hours, it was online!
Here’s how I did it—with Kindle Create!
Once I downloaded Kindle Create—Amazon’s free interior formatting tool—I uploaded my book manuscript, which must be in doc, docx, or pdf format. The manuscript was immediately displayed on my laptop screen in Kindle format, with a professionally designed theme. The app found my chapter titles and styled them automatically, while simultaneously building the book’s table of contents. All I had to do was use the simple drop-down menu on the side to add the Copyright page and Foreword in the Front Matter section and the About the Author and Acknowledgement pages to the back of the book.
The built-in Kindle Previewer enabled me to examine my book onscreen and showed me how it would appear on different gadgets, such as phones, tablets, or eReaders. Once I edited and approved the content of the book, I moved on to the Cover Creator to select the image that would appear on my eBook’s cover. There is a wide choice of beautiful images—or you can upload your own—and various fonts available to personalize your front and back cover.
I then chose the price and the percentage of royalties I desired for my eBook, and I was good to go. After it was reviewed and approved by KDP, my eBook was live!
I also opted to make my book available in paperback format. Again, Amazon doesn’t charge for this, because paperbacks are not printed until they are ordered, in which case the cost of printing each order will then come out of my royalties. Setting up the paperback involved a similar procedure to the one above, with the Print Previewer giving me an onscreen visual of how my book would appear on paper.
And so, thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, I am now a very proud, self-published author!
Through the KDP website, I can edit the content of my book whenever I want, view reports of book sales and other information, and also order as many author copies in paperback format as I wish. As the author, I only have to pay the printing cost for these paperbacks, which makes it possible for me to be able to sell them locally to those who prefer to own a physical copy of my book.
Writing has always been a part of my life, and publishing my first book fulfilled a lifelong dream that my loved ones had been forever encouraging me to pursue. My main reason for doing it is not about gaining fame or prosperity though. I am passionate about using my ability to create awareness about moral and social issues. In fact, my collection of short stories, Flowing From The Ebb, explores various themes in life: some that flood us with joy, others that produce great suffering and heartbreak. But I am a firm believer that, whatever life throws at us, we as humans have the ability to endure, persevere, and come out the other end stronger and wiser than we were before. So, I invite you to read my book and get to know each of my protagonists, with the hope that they will inspire you, fill you with confidence, and console your troubled hearts.
Flowing From The Ebb: A Short Story Collection About The Tides Of Life, written by Shirley Jobson, is available in Kindle and paperback format on all Amazon Marketplaces.
Note from the author to residents of the Maltese Islands:
If you would like to purchase a paperback copy directly from me, please get in touch on 99422453, at shirjobson@outlook.com, or through my website. Thank you!
