In this article, I will show you how to write a book and sell more copies in six months.
1. Start with a rough draft, don't worry about it being so imperfect.
- Amazon Publishing allows you to update the Menu Script, remember, writing a book is like creating a start-up, you don't know what feedback you will get from readers. What is important is to pay attention to what the readers are saying about your book and iterate based on the feedback.
2. Look at your draft as a reference for your self and not for other people.
- When you have this perception in mind, everything you write will be meaningful because you are doing it for yourself. Would you look at something that does not make sense? No, you would read something that makes sense right? Absolutely no doubt.
- Mainly, you will be writing a book about something you are passionate about, look at it like you want to teach someone else the skills you have acquired over the years and that includes yourself. The knowledge kept to yourself is of less use but ones that are shared with others might solve many problems.
- When I was writing a book, I actually was writing for myself, a book I could refer to whenever I was stuck drawing a realistic image. That helped me document my journey to drawing realistic images as well as provide insights to others with the same interest or predicament.
- If you write a book as if you were writing it for yourself, it becomes useful to you as well as your readers.
3. Use a tool like https://www.ernestech.com to keep your notes under one roof.
- ErnesTech.com helped me keep my book writing notes on my profile, it allowed me to Edit and collect my thoughts about the chapters whenever I happen to have ideas about the book.
4. Keep readers in mind, for example, don't bombard the readers with unnecessary information. Readers don't have time, chances are that they are reading your book to save time so that they can go back to doing something else. Stick to short sentences and don't lose your readers with long and poorly punctuated sentences.
- Instead for every paragraph, evaluate what useful information was passed to the reader. Ask yourself, if you were the reader would you feel good after reading the paragraph? What would you have achieved after reading a sentence?
- Make every paragraph as useful as possible.
Getting Ready to Publish
5. Publishing is the most exciting time after spending long hours, days or even months writing your book, there comes time to publish. This can be exciting as well as challenging sometimes, technology is changing at a rapid pace that means you have to keep up learning new tools and features to be able to provide quality products to your end-users.
- keep in mind that when publishing, the publication or publishers would require your book to adhere to certain formats or standards. This would require you to come up with a process to refer to whenever you publish a new version. For example, this document saves me time whenever I look forward to publishing a new book if it can save me time, therefore, I expect to do the same for others.
[NB] Use https://www.ernestech.com to document your processes and refer back to your documentation whenever you need to publish a new version all your processes are in one place.
Publishing and Polishing your book using Kindle Create
6. Kindle Create is Amazon's application you download for formatting your kindle book to adhere to Amazon Kindle Publishing guidelines.
[Important]
7. Open up the application, navigate to New Project -> (Make sure you see an option for uploading Word Document or else you won't be able to edit your menu script) Upload World Document.
[NB] On the Create Kindle Window, make sure you choose "Novels, Essays, Poetry, Narrative, Non-fiction" template otherwise you won't be able to edit your menu script.
- Watch this video to understand more Link Here
8. After step 7 is complete start toying around the application, edit, format, and test
Editing Your Menu Script in Kindle Create
9. This will depend on your style, in general, keep your style consistent e.g.
- Maintain space in between the title and the paragraph
- If you named the images using "figure 1" format, keep the space in between the "figure 1" and the paragraph
- Italicize the Citation in the Grocessary or Reference page.
10. Publish or export your book in Epub Format.
Upload Menu Script to Amazon
11. After publishing your book using Kindle Create application, a .KPF file is produced. Upload that .kpf file to amazon and you are done
12. If you sell your book in Kindle format or Paper Back (Print) you will need to upload the same .kpf file as a Kindle or Paper Back (Print) as well. Amazon does not propagate the same file uploaded to various types of book formats.
[NB]. When the upload is complete and you want to preview the changes to make sure the Amazon Book Formatting process did not mess up the layout (Because it happens a lot), previewing the book after the upload is complete really takes some time. Prepare to be disappointed on numerous times when the Upload Process misaligns the formats or page layout.