Day 6 - Digging into Kindle Direct Publishing, Formatting, and Templates
Another busy day. Got organized a bit and started delving into the dark pits of Kindle Publishing.
What I did today:
Made a to-do list. Not at all exhaustive, but some important things to get finished. Or start
Searched and found some romance novel podcasts - contacted for interviews. Fingers crossed
Started working on a blog post for future publication. Jotted down some ideas.
Created Melanie Brodie Facebook Page. Come say hello.
Created FB post for current giveaway.
Boosted post for $10 and one day. I’ll post “reach” when it finishes. Target: Females age 18-65+, United States, Romance novels fans (about 4 categories). Took about an hour for Facebook to approve my boost.
Driving myself crazy watching the Facebook page for new likes. Focus, Melanie!
Participated in #WritersLift on Twitter. Whoever started that is a genius. I’ve gained 40 new followers today. Thank you everyone! I hope you stick around for the fun.
Learning about ISBNs. Read: ISBN for Self-Publishers: Answers to 20 of your Questions
Here’s is Kindle Direct Publishing’s (KDP) page on ISBN. It looks like they provide one free of charge for both eBook and paperback. I don’t understand the benefit of buying your own, unless you plan to market your book with other booksellers. At the moment, I’ll only be using KDP for both print and eBook. I think.
Looking up trim sizes for paperback books. Found Picking a Popular Trim Size for Your Book - It looks like I’ll be going with a 5.25x8 trim size.
Read: Kindle Direct Publishing Paperback Cover Templates - as I will be designing my own cover.
I want to do it all, so I’ll be formatting the manuscript myself. I feel very comfortable using Word. I don’t expect any issues. Here are Kindle’s eBook Manuscript Formatting Guide.
As for PAPERBACK, I read through the instructions for self-formatting and thought: Someone has to have a template online somewhere. Yes, Kindle does. Totally cool. You get a zip file filled with ALL the manusript sizes. Pick the one you want to use and it’s all ready to go. At this point, I can change the fonts and elements myself. Easy.