Does anyone self-publish on Amazon Kindle?

killielila

i just did it directly via kindle hun . i did it as a bit of a joke at 1st tbh .. Hubby and i lived apart for 1st year or so him in USA me here and we emailed naughty bits back and forth told stories etc . He had always wanted to be an author so for his birthday i edited some of our stories together on word then used the kindle converter and put it up and said there you go you a published author ...... it doesnt even have a cover pic it must just have caught right vibe
the recipies are same have been collecting and editing recipies for years and had planned to make a wee folder for when DD moved out instead i put it on kindle

message me if you want to chat but am afraid i dont have much advice so far has been fluke ill let you know if this next one that i have worked on and planned has much success xx

Bmth100

I've nearly completed my first novel, so this might be a route I take if no agents or publishers bite.

Rom_london

I read a blog by a amazon top seller the other day saying that a number of weeks in the top 10 proved hardly very fruitful.

gb12345 may have struck something with non-fiction, and putting your own book on wikipedia

the book cover tool sounds great too!

I use a great piece of software for writing called Scrivener - and this allows you to publish in e-reader format.

I'd love to see links / names of anyones books who have published!

I'm not on amazon yet, but on my way there!

londongirl

Thanks for the reply Killielila :-)
That's very cool that you just did it like that and managed to make a few pounds! I like the idea of even just saying i've made a tenner out of something i've written! lol!
I quite like writing for textbroker and seeing what I've written on websites and blogs so thought this would be kind of cool too just to think someone had bothered to read something I'd written! I will have to think carefully about what to write though - definitely non-fiction as my fiction writing is terrible and cheesy and I hate my own style! :0)
I may well message you if I get a little further on in the process! Thank you for the offer x

musashi10

gb12345 wrote: »

I have been self-publishing on both Kindle and Createspace for a few months now.

I started with public domain ebooks, but there is too much competition to make any real money from them (the one I made did justify the time spent creating it though).

I then moved on to writing my own books in both paperback and ebook format and published my first one in mid December and my second at the end of January. The paperbacks are selling better than the ebook versions and I've made a reasonable amount, considering that both books are technical books (so never going to be blockbuster bestsellers) and that I've done no promotion apart from creating a website to support them in the last couple of weeks. My first book has somehow got a mention as further reading on the Wikipedia page for the s/w package it is about though.

As to how easy it is to publish, it takes time but shouldn't be too difficult for people.

• If you just publish as an ebook then you have to create an HTML file from your Word document that is then processed with an application that Amazon provide to produce the correct format for uploading
• If you are publishing a paperback and an ebook then it is easier to do the paperback first by saving the document as a PDF for uploading and Createspace will then also generate a file for you to upload for the ebook.

You also need to create a cover for your book, which Createspace provide a cover generator for.

What sort of margin on average to you get on paperbacks?

gb12345

musashi10 wrote: »

What sort of margin on average to you get on paperbacks?

It depends which channel it sells through and how many pages the book is, but for a book selling at $15.99 on Amazon.com, I get about $6 - $7. It works out at about the same figure for Amazon.co.uk and the European Amazons (just in the local currency). For the Expanded distribution option that Createspace offer I get about $3 or $4 a copy.

I've now got 7 paperbacks published and am earning on average a couple of hundred quid a month between the eBook and paperback versions.

Rom_london

Hi gb12345, that's sensational that you're getting the money you are from your books! Are you writing non-fiction or fiction?

I just got it through my thick head that createspace was a self-publishing platform. Will be checking it out right about now

gb12345

Rom_london wrote: »

Hi gb12345, that's sensational that you're getting the money you are from your books! Are you writing non-fiction or fiction?

They are all non-fiction books.