A Basic Amazon Publishing Guide: Go Make an eBook

Inexpectant Reader,

Having now made enough money out of my Danbury Place eBook to afford a meal at Spoons, in my attempt to advocate that everyone in the world should really do this, surely there’s no point just writing something and leaving it doing nothing I would like to write a short tutorial on how to publish an eBook for sale on Amazon in just a few minutes. This certainly isn’t up to the standard of any of my previous tutorials, mainly due to the very little time I have to myself right now, for each bit that’s wrong you may yell at me.

Hopefully, if you’ve used the internet any time in the last decade, you should have an Amazon account. This is pretty essential I’m afraid. If you don’t have one, go make one, it’s free. Make sure you’ve got a card linked up to it as well or you’ll probably struggle to get money from your ebook into your bank account*.

Next, make your way to kdp.amazon.com, where you’ll be able to publish your ebook to the world in just a few clicks.

Log in with your amazon account, and you’ll find yourself on the helpfully named ‘dashboard’ page. Don’t be fooled, you’re not in a car, this is where you can begin uploading your ebooks. Press the ‘Add new title’ button on the left side of the page.

This’ll load a lovely long page of input boxes, fill them each out with the relevant information. Enroll in KDP select if your book or any of its contents are nowhere else on the internet, I’ve never done this since I like putting odd bits on here…

Make sure you’ve pressed Add Contributors and added yourself as author, editor, firefighter, or whatever else your roll was in the production of the ebook. If it’s your work, tick the ‘It’s not public domain’ box, if it’s public domain then it must be significantly different to other versions of the work on the internet, or the only ebook copy of that public domain work.

Remember, for your own work you get 70% of all sale revenue, for public domain work ebooks you’ll only get 35%.

Upload a cover if you have one, otherwise their cover creator is actually very good, and I’ve used it for both of my ebooks.

Finally, upload your ebook file to Amazon, they’ll then convert it to their own ebook format so that anyone can read it. They accept Word, HTML, Zip, mobi, ePub, RTF, TXT, and PDF files, so no, you can’t upload your ebook as a series of unrelated GIF files and a live hamster.

Now press Save and Continue, and Amazon will take you to the pricing options for your eBook.

Tick worldwide rights, unless your ebook breaches any copyright laws of different countries or world powers – if it does, blimey. Next there’s 70% or 35% royalty tick boxes, if your work is public domain then 35% should be ticked, otherwise tick 70%.

Finally, there is a tickbox at the bottom of the page that you have to tick to confirm that you’ve done everything legally and you’re not trying to smuggle space fuel to Gibraltar. Tick this (unless you are really smuggling space fuel to Gibraltar, in which case, why are you wasting your time publishing an eBook?), and press Save and Publish.

There you go, now your eBook will be reviewed by those lovely people at Amazon, or maybe a computer program that crawls over it to make sure you’re not giving advice on space fuel smuggling and other illicit activities. In a few hours you’ll be able to fill your blog with all sorts of annoying BUY THIS NOW PLZ sentences.

BUY THIS NOW PLZ http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HNU90TM OMG ALSO THIS http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HJZVV7A

Works well as an advertising strategy, doesn’t it? Also hastily written Amazon ePublishing tutorials are a great way to get away with writing BUY THIS NOW PLZ in a post where it would otherwise be out of place, and a little annoying.

To start earning money, you’ll have to click on the ‘So-and-so’s-name Account’ link at the top of the page, where you can complete your tax information and change it so that Amazon make all payments directly into your bank account. By default, since this is the late sixteenth century, they send you a cheque.

*This statement excludes wizards

150 Words More

Kind Reader,

Whether I’ve managed to finish the Amazon publishing guide post or not before this one gets published, I can’t say – that depends how the week goes! For now, dear reader, allow me to focus on the purpose of this honest post.

As another part in the rather interesting 150 word story challenge that has quite taken hold of my imagination, I would like to present this simple tale, and pray it might please the reader. This time, it’s the turn of something borrowed and something for sale.

Cassy’s Tale

The Joy of 150-word Stories #6

Cassy had really got into the swing of her story now, her arms had started going – darting here and there with an odd connection to her excited words. It wasn’t convincing though, there were certainly frowns on the faces of those listening. Listening so intently. She’d rehearsed her story a few times already – never been that great at public speaking – always got a bit flustered.

At least she’d got the information she wanted out, how they’d ‘borrowed’ her parents’ car and gone down the coast. Quite fun at the time, really, they were ‘dealers’, they were important. If that cop hadn’t gone to search the car they’d be on the beach now.

She hadn’t meant to do it, didn’t even realise the gun was loaded. Just for protection, she never meant to hurt anyone with it.

The courtroom was silent. They couldn’t really execute her for an accident, could they?

In other news I’m presently putting together a couple of simple eBooks – they’re really just for personal use, but they’ve got some nice typography so maybe someone else will enjoy them. One’s a rather dull selection of my poetry written while studying my degree, and the other is a copy of A Shropshire Lad with a selection of my very favourite poems by various authors at the end. They’ll be up here as free downloads some time soon.

Until next time, kind reader.

100 Posts! And a 150 Word Story

Unbeknownst Reader,

Allow me first a moment to celebrate 100 whole posts on this humble space of internet. What it did to deserve my increasingly select ramblings, I seem to recall owes itself to a particular university assessment, and what I learnt from it is really quite beyond me.

