10 Good Reasons to Consider Self-publishing with Amazon

So you’re looking to publish? Awesome! I’m excited for you! There are more self-publishing companies out there than you might think, and it can take a while to sift through and find the right one. If you’re like me and that crushes your joy for writing and creativity, go with Amazon! Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which publishes Kindle and paperback for you, is incredibly user-friendly. If you just want your book out there and don’t mind a little self-promotion without a marketing team, Amazon is for you! Here are 10 reasons why.

10. You Can Upload and Proof Your Manuscript Again and Again

No one ever gets it right the first time—not even a professional proofreader! Amazon’s KDP website allows you to upload your manuscript, then forces you to look over it and approve or not. I always find something with formatting, a typo, a blank page missing between section breaks, you know, the things you don’t notice until it’s “done.”

The nice thing about KDP is that you can find oddities like that, fix it in the original document, and then re-upload it. I proof and upload every book I publish at least six times before clicking that “Publish Now” button. You don’t have to be perfect the first time, you just have to be willing to re-upload until it’s right!

More here: Destination Creative Retreat (and why you need one to finish your book!)

9. It is 100% FREE

It’s true! You don’t have to pay to have your books printed on Amazon because they use a “print on demand” model. That means no books are printed until they are ordered. You don’t have to order any copies up front, and you don’t have to pay Amazon to print anything!

8. You Can Buy Books at Cost

If you want to get a copy of your own book (we both know you will!), the nice thing is that Amazon will print it for you at cost. For instance, my Lost and Found books are all around $2.50. Their price on Amazon is $8.99 so that Amazon can make their 40%, and I can make my 60%. But if I want an “Author Copy” of my book, I can order it for $2.50. And as an author, so can you! Unfortunately, your Amazon Prime free shipping is not applicable, but either way, you can get that book at cost, instead of paying full price.

Related: 7 Reasons to Use Scrivener to Write Your Book

7. The Books are Printed Where They are Being Shipped

This matters to a lot of people these days. Rest assured that if you live in Europe, your book will be printed in Europe. If you live in the United States, it will be printed in the U.S.A. Amazon prints all over the world!

6. Publish to both Kindle and Paperback

With just a few clicks and one more upload, you can turn your paperback into a Kindle, or vice-versa! You won’t have to go through the whole process all over again, just the final few steps!

More here: Your Ultimate Guide to Self-publishing with KDP Amazon

5. You Can Create Your Own Cover

I love using my own photos and creating my covers, but even if you’re not into that, Amazon’s Cover Creator will help you! You can choose your color scheme, font, images, all of it. It’s one of the most exciting things, to me, to see my own cover come to life!

More here: How to Self-publish with Amazon

4. Make 60-70% instead of 3% Royalties

This is perhaps the most important part to the majority of self-publishing authors: the payoff! A good book deal, especially for a beginning author, is 3%. Three percent. With Amazon, you’ll get 60% on paperbacks and 70% on Kindle purchases of your book. That’s huge!

While that’s great, just remember that, while you do get a bigger portion of the royalties, you don’t have the benefits of a team of proofreaders, editors, marketers, PR professionals, and the like. Be prepared to do a lot of legwork for that bigger percentage!

3. You Can Make Changes After You Publish

Similarly to having the ability to upload over and over again before you hit “Publish Now,” you also have the ability to correct mistakes and re-upload after you’ve hit publish! Just as an example, I didn’t know when I published my first book that I had to put in the title page, copyright information, and other front matter. (In my defense, I clicked the box in KDP that said I own the copyright information, so I thought they would put that in!) Once I realized my mistake after I published, I was able to put the correct information in and re-upload my mauscript before any more copies got printed. It was easy!

Coming Soon: How to Add Your Book to Goodreads

2. Publish Your Book on Your Timeframe

Traditional publishing takes a long time. In fact, it can be years from the time you finish your manuscript to the time it actually gets published. With Amazon, I have published six books in the last four months, and I have two more books coming by the end of November this year! I’m not a major advocate for instant gratification, but I am an advocate for not wasting time. Your book, your timeframe, you pick!

1. It’s Much Easier than You Might Expect

I put off self-publishing because I was just afraid. I was afraid it would look unprofessional, it would require a lot of information or resources I didn’t have, and that it would just be really hard, and between my blog re-vamp and writing a book a month for my newsletter subscribers, I wasn’t up for taking on any new projects.

But it was so easy! Literally, Amazon just gives you an ISBN. They don’t ask for any money. They help you create your cover. They have tips all along the way for what keywords to use, what makes a good book description, what makes a good cover. You just upload, approve, and click “Publish Now,” and BAM! It’s on their website! You can do this!

Want more about publishing with Amazon, writing tips, and creative encouragement? Check out my Writing and Publishing Resources Page!

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