Become a Published Author: What Goes Into Self-Publishing on Amazon

Every year, more than 1.4 million self-published books hit Amazon’s virtual shelves. In 2022, four of our anthologies were among them, and we’re about to publish another: our First Chapter Anthology.

Publishing your work via the world’s largest e-commerce company sounds great, but it isn’t as simple as uploading your raw manuscript, entering your listing price and clicking “publish.”

While it can open the door for you to become a published author without having to gain the acceptance of an agent or editor, self-publishing on Amazon is not a shortcut. It too requires substantial effort: effort that involves much more than writing. When you opt for self-publishing, you don’t get the benefit of a publishing house's dedicated editorial, design, publicity, marketing and sales teams. Instead, it’s all up to you. Exciting and scary, right?

The good news is, you're not on your own! We’re here to help you with every step of your writing journey, from drafting to publication. With several anthologies under our belts, we’ve become well acquainted with self-publishing on Amazon, so I thought I’d provide a broad overview of the process and timeline using our most recent anthology as an example.

Let’s hop into our time machine and travel back to March 13, when our contest submissions closed. After selecting the most promising stories, we began working with the authors to polish them for potential publication. This period, part of our standard contest cycle, typically takes about a week or so. For revisions of a full novel, plan for much longer (usually at least a couple months).

Once revisions were complete, we selected finalists and the winner. In addition to developmental suggestions, our editorial team also carefully reviewed the mechanics of each story. I highly recommend investing in a professional edit of your work. Whether a gigantic plot hole or a tiny typo, errors are avoidable. I'll take it a step further: they are inexcusable. If you can't thoroughly edit your work, how can you expect readers to take it seriously?

Multitasking is the key to efficiency, so as we edited, we began work with our designer on the anthology cover. While you may possess the skills to create your cover, or simply a willingness to learn, this is another area where a small investment might pay off. Don’t underestimate the power of a good book cover: it’s the first thing your reader will see. It may make the difference between a reader clicking into your book or scrolling past it.

“If people don't notice your cover or connect with it, the author of the book next to yours will be grateful.”
— David Leonhardt

A published book contains more content than the actual story, or in our case, stories. So after we compiled the polished pieces into a single file, we started writing this additional text: the table of contents, the foreword, the back-flap copy and the book description. Your book may have other parts, like a dedication page, or, for nonfiction, a glossary. At this stage you should make sure all your elements are ready to go.

Next up was formatting our file for upload into Amazon’s system. This is really just a matter of adhering to specific guidelines (margin size, font size, etc.), which you can find here. (Note that ebooks and print books have different formatting specs.)

With our anthology file formatted, it was then time to jump over to Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP, Amazon’s self-publishing platform, to input all our information and upload our materials. (Although the two are linked, your KDP account differs from a standard Amazon account. You can sign into your KDP account here, or create one if you don’t already have an Amazon account.) Because of all our advance prep, this stage isn’t too time-consuming.

It’s important to be aware that KDP requires more than just the title of your book and the manuscript file. You'll need to input quite a bit of information. Most of this is straightforward (like book language and age range), but two sections are worth taking a closer look at: categories and keywords. Both play a major role in readers’ ability to find you.

Categories and keywords are critical tools for selling books on Amazon.

Categories tell Amazon which shelf your book belongs on. There are more than 16,000 category options, but KDP only allows you to choose two. Be as specific as possible, and select the ones that best fit your book. This will make it more discoverable for readers. For example, instead of just selecting “Fiction > General,” we use “Fiction > Anthologies.”

Keywords are another vital piece of your book’s metadata. KDP allows you to choose up to seven. These are words and/or phrases that describe your book. They may pertain to the type of setting (medieval adventure), characters (zombies), etc. A helpful trick is to type a potential keyword into Amazon’s search bar to see what it suggests.

After you fill out the necessary information and upload your manuscript and cover, it’s time to hit “publish.” Now, while publishing on KDP is lightyears faster than traditional publishing, it’s not quite instant. It can take up to three days for your book to become available.

When all is said and done, it’s about a three-week turnaround time from the day our submissions close to when the anthology is available for purchase. Not too shabby!

Persue Publication With a Bardsy Anthology Contest

If you're ready to make your publication dreams a reality, enter our current Anthology Contest. All finalists will be published in our anthology and receive a monetary prize. For a more in-depth walkthrough of self-publishing on Amazon, look out for our upcoming publication guide!

TO DO SCRATCHPAD PRIVATE JOURNAL TRACKING Update Assessment

CLICK A TAB TO USE WILL.POWER

TO DO LIST:
Add tasks to your sortable list, then revel in checking them off.

SCRATCHPAD:
Cache your gems as they fall in this always accessible place.

PRIVATE JOURNAL:
Reflect on your process — good, bad and ugly — in your dated diary.

TRACKING:
Measure your progress with key writing metrics, automatically,

ADD DO

Show Dones

ADD ENTRY

Metric:

Words

Minutes

ADD

Click anywhere to close / cancel

Become a Published Author: What Goes Into Self-Publishing on Amazon

“If people don't notice your cover or connect with it, the author of the book next to yours will be grateful.” — David Leonhardt

Categories and keywords are critical tools for selling books on Amazon.

Persue Publication With a Bardsy Anthology Contest

“If people don't notice your cover or connect with it, the author of the book next to yours will be grateful.”
— David Leonhardt