†† Paula Neal Mooney ††

I already have one book published on Amazon.com in their Kindle store, and once I get my butt off this website and others this week, I should have my second book published on the Kindle in a few days.


But you won’t find me pumping those books on my sites. These are the ones I prefer to write under pen names, just so I can write more freely, and not worry about anyone who knows me finding the books and trying to put two and two together and running and squealing and pointing fingers.

How to get your book from Microsoft Word document into the Kindle book store on Amazon in 12 hours…

I’m all pumped up because I just watched this new video from Amazon, showing pretty much step by step how you can upload your book’s cover image and Microsoft Word document onto the Kindle Direct Publishing website, and if it’s in English, it will get published in less than 12 hours or so.


That is just amazing to me, because when I published my first Kindle book one year ago, I went through a whole lot more rigmarole than that. I’m so glad it’ll be easier to get my new titles up and running and selling in no time. And hopefully they’ll sell a lot more than my first book, which sold a handful of copies when it was first published, but then I kind of lost steam and didn’t concentrate on getting more reviews and backlinks.


The video doesn’t give you the basics on how to format your Word document, but you can find some of those formatting tips on this page about publishing a Kindle book.


I do remember that you shouldn’t left or right justify the photos you upload into your Word document, but just leave them centered, if you have any.


“Kindle book titles can be up to 200 characters,” she says in the video — but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should make them that long. I might experiment with shorter titles, and definitely make sure your title is something that people may search for on Amazon, like Divorce Recovery, for example, a title I just came up with by searching on Amazon.com and looking past the titles that are obvious searches for an exact book.


It also helps, perhaps, if the books that do appear in those search results aren’t too popular. But don’t let anything stop you. Try and try again to see what hits — because none of know Amazon’s exact ranking methods — we just know that “likes” and reviews (especially probably from verified buyers) and backlinks and sales all help contribute to positive rankings, and therefore, more sales. And the price matters.


But anyway, after I get my book up and running and published on Amazon, I’m going to visit Fiverr.com and invest 5 bucks on a kid I read that will work his magic and get a bunch of backlinks and social media links to the book’s page and see how much that helps my title be found and sell.

Okay, on to the thieves stealing content and publishing it in Amazon Kindle books

Because Amazon can publish content on Kindle in 12 hours or so, they obviously don’t have time to read all those books.


I’d heard about people stealing classic books and publishing them online — and I’ve even heard a lot about the brouhaha over PLR (private label rights) stuff that can be either great or crooked, depending on who you read.


But yesterday was when I learned about a guy who paid money to learn how to make money with Kindle books from some people on the Warrior Forum — and once they sold him a huge zipped file of what turned out to be stolen content and he got caught and brought it up to the parties, they kicked him out.


It’s interesting how they stole from writers who wrote naughty stuff — thinking those people would be too ashamed to come forward and complain and challenge them.

Ah well, I’m glad God has gifted my fingers and brain to fly fast across a keyboard, like a musician creating a new piece — so I’m not concentrating on stealing any content for my Kindle books — I like the act of creating something new.


And I’m not writing under pen names because I’m creating anything naughty like I’ve done in the past. I merely find more freedom in writing under a pseudonym at times so I can write more truthfully, without worrying about invading the privacy of myself, my family or anyone around me.


It’s fun to write books that can tell the honest, raw and real truth, and then lead folks to Christ therein by showing them the things He’s shown me. And thank the Lord that Amazon is making this process so much easier.


I will let you know how my experiments with different titles and backlinking methods affect my sales as the year progresses. Now let me get off this blog and get back to my book so I can get that title up and running!


Oh yes, and by the way, another thing they don’t go into in the video is how to create your Kindle book cover. The last time, I did it myself, using a copy of PhotoShop Elements that I’d picked up from Best Buy.


This time, I plan to do the same thing, because a good-looking cover makes all the difference. Even though Photoshop isn’t as intuitive as I would’ve liked for it to be, at least they have a guided tour (and there are lots of tutorials on YouTube) that can help get you through the process.


I want to set up a nice little template in Photoshop that lets me use different pics in the middle or wherever, and create the book title and author name and make it easy to use again and again, but not staid or boring.


Eye-popping, eye-catching covers that scream to readers, “Buy me! Buy me!”


And I was amazed how hard it was to find the simple image requirements for a Kindle book cover, so I think I decided to go with one man’s advice to, “Use the JPEG image format, size 600×800 pixels.”


So there you go. There’s practically no excuse now not to put that Word document up on Amazon.com and call yourself a published author!


They don’t even have to be that long. Amazon doesn’t have a minimum word count for Kindle books, but you’ve got to be able to set the expectation for your readers by somehow warning them in the description or reviews — somewhere other than that “Print Length” field pictured here, because some buyers may skip right over that.


I learned that when I listened to the Ty Cohen webinar, and he explained how he gets stay-at-home moms and other people to write books for him, and somewhere in there I inferred that they weren’t that long, because when I did some research into him and other marketers making money off Kindle books, I remember reading reviews dubbing it “short and power packed” or whatever.


I wouldn’t go charging $7.99 for a 21-page book, for example, but I think 99 cents would be fair in that instance, as long as it’s not stolen writing and the book really helps someone. You can even go free with the new KDP Select options, and hope you make eventually enough sales to get as big of the KDP Select $700,000 funds as some of the most popular Kindle writers have gotten in January 2012.


Okay, there’s my 1,391-plus words on the subject. About 3,600 more words and I could have myself a Kindle Single! That reminds me, the Kindle Singles program does have a minimum word count of 5,000 words — however, they reportedly don’t accept how-to types of books, even though I think I saw one in the Kindle Singles store.


Those lend themselves to essays and the like, and I plan to apply to have my book accepted in the Kindle Singles store once it’s published, even though I heard it can take a while to get through the review process.


No worries — onward and upward, Christian publishing soldiers!

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