How to Write an Amazon Kindle Ebook

How to Write a Book

© Ugur Akinci

If you’re not writing an Amazon Kindle Ebook you’re really missing an important stream of income as a writer. As of April 2011, Amazon started to sell more Kindle ebooks than paperback and hard covers COMBINED. Ebooks are the future of publishing.

Here are the very first things to know about Kindle Ebooks:

1) When you write an Amazon Kindle ebook instead of any other ebook, you’re writing for a publishing and marketing platform without an equal. Amazon knows how to attract customers and how to sell to them. A 1% or 2% “closing ratio” is pretty good for most online vendors. With Amazon I’ve read that this number can go as high as 10%, 15%, or even 20%, and I believe that on the basis of my own personal experience.

2) Kindle ebook is not good for color images, photographs, detailed drawings or tables. If your book is rich on these visual elements, you should not expect much from Kindle. But if what you are writing is mostly text, then go ahead and give it a try.

3) Go with what you know best but first check the Amazon Search engine to see which keywords are popular and then build your ebook around such keywords so that Amazon shoppers will be able to find your ebook easily.



In terms of the mechanics of writing it, here is a workflow that I use myself:

1) Make an outline. Seven to 10 chapters, tops. Try to shoot for 5,000 – 10,000 word range. In terms of pricing, $4.99 to $9.99 is the “sweet spot” where you become eligible for 70% commission. Anything above $9.99 drops to 35% commission.

2) Start writing your ebook nonstop. Once you finish, go back and edit it for consistency, grammar, and relevance.

3) I recommend using MS Word for the original draft. Then save it as “Web Page, Filtered”.

4) Design a cover. This will be published on Amazon to identify your work.

5) Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator to generate your Amazon Kindle ebook.

6) Import the HTML file created whne you saved your Word file as “Web Page, Filtered” into the Mobipocket generator. Add the Cover Artwork. Then generate the Kindle book file.

7) Go into your Kindle Publishing page. Create a new Kindle book by importing the final Mobipocket file.

There are other fields you need to fill in once you are inside Kindle publishing site but they are all self-explanatory.

It usually takes Amazon 3 or 4 days to approve the book submission and post it in Amazon for the keywords you have chosen. The rest is about watching the money roll or trickle in, depending on the popularity of your work.



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