It’s better to know why to sell an eBook before you know how to sell. Since everything is going online, why not sell and buy an item? Yes you’re right. We are now in the next generation, where selling an item is not as difficult as in the past, when everything was sold manually by approaching a person or company or by distributing it offline through different showrooms or stores.
Writing a book is hectic work and should be paid accordingly. Authors and publishers used to spend a lot to print, publish, and market their content. Sending books to different popular bookshelves and libraries to get your writings out of print and get the monetary return as soon as possible, however, it was not as easy as marketing and selling a book that no one knew about through offline sellers was a tedious task. and time consuming work.
Time passed and then something came up that changed the whole cycle of the buying and selling process. Online marketing and selling was the technique adopted by many authors and publishers in which they found selling their e-books online on different platforms and getting paid for the same, directly through online transactions.
There is a lot to know about “how to sell an eBook on different platforms”, however, we would be talking about the most popular platform at the moment and that is Amazon.
There are a series of steps that must be followed to obtain the desired result and they are as follows:
Create an Amazon KDP account:
The start here is to create a Kindle Direct Publishing account on Amazon. The link that can be used to register:
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
Don’t worry if an eBook is not in Mobi/Kindle format, because after uploading the book it will eventually be converted to Kindle compatible format.
Add books to the shelf:
The next step that needs to be done is to add an eBook to the bookshelf. On the left side of the dashboard, after you log in, you will see an option to “Add New Title”. Clicking on this option will take you to the page where you need to add the book details.
The fields are self-explanatory, however there are options to help you complete each field if necessary.
Enter your book details and leave the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) field blank if you don’t have that information. Please mention your name as well in case you are self-publishing the eBook.
Next, you need to choose the category in which you think your book should reside and the keywords that can help readers find the desired content.
After doing all the steps mentioned above, you need to upload your ebook cover image, which is just as important as the ebook itself because this is the image that will be displayed on the Amazon selling page and would be a reflection of its content.
Uploading the eBook on the platform:
You can upload an eBook in Kindle format or a PDF/word format and let Amazon do the conversion for your eBook. If you are allowing Amazon to do the conversion, be sure to double check the file for any images or graphics, as online conversion may alter the format.
Confirm your pricing and royalty options:
You have to decide which royalty option you want to take because the rest will be taken by Amazon.
There are 2 royalty options you can select:
35%
70%
If you want to keep 70%, you need to sell your book for between $2.99 and $9.99. If the price is outside of this range, you’ll only get 35% of the total sales price, so be careful and make sure you’re targeting the right price for the highest return to pocket.
Are you ready. Be a spectator, wait and watch. Let Amazon review your content and approve it. Once approved, the eBook will be published and the direct link will be shared with you.