Be an Earning Author

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Kindle Direct Publishing: Selling Your E-Book in Amazon.com

Let me ask you a question, have you ever thought that you can't sell your e-book at Amazon.com unless you are a well known author? Yes you can sell your e-book at Amazon.com even if you are a not a well known author. The solution to that is called Kindle Direct Publishing.

What is Kindle Direct Publishing?

source: https://kdp.amazon.com


Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon.com's platform that helps e-book creators to self-publish their work in formats acceptable for their greatest product, Kindle. It's easy to create your digital book using this platform, just signup and go to the step by step guide from starting a project to its cover and at the listed price you want to sell your e-book. 

You can read their manual on how to go about the guided steps in regards to the format from which your content will be uploaded to the system and also some requirements in regards to the cover image quality.

After uploading and setting your rights and price of your e-book the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) team will evaluate your project and email you once it is approved. From there you can check your product on the Amazon.com website and use the link to market your work to your friends and prospective e-book buyer. With that you can share in the profits of any sale of the ebook base on the agreed royalty program you choose.

I did my first e-book which was a compilation of my best blog post. Below is the image and link to my very first digital product.  
 
Go to http://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-of-a-Blogger-ebook to learn more about my first e-book.


So what are you waiting for gather your material and make your e-book in Kindle Direct Publishing and be that earning author that you dream of.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Blogging: A Way To Start Your Writing Dream

Be an earning Author
Don't know how to start your dream of becoming an author? 

I suggest you start blogging.









 



Blogging is an online media which is basically a journal or a diary. The distinct feature of a blog is that it indicates the date it was written. Blogging was originally for diary writing but it grew into a marketing tool where bloggers have become one of the marketers by giving a review on certain products, movies, restaurant, a vacation destination, and others.

When you blog you are actually sharing your work to the whole world if you allow the public to view it. You can use a blog as an outlet for your deep emotions as what I did when I started blogging way back 2005. Blogging can be a practice ground for your dream career of becoming an author. Blogging now is not limited to the "diary" or "journal type" format. You can blog about your passion for photography describing each day the basics of photography, telling your reader how to use different lenses, how to make well use of natural sunlight for lighting and others. You could also write your childhood fantasy story by telling a different part of the story each day thus creating a series or chapter by chapter effect. You can hone your writing skill through blogging.

Also many bloggers have taken their online work to the actual book format by either compiling their best post or by making a detailed book about what they have been writing in their blogs. In a way blogging has become a launch pad for their writing career.

There are two major blog format in use: Blogger and Wordpress.

As you can see I use Blogger. 



Blogger Logo
source: www.blogger.com
Blogger is easy to use; with their updated platform you can create a blog in minutes. You can choose templates to easily establish a blog with the look and feel that you like and later on tweak it to your liking. I have been using Blogger because  of one advantage: monetize my blog using Adsense. It is easy to monetize my blog since Adsense is integrated with the Blogger platform. But with the latest requirement of Adsense, in order for a blog to have ads it has to be at least 3 months old (not so accurate on this). Also the quality of content is now being checked and even discussion came out that blogs coming from Asia are either denied or delayed approval due to the belief that Asian bloggers write poor content. But again this is all just a rumor so don't hesitate to create a blog using Blogger.

Wordpress on the other hand has some great following specially on those who are great at coding and web design. But in order to do such one has to upgrade to a paid version. Also only paid versions can put ads on their blog. Customization is a Wordpress advantage over Blogger and thus many prefer to use Wordpress.

                Wordpress Logo

There are other blogging formats like Tumblr, Posterous, and others thus you can choose from these formats to start practicing your writing skills. As they say "Practice makes perfect."