The Process

The Self-Publishing Process

One of the many questions I get when speaking to people is "how exactly did you publish a book?" Having navigated the process, I felt that is was important to share what I learned with other aspiring authors who hope to publish a book one day.

A Prehistoric Odyssey was published through Kindle Direct Publishing, by Amazon. The neat part about KDP is that it is print on demand, which means zero overhead; you only pay when you want a book printed. First, of course, you will need to make an account with KDP. Then is as simple as starting a project. You must create ebook and paperback versions separately, with the ebook version being far simpler.

After you have a project created, all you have to do is fill in information. Title, retail price, keywords, and age range are all included in this, as well as physical details, such as cover and paper types. You also must upload a file for the cover (as a PDF) and manuscript (as a Word document).

Getting the cover correct is tricky, and something that I myself am not an expert at. In summary, you want everything to line up, and it must have the right aspect ratio, or KDP will reject it. You'll also want your manuscript to be formatted correctly. There's a massive difference between a document full of writing and a published book. KDP offers templates, but I also looked at a lot of existing novels to inform my decisions on formatting. You will need to use Microsoft Word for this, as it has an option for mirrored margins (Google Docs does not, unfortunately).

Once everything is uploaded and you've looked over it, and can send your book off to get approved. This only took a few days for me. You can also order a proof copy, which was shipped to me in around a week. If you're happy with the proof, you can go live. If not, you can make edits and order another proof.

While the entire process was nerve-wracking at times, it only took me around a month to teach myself the ins and outs of KDP, formatting, and cover design. There are plenty of resources online that dive into these subjects more in-depth. I hope this information is useful, and I am always available to contact at my email for further questions.