Tag: KDP

Setting a Book for Free on Amazon: Not Easy!
My Thoughts · poetry · Self-publishing

Setting a Book for Free on Amazon: Not Easy!

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Free e-book

Setting a book for free on Amazon is not easy! Remember I am creating a lead magnet for my four-book poetry series. Yes, I finally have it up on Amazon, but now I need to set the price. It’s not straight forward!

Preparing a Book/E-book on Amazon

First, on kdp.com I created a new book and identified the name of the book, subtitle, author and a description. Then I uploaded the manuscript and the cover. After that I ran a preview program to make sure it looked the way I wanted it to as an e-book.

Before starting this task of creating a new e-book, I used a program, Publisher Rocket, to identify the three categories and the seven keywords/phrases that might attract more searches and ultimately more readers. From this research, I took my two lists and entered them on KDP.com. These two pieces contribute to the success of my book, so I take time to be sure I have them right.

Next, I have to price the book. This is where I ran into trouble. Remember, I want this chapbook/e-book, Is My Truth Universal?, to be free as a lead magnet to my four-book poetry series. Why? Remember, it’s free to entice readers to sample my poetry and then, hopefully, purchase my four other books. (Three of them haven’t been published yet!)

This felt like a roadblock, but I did what I always do when I need help. I googled how to price an e-book free on Amazon! Well, it gets complicated at this point, but I found a tutorial and remembered somewhere in my eleven-year journey of self-publishing there was a way around it.

Why and How to Make Your Book Permanently Free on Amazon – Updated for 2024

Here’s what the tutorial said:

  1. Price the book as $.99 on Amazon and do not make it KDP Select.
  2. Go to either Barnes and Noble or Kobo and publish the book and set it free.
  3. Then go back to KDP and go to the Help Center and find Price Matching and email them to match the price of where you published it.

What I learned

I have to give Amazon and the other company time to publish the e-book, so it can take 72 hours, but it usually doesn’t. (It didn’t take 72 hours. Amazon has published it within hours.) My next steps: wait for Kobo to show it in their store. The email in the KDP Help has a template, asking for specific information that comes from the listing like: ASIN / Kindle Store: .COM, UK, DE, etc. / Current competitor region link(s) / Current competitor price.

So, now I must wait for Kobo to do their work, then I will send the email and Amazon will drop the price from $.99 to $.00 because they price match. Whew! What a journey!

UPDATE FROM LAST WEEK ON COVER

Wat It a Dream? cover - Free

Last week, I told you about the cover for my new poetry book, Was It a Dream? where I found two mistakes in the text. The cover company who created my beautiful cover, 100covers.com, came through again in two days, fixing the mistakes and helping me get the book done. Hopefully, the book will be published this week as an e-book and the paperback will be available in a week or so.

So there you have it! The intricacies of self-publishing keep me hopping for sure! I’ll let you know when my chapbook/e-book is free on Amazon and you can sample my poetry and make a decision about purchasing my first book in the series!

Podcasts & My Interviews

Buy My Audio Books:

This Tumbleweed Landed

This Tumbleweed Landed audiobook cover

Let Me Tell You a Story 

Let Me Tell You a Story audiobook cover

Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Memoir Audiobook

Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir audiobook cover

Virtual Voice for An Audiobook—Yes or No?
Audiobooks · My Books · My Thoughts

Virtual Voice for An Audiobook—Yes or No?

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Microphone to record - Virtual voice

Virtual voice for an audiobook of mine? Yes, or no? KDP, Amazon’s self-publishing branch, sent me an invitation in November, 2023 to participate in a Beta version to do my eligible ebooks. Finally, a couple months ago, I opted in to do it. Let’s talk about the process.

I have recorded three audiobooks myself, creating a home recording studio in a walk-in closet in our master bedroom. Those titles are Let Me Tell You a Story, Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir and lastly, This Tumbleweed Landed, listed below to purchase. Also, in 2022 I recorded another book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, but have only seven of thirty-one chapters revised in a final copy. That’s the year shingles hit me and I stopped mid-stream.

Recording an audiobook - Virtual Voice

I thoroughly enjoy recording my own books because I love re-reading them, being surprised and thrilled at my words and thoughts.

