Chris A. Baird | May 7, 2020
Is Amazon the best free online option for self-publishing?

When you are new to self-publishing, you would always want to try the free online option. Learn about the other places where you can publish your books and compare it with Amazon.

Today's question is, is Amazon the best free online option for self-publishing? So, let's move on to where to start. The first thing is that this is an excellent question.

There are tons of different options available when self-publishing we have Lulu, Drafts2Digital, Smashwords, and IngramSpark. We also have Amazon.

For the paperbacks, there is a series of options. Audiobooks with ACX and Audible. So many different options, so much frustration.

Check out this related article: Should I Publish My Kindle eBooks On ACX And CreateSpace?

Well, everybody's heard of Amazon and Kindle Publishing but is that really the best place to start or maybe you should start somewhere else? So, hopefully, we can answer that question.

Check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. That will most likely be able to help you. It has helped me produce over 170 ebooks and running so far.

A little bit about my story, when I first started, it was most definitely starting with Amazon. They are the biggest and they were the ones that I had heard about.

In particular, I was excited about Kindle Publishing because I myself was already reading and downloading Kindle books. Some of them involved how to make Kindle books.

Nothing Compares To Amazon

So, getting a Kindle book on How To Make Kindle Books. I thought maybe I should give this thing a try. I have some messages that I would like to spread out into the world. In some nonfiction books and what better way to do it.

That was the route I took and then after that, I ended up moving on to CreateSpace for Kindle Publishing, Lulu for hardbacks, IngramSpark for paperbacks ACX. It then pushes out to a whole series of audiobooks and going that route.

So that was a little bit of my story. But the question was, should we start with Amazon? Is that the correct start? I also did do Smashwords on the side and consider Drafts2Digital but if tested out many different options.

The answer is yes, Amazon is, in fact, the best place. You have the largest audience of customers in the world who are looking to buy books. That is something that you can't match anywhere else.

Check out this related article: How Do You Self-Publish A Children's Book On Amazon Kindle?

Amazon's willing to pay you 70% of the profit on your Kindle books between $3 and $10 assuming we keep it in that range. The other thing to remember is that people have their credit cards out, they are ready to buy.

They've got their logged in to their Amazon accounts. They are in the right location. They are even searching exactly for what you're creating.

That is assuming you did it correctly with your keywords and description and these sorts of things in your book cover. They are going to see your book and they are ready to hit the button.

Start There But Don't Settle There

Unlike if you had Facebook ads or something and they click a link. They have to then log in to an account and they have to pull out their credit card and register it. There's a whole series of necessary steps.

Whereas, if they are already on Amazon, we have already got a captive audience and they are willing to buy. But a huge mistake could be made here just because Amazon is, in fact, the right place. I would say even Kindle Publishing is where you should start.

Starting with using limited to only Amazon, in the beginning, up with regarding your ebooks. Since you can't run ads on Amazon against those books unless you agreed to select on their specific platform, that you agree to the terms of that.

But regarding the paper books, and also your audiobooks, this gives us a lot more flexibility. So you should not stop by publishing only on Amazon.

I would recommend immediately after you have got your Amazon Kindle book, that you have your Amazon print book and then your audiobook produced. That should be the next step.

Then, IngramSpark and Lulu have to follow after that but don't burn yourself out. Sometimes, we can spend so much time thinking about where to start that we ended up doing nothing.

Check out this related article: Does Self-Publishing Hurt Your Chances To Become Popular?

So I would say, start with Kindle on Amazon and learn how to produce these books. Because the principles behind getting your Kindle book going will be the same ones that you are going to be using later on down the line.

What have you found? Have you found that Amazon is exactly the only place you want to be going? Or maybe there are other platforms that you would like to go to.

Let me know below in the comments. Check out my other blogs and videos to see other questions that are answered just like this one. 

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