I have recently uploaded three print books to Amazon Kindle. I may not get big sales for 2 that are poetry books, namely of Arc & Shadow and Evangelyne & other poems, but hopefully my novel The Ozone Cafe might do well. Fingers crossed. I just have to keep promoting my work, ep. like writing blog posts. In this one I am sharing the processes that I took on how to upload to KDP Amazon (eg. Kindle Direct Publishing) and it's free. You can allocate the price of the book yourself and the percentage of royalty, either 35% or 70% that Amazon pays you! Check out My Author Page where you can purchase my books!
One of the reasons for uploading my books (novel & 2 poetry) is I have learned that publishing houses do not have the resources to convert your work to digital. They do this for high profile, top selling authors, but for the rest of us, it’s tough bikkies.
With Digital Publishing your POETRY you may not get high sales, but remember the internet is timeless and immortal. If you die, your work will remain on Kindle Amazon, if you have a free blog/website your hours of posting/ or promoting yourself as a writer will always remain. Hopefully the grandchildren or great-grandchildren will seek you out. You will definitely be immortal along with Hemingway, Jack Kerouac or Adrienne Rich (poet), to name a few. You would think that some story snippets from our Australian authors like Elizabeth Jolley, Peter Cowan, Patrick White or Dorothy Porter (poet) might be accessible for “free” to read online. At least, they should be available either as ebooks or audio books.
As per previous posts, again with “poetry” you have to think outside the box. Some videos have suggested you can turn your work into images like concrete poetry. The same steps for POETRY are below, and I have acknowledged a 6-year-old video from AuthorHouse Publishing where I learned “HANGING INDENTS” – this is because some poetry lines are too long and Kindle platforms (phone, ipad, ereader) will turn the end line and most likely not where the poet intended. It’s best to watch the video (see below) as all other tips mentioned are relevant for digital publishing.
If you have a poetry manuscript or print collection and would like to see your hard work as an ebook, follow these steps. A word of warning! It is very time consuming, and also be prepared to upload as many times as you want to get it right/ perfection is another country!
For Your Poetry Book or Manuscript
Cover required for KDP. This you will load last (I used my print book cover, slightly altered). KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, on Amazon will style one for you although they may be a little bland.
- The manuscript is best in Word ie .doc / docx, Times New Roman, Font size 12, in single spacing. Keep it simple as Amazon changes the font anyway.
- Delete all page numbers.
- Re-format your poetry into one long continuous flow of text so that you only have one or two spaces in between poems. This is in order to insert Page Breaks. Page breaks work best at the end of your poem/ ie. last word – try every which way as we all have different Word editions. Click on the show/hide symbol to view your page breaks at end of poems. Show/Hide is in the “paragraphs” section on Word eg. ¶
- You need a title page, a copyright page, a quote/dedication page (optional), author page if you’re new to this, and a Table of Contents – before the first poem.
- Table of Contents: it’s important to click on Heading 1 (in style) on each Title of Poem. Word automatically links your title page to the TOC page. You do not need page numbers. You will see why when you use the KDP’s manuscript previewer. Please watch as many videos as possible on how to create a Table of Contents in Word. I have acknowledged Derek Murphy below. His TOC video is excellent!
- Note: If you’ve written free verse, you are definitely on the way. Small poems justified to the left work best for digital publishing. Really long lines spread across the page do not work so well as each digital platform will do a “hard return” and you could end up with something like this: eg.
- The train, a long tube
wound its way
around the mountain
When finished promote your ebook to as many poetry readers as possible, include cover, link back to Amazon Kindle where your book is and post the release on all your social media. Good luck!
Remember! You are the copyright owner of the work and if your contract doesn’t say anything about “Exclusive digital rights” you are home, hosed and out of the woods.
For Poetry
AuthorHouse Publishing – Poetry Books: Guidelines & Design Options
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMVk4BtHK4U&ab_channel=AuthorHousePublishing
Derek Murphy
How to make a Table of Contents for Kindle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ8bpEDHFh0&ab_channel=DerekMurphy
How to format a book with Kindle Create
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qfSMG0-Xaw&ab_channel=DerekMurphy