I considered for half a moment that I should post some horribly self absorbed consideration of why I blog, or some summary of these ponderous moments that have led to me mashing away at these chime-less keys. But what is the use in a post like that?

For surely, kind reader, every post should add to a blog, as every step up a mountain should be towards a higher point. For what if we were to look down and consider the time that has been spent upon the journey, and despair at the pointless nature of it? Please, then, allow me to humbly present a small piece of writing for an excellent challenge brought to my attention, where 150 words alone must make a tale.

The New Place

The Joy of 150-word Stories #5

The room was cold, an abandoned house of cards sat over by the closed window. Even the view was bland, not many people fighting for a place with ‘fine views over the Aylesbury Estate’. But Jack and Jane had bought it; a new place. A new start.

Jack seemed to think things still weren’t good between them, he couldn’t quite remember how it all began, but things hadn’t been normal for a long time. Perhaps this new place would help.

“Ah, tea, dear?” Said Jack, Jane had just entered carrying a mug of his favourite milky breakfast blend with three sugars.

She gave half a smile, but her eyes struggled to look at him.

“Nice place, isn’t it? You found where we packed the kettle then?”

“Dad…” Jane didn’t really look at him. “We’ve been here for three years, since Mum died, your memory’s pretty bad today then I suppose?”

Having re-read the blog post, I realise that I may have missed the deadline for the challenge. Until next time, kind reader!

Danbury, 1675

Petulant Reader,

I have had far too little time to blog recently, except for the odd draft-post that I wish that I had had time to perfect by now. However, last night while reading through my facsimile of Ogilby’s Britannica I was astonished to find that Plate 93 contains a tiny engraving of a very familiar place. (Aberystwyth’s in it twice, I should probably post about that some time too!)

Danbury, 1675 or a little earlier

This (from the bottom) shows the A414 coming from Chelmsford, crossing the small river just before Danbury, before running in past the North side of the Danbury Park, past Well Lane which is the road indicated at the top of the park on this map. Then the route runs through the only built up part of Danbury in 1675, along the part of the A414 that runs past the church. The cross roads just above the number 5 is Eves Corner, just after which the road becomes a dotted line as the diagonal entry to Gay Bowers runs off ‘to Purleigh’, so it may be that this part was just a dirt track through what was then known as Danbury Common (in a different area to the place where the Common is now).

The two buildings labelled ‘a Hamlet’ are the origins of Runsell Green and beyond this the current route of the A414 didn’t exist, so right at the top the road curves round a little. This follows the road running past the Anchor and towards Beeleigh along Old London Road, which in the 17th century was a major coaching route, not just a nice country lane. (Note should be made that ‘Sandown’ or Sandon Church was not on that main road, and it appears on this map simply to say it is over in that sort of direction – as a landmark for people to look out for over the trees to make sure they were on the right road.)

Aside from being the oldest map of Danbury that I know of (beating the previous oldest by some 80 years), it also has the earliest depiction of Danbury Place – at a time when it was still owned by a veteran of Newbury.

Why Rubrication is Awesome

Inopportune Reader,

Why inopportune? Because you’ve decided to live in a world where rubrication, the very subject you were clearly interested* in reading about, is a forgotten art.

About a month ago now I bought a very large fragment of Saint Augustine’s Commentaries on the Psalms, an incunable copy printed in 1497. Unlike any of my other incunables, this one is rubricated, an excellent way to jazz up any page that is sadly jazz-less, and something that would certainly make those business reports that you just finished look much, much nicer.

What is rubrication then? Firstly, it’s a great word, just look at all those letters. It basically refers to the practice of ‘beautifying’ printed books by adding coloured sections of text and initials (traditionally in red ink), and was common from the time of medieval manuscripts right the way through to the start of the eighteenth century. (Although granted a lot less common later on in its practice.) In very early books such as my incunable or even the manuscripts that pre-existed it, this involved leaving huge gaps around the first letter of different sections within the book, so that a larger initial could be hand painted over the top, much like the grand initials found in illuminated books. It also included things such as underlining, adding marks to indicate sections, and adding in important parts of the text in coloured ink. Usually any occurrence of rubrication at any date later than the mid-1500s involves solely the underlining of text or line borders around pages.

For those really interested, it was different to illuminating a page because technically illumination has to involve gold leaf.

Sadly the growth of printing and the increased availability of books killed off the wonders of rubrication; as it became easier to print large initials and underline text using the printing press rather than doing it by hand, books slowly lost any need to be beautified after they were printed. This, plus the fact that books became cheaper and less important, so were not really worth putting time into improving them by hand, meant that now the word rubrication has almost been forgotten from our language.

But, reader! What if it were around today. Imagine scores of scribes sat by every printer in every office, taking whatever the inkjet spewed out and running over it with a quill and brush, picking out initials in beautiful gothic style, adding borders, even illustrations to the page margins. Now that, reader, is a world I think that I would enjoy, and would perhaps remind us of the importance of the printed word. Forget handing in a boring dissertation of page after page of text, and instead imagine it flowing with fine hand-painted section headings and grand initials, bordered with hand-drawn imps and minstrels, what could be more excellent?

Oh look, some rubrication

Try this with your CV next time you’re going for an important job, I’m sure it’ll all be fine.

*By assuming the fact that the word interested you, I do by no means suggest that this post is interesting, in fact you should go watch the tennis instead.