Really folks! Publishing a book was like in the 13th out of the 15 things that I wanted to do before I die and a few weeks ago I had successfully published my book over Amazon. Why 13th in the list of 15? Because I had always thought that while I can write a book, publishing one wasn't my cup of tea. Watched late dad publish his book in prints while growing up. I thought it takes a lot of competence to be able to do that so I still could not believe I actually published one in the form of Kindle book and paperback. Visited the page again and again, pinched myself a few times and finally realised that I have actually published a book over Amazon which has commercial value.
A bit of history - in 2010 I wrote a book for my employer, a government agency. It was a guide for entrepreneurs in managing their employees, mainly the knowledge employees - the ones who do the research and stuff. The book was never published but was circulated among clients of the company, then. In 2017 I wrote and self-published my second book on how to survive without a job as a single mother with rising debts and a kid in international school - SINGLE-kid-JOBLESS-DROWNING
That was done over BookRix, had a few sales but the money was never received because I did not set up payment page - you know where you can receive payments from sites that sell your book. It was a maiden trial, so I did not take it seriously. Years passed, I forgot all about writing.
Something triggered in me after dead dad passed on. No idea what and at the same time I saw Reedsy advert on my FB page. They run weekly competition in writing short stories at their website. So, I submitted my first piece - yup, didn't win anything but that started off my writing streak. In the meantime, I had also started a blog on short stories - Chottakahani.
Initially, my stories were those heard from my late grandfather, then I started writing from my own imagination. One day, I realised I had 10 short stories and decided to publish that as a collection. Not wanting to repeat the BookRix episode, the first thing that I did was to research on how to publish a book on Amazon. There are hundreds of thousands of video and guides on the Net. One just have to read or watch and ingest. When i was ready, I began my publishing journey. The following were the things that I did:
1. Choosing book title
The guys who teach how to publish book over Amazon said your title must be catchy, attractive. The first title I chose was `Collection of Short Stories'. Boy, that was very lame! So, I went into Amazon books page and browsed to see how authors chose titles for their books. Most titles had a touch of strangeness - When Crawdads Sing - the best selling novel on Amazon. What the hell was crawdads? But the author sold millions and the book was actually a translation from French, if I remember right. So, I looked at the short stories in my book - the owl story was a mind twister, so I chose that title as my book's title.
2. Making e-book
The next challenge was making the e-book. The good thing about Amazon is that they have their own e-book creator - Kindle Create. It's like an app that needs to be downloaded into your laptop or desktop. Simple? Yes, but there is a catch. Kindle Create only works on the network that it was downloaded on. I downloaded using home network. When I tried opening at the office, I did not work. said it could not detect the network or something like that. So, I would think the best would be to download using broadband or mobile hotspot, so it can be opened anywhere.
The app, Kindle Create (KC) itself is very user friendly. Probably, for someone my age it is user friendly because I did not have to do much. All I had to do was to follow instructions and voila! my book was ready. But, folks, do remember that KC is not an editing tool. That means you cannot edit the content of the book on KC. You can add and then edit the contents page, intro page etc but not the contents of the book. My overall the experience was very pleasant, indeed.
3. Publishing the e-book
Now that the e-book was completed, I wanted to have it published. I needed a KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) account. It was easy signing up. I added my book into the e-book template. The steps were so easy; believe me, if a technologically two left footed person like me can do it, it has to be easy! When we add the book created using KC into the template, it will guide us step by step plus on cover creator - front and back. Amazon has a library full of images that writers can use for free. It is not rocket science to design an attractive cover - one only has to use some sensibility and the book is done. If a writer does not want to use images from Amazon, there are always sites that offer free images e.g. Unsplash. Just make sure the image size is suitable for KDP template.
The KDP steps will then take us through publishing of e-book as well as paper back. The Amazon publishing gurus will tell us that it is a good idea to have one book in both kindle and paper back formats because not everyone likes to read on device. So, as we complete the kindle version, there would be a prompt that asks us to make it available on print as well. Again, the steps would guide us through and in no time I had my paper back done up. Voila!
4. Pricing
Then KDP would ask for pricing. Worry not, all you have to do is follow their suggestions. As new writers, we just want to have some footing and make may be an extra USD100 a month, so it would be good to just follow their suggestions at that stage. I had set the pricing along the suggested range and also enrolled into their library programme. My paperback is available on Amazon US, while kindle edition is available on Amazon India. Why Amazon India? Read the point below.
5. Getting Paid
One of the important things about publishing is getting paid. Malaysia and Amazon do not have any connection in financial services. That means, if my paperback sold well worldwide, Amazon would send me a traditional cheque to pay me because there are no Malaysian banks on their panel. Don't believe me? Try publishing a book on Amazon and see. So, for the Kindle version I had to choose a country where I have a bank account - India. Yeap, folks, the cat is out of the bag now. I do have a bank account in India. So I used that account to register to get paid. In fact, there was one guy who made a video about opening a non-resident account in the US. Well, I didn't really want to venture that far, so I decided that India would be the best place to anchor my kindle version. I would get paid in Rupees.
6. Editing the Books
Again, no you cannot edit the contents of the book but I edited the back cover of my book because when I first published it, I forgot to write something there! Can you imagine my surprise when I visited my own page at Amazon and found that while the front cover looked good, the back one was empty, save for my photo on it! Anyways, KDP allows editing of covers and I managed to add some words to the back cover.
7. Selling your Book
The million dollar question - how do you sell your book? Well, authors are encouraged to sell their own books and one can do promotion over just about any platform - Facebook, Instagram, Reedsy, Bookbub or even Amazon. And how do you make it a million dollar income? Well, that is the secret that I have yet to find out. The YouTube has millions of videos on how to sell books and become a millionaire - well, I have only this to say - the only way to sell online is to get people to trust you ad buy whatever you sell. TRUST. So, how do we get people to trust us? Check out for my blog on selling online Part 3 at www.bollywoodbegum.com. No, the blog is not published yet. Wait for it. People will buy from sites that engage with them. So, how do you engage with people? Wait for my book on selling online yaar! That would be my fifth book.
The good thing about publishing on Amazon is that authors can order author copies at author prices for paperback version and later sell at their own website. I have not reached this stage yet, am sure will very soon.
Now that you have heard my novice experience on publishing a book on Amazon, go and write that story that has been playing on your mind!
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