Many authors wanted to go to KDP but worried if they are on the right route in self-publishing their book. Learn what are the next steps after writing your very first book and whether or not should you self publish with Amazon KDP.
Today's question has three answers and you're going to want to stick around for the third answer. Because it is a secret as to why KDP is so important when it comes to self-publishing.
Let's get into it. The question for today is, should you self publish with Amazon KDP? That is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing if you're wondering what that stands for.
This is an excellent question because perhaps you've already written your very first book. And you're moving to the next step which is you want to distribute that book. Obviously, what's the point of writing it if you aren't planning on distributing it?
As we're getting out onto the market, we want to make sure that we're going to put it into a distribution that's going to get as many people as possible to see and buy that book. One of the options available is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP.
This is a question that many authors have, "is this the correct route?". There are several reasons you might choose not to go with KDP. But we're going to explore some of the ones why you should go with KDP in today's blog.
Check out this related article: Where I Self-Publish My Books?
But before we get into today's answers, you can grab a copy of my absolutely free Self-Publishing Checklist. Now, let's get into it, a little bit from my own story. When I first got started, I wanted to get my book published.
But just like in this blog, I was initially overwhelmed with seeing how many different options there where it was when it comes to publishing your book. There are so many websites and so many people who will do it for you or places you can distribute your books.
There are just a lot of options and that can lead to quite a bit of overwhelming. So what happened was I ended up wasting a lot of time exploring the different options. Looking around before I got moving.
Like you'll hear me often comment on my channel when the biggest enemy that we have is doing nothing when we're getting started with self-publishing. This is one of the reasons why I'm going to try to help you avoid this exact mistake that I made several years ago.
Definitely Go For KDP
The thing is that I finally decided to go with Kindle Direct Publishing. I got my Kindle book on the market and it started making sales. What I noticed immediately was that my motivation jumped up quite a bit when I saw not a lot of sales coming in because my book was not optimized at that time.
I didn't understand the secrets necessary to maximize sales but I was seeing some sales. That had a huge impact on my motivation to keep me going on. As a result, I learned a whole pile of tips and tricks which I share with you here in this blog that I create.
I started to see an increase in the sales of my books as I increase the distribution and marketing of those books. But Kindle Direct Publishing was the absolutely first place that I started. So, should you self publish with Amazon KDP?
The first thing is "Yes" you absolutely should start with them. It's the easiest place to publish. One of the big reasons is because of the formatting issues on the books, in particular, the covers are a hassle so we do want to avoid that.
We will just take a simple Kindle cover where we don't have to worry about the spine, the back cover, formatting, and stuff. You just have the cover, you can either create yourself in Canva or pay somebody on Fiverr.
You can find my affiliate link below in each of my Youtube videos for the person on Fiverr who use to do my covers. She does an amazing job every single time for all of the covers. I just run all of my covers through her.
She helps me with optimizing and making sure that my covers are as high of quality as possible. Then we can get the book quickly out onto KDP. You can get your Kindle version of the book, you can take a Word file and go through Smashwords for free.
You can use Jutoh to get it into a proper format. That you will also be able to use for your paperback books as well. You can also find my affiliate link in the description below my videos for the different programs that I used for all of my books.
Keeping The Motivation High
The second thing is you don't need to look at any other platforms or marketing issues until you have your first version is out. We can worry later about marketing and which other platforms. We need to put it on paperbacks, audiobooks, hardcover books, and EPUBs.
There are so many different versions and distribution channels that we are going to explore at a later time. But as I tell all of my students, you need to start with the Kindle version first before we do anything else.
If you come to me and say "Okay, Chris tell me what we need to do here". I'm thinking about the marketing, the audio, and the paperback. My first question would be, do you have your Kindle version out?
If you don't have it out, then stop everything and get it out first. Then we can move on to the next step which is optimizing your books, marketing them, and moving them into other media and also other platforms. We can make sure we're getting as large of an audience as possible into our books.
But now comes the secret answer of the day, our third answer which is that getting the book onto the market at all will drastically increase your motivation to move to the next step. For self-publishers and authors, this is something that we underestimate.
The biggest challenge we face is in our heads. It is a head-game that we're playing. That is what makes it difficult for us to get our book onto the market. We need to keep the motivation high.
So we will continue to move through these other tracks. To make sure that we're not leaving money on the table. We want to make as much money from every book we put out as possible.
This is the trick to getting it done. So that is the secret answer for the day. Is Amazon KDP right for you? Should you self publish with Amazon KDP? If you believe that it's the right place for you, then please write the word "Yes" below in the comments.
If no write the word "No" and that will help me better understand where you are coming from and how exactly you're feeling with regards to this whole process. Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.