Publish your own book for free on Amazon KDP

Have you ever dreamed about writing and publishing your own book? That people all around the world buy, read and appreciate what you wrote? It has never been easier to make your dream come true. This blog article will take you with me on my journey of publishing my own book on amazon. I will describe how I did it and will give you all the details to do it like me.

The content

Let us start with the content of your book. Are you a fictional or a non-fictional writer? Do you love poetry or are you a passionate children's book writer? The list is endless. Pick your niche, your expertise or your passion and write your heart out. Let somebody read and edit your text.

To be honest I am no writer. I don't have the patience to build a good story, describe the characters and the environment, and let the plot develop. But I love and use journals a lot. I have one for work, one for private notes and one for ideas. These kinds of books are often called low-content books. They usually just take a few days to create and yet have great profitability. So as a creative person with an eye for design and aesthetics my niche was clear. I would write journals.

I researched how the market looks like on eRank, amazon, and google. Before you start you want to know what people are searching for and how tough the competition is. I could see that there already was a huge competition selling planners and blank journals but affirmation journals were still a niche where there were fewer products available but people were searching for it.

Affirmations are small but very powerful statements that help you to think positive about yourself, make you believe in your capabilities and your dreams. It is proven that our mind is affected by negative thinking, We all have been there: I can't do this. I am not good enough. She/he is better than me. We all struggle with these or similar negative thoughts and they affect our lives. Positive affirmations let you take control of these often unconscious negative thoughts. By reading, saying out loud and believing in positive affirmations about yourself, you start believing in them and positive thinking is shaping your reality.

An advantage of affirmations is that I did not need to worry about copyright. I could easily come up with affirmations like:

I am more than enough. I am kind to myself. I love the person that I am and the person that I am becoming. So I wrote 49 different affirmations that are all about gratitude, confidence and self-love. If you are interested in low content books there are many other niches. See this list of low content books:

The design

Every book needs a great design. You can hire a freelancer to design a book cover, use Amazon KDPs cover creator or you can do it yourself. I did it myself. My plan was to create a clean, minimal design attracting modern women and girls. So I went to Canva where I have a free account and designed a book cover. Canva has several templates, photos and graphics but you must be careful. You can not simply take a template and use it as your cover. Read the licensing agreement carefully. If you create your own design from the free elements available on Canvas you are allowed to use them for personal and commercial use, in marketing, social media and you can sell merchandise without restrictions.

I opened two projects in Canva. One for the blank lined pages with affirmations and one for the cover. You will find different kinds of information on which sizes work best for publishing on Amazon. I used the following sizes with bleed (Bleed simply means that the ink coverage goes all the way to the edge of the paper and that you need to upload this file as pdf to KDP amazon.):

Pages 6.125 x 9.25 in

Cover 12.52 x 9.25 in

I even added a page with the copyright information.

I downloaded and saved both Canva projects as pdf print.

Amazon KDP

There are other self-publishing and print-on-demand possibilities but I tried Amazon KDP - Kindle Direct Publishing. You open a free account first. Then you directly come to the dashboard where you can start to create a paperback or an e-book.

Now click on the + Kindle eBook or + Paperback sign to start creating your book. On the next page you will need to pick the language, write the title of your book, the author, a description of the content, and you need to give information about the publishing rights. Either you have the copyright or it is a public domain. You will be asked to use keywords and to pick 2 categories. Amazon wants to know if the content is appropriate for children under 18 years, too. When coming up with a title, description, keywords and categories think in terms of your target audience: What words would they search for to find something like your book. Use as many of these central words. I made a huge mistake with my SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) because I did not use the space in the title smart enough. Do better than me here!

All paperbacks need to have an own ISBN. On the next page in KD you can either pick our own one or you get a free KDP ISBN. You can choose now a publication date. If you don't the date your book is live on Amazon will automatically used as publication date. In the next section you choose the print options where you get asked to make some choices:

• Black & white interior with cream paper

• Black & white interior with white paper

• Standard color interior with white paper

• Premium color interior with white paper

• Trim Size

• Bleed or no bleed

• Matte or glossy cover

Following, you can upload your paperback manuscript and your cover. Here you can preview your book to see if the formating works out. Now you are almost done. On the last page you pick the territory, the primary amazon marketplace and you set the price. Set the price for you primary marketplace and let amazon adjust the price in the currencies of other marketplaces or you set the price for every marketplace yourself. You will directly see the printing costs and your royalties. Some marketplaces allow so called expanded distribution which means that your book can be made available to other retailers outside of amazon. Even here you can earn royalties. Now your book is ready to be reviewed by amazon. That can take up to 72 hours. Then it is available to purchase on amazon and you can order author copies.

Profitability & Marketing

Some words need to be said to make your expectations realistic. Yes, low content books published on KDP belong to the so called passive income. But there is nothing passive about it. You will need to do the research, the writing, the designing, the publishing, the marketing. Just because you publish a book with Amazon KDP, your book won't directly become a bestseller and you will not necessarily get rich by publishing one or two low content books. Amazon is huge. Even if you pick a smart niche there will be either competition or not enough people asking for the product. Your SEO needs to be on point and even promoting your book on social media or using ads is a very good idea. To make a living from low content books and Amazon KDP you will need to create many books and do this on a full scale. Still, personally I think it is a wonderful thing that nowadays you can create and publish your own book in such an simple way. If you do everything yourself it is just your time you're investing. There is no money upfront necessary and that means everybody with a computer and internet, good ideas and hard work can do it.