So, the idea of having someone else record my books didn’t appeal to me at first, but I love to experiment and I have been a “technology nerd” for years, so I thought I’d give it a try. I selected When Will Papa Get Home?, a historical fiction I self-published in 2017. I planned to do an audiobook for this book after I finished my Bitter or Better audiobook.

In the process of using KDP’s offer of a virtual voice, I received no email or notification it was done. I just finished a promotional for this book for Father’s Day and noticed the audiobook was in “Draft” format, so I realized they had done it.

Pick a Voice

Next, I went into the audiobook setup and had eight voices to choose from: five feminine voices and three masculine voices. Two of the feminine voices had British accents, so they wouldn’t work. All choices ranged in age from thirty to forty which seemed to work. I chose the seventh voice.

Audiobook cover

KDP offers to create a cover for the audiobook, showing a sample of the e-book and the audiobook, but it doesn’t show you what your cover will look like—lots of free offerings that make me wonder.

KDP Select Enrollment

Because my book is enrolled in KDP Select, automatically they enroll my audiobook in Audible Plus.

Pricing and Royalties

Next, they talk money. They give you the choice of setting the price. With the other audiobooks I’ve created, they gave a suggested price—not here. But they do give a price for the audiobook as a Standalone and then an eBook add-on price with royalties for all. Here they list the Amazon.com royalties and the Audible.com royalties which is 40% of the price. ACX.com also offers 40% royalties for audiobooks they distribute. FindAwayVoices.com offers the best royalties—80%!

Virtual Voice Studio

Finally, I arrived at the heart and soul of this setup—listening to how the virtual voice sounds speaking my words. When I heard my name, Larada, read, I realized I had to edit the pronunciation. So, I typed in “La Rayda” for the edit and it seems to be close to how my family pronounced my name. I have the option of editing the “Voice speed,” also. Also, I can add “Pauses” if need be.

This book has Spanish sprinkled throughout, and I just listened to sections that have some Spanish to see how the virtual voice did. On some of it, the pronunciation worked, but the word “hijita” didn’t because the “j” in Spanish sounds like “h.” Also the “i” in Spanish sounds like the English “ee.” So I’m going to have to do some major editing of this audiobook because of the Spanish words.

Finally,

I listened to snippets of several chapters. Yes, the Spanish pronunciation creates some issues, but for the most part, the feminine voice I selected sounds great and uses inflection to emphasis crucial points in the story.

I’m still not sure about this because of ownership rights to the audiobook. I need to do some more research because I don’t want to give up ownership to the audiobook. Their contract says, “you retain all ownership rights in and to the copyrights and all other rights and interest in and to your Books, and we retain ownership in the AVV (Audiobook with Virtual Voice) Edition file.”

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GWHSFAK69P2537YR

That doesn’t sound good to me at all! What do you think? Would you do it?

My Audio Books:

This Tumbleweed Landed

Buy Let Me Tell You a Story Audiobook

Buy Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Memoir Audiobook

Enjoy my interview on the podcast, The Writing Table

Moving Parts of Publishing an E-book!
My Thoughts · Technology · Writing

Moving Parts of Publishing an E-book!

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Moving parts

Moving parts of publishing an e-book—so many for sure! My new e-book, Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir, has made it through the ringer, available now! This week I struggled with the process and succeeded. Let me share it with you!

Eagerly on Monday, first, I created the new e-book space on KDP, an affiliate of Amazon. I filled in all the required information, which I prepared for a couple of days ahead of time. Lots of research goes into launching a new book for keywords and categories. When a customer searches on Amazon, their search engines use keywords and book categories to find the book—super important for the sales of a book!

Then I uploaded the manuscript to KDP, excited I was finally there. Anticipation about this day had hovered over me for weeks. KDP has an online previewer, thank God! First, I realized I had the Copyright page in the wrong place—after the Table of Contents, not before it. So, in Vellum, the program I use to create my books, I moved it forward one page, but then had to upload the document again. Whew! All these moving parts!

Then, I have several pictures in the book and the placement in Vellum wasn’t true to size. So, I resized and resized and resized, going back and forth several times between KDP and Vellum. Finally, it looked good.

On Tuesday morning, I asked my book coach and group about using my ex-husband’s name in my book. None of what I wrote about him was derogatory, but I have become super cautious about using people’s names.

The solutions they offered: change his name or call him and ask permission. I haven’t talked to him in over forty years, so calling was out of the question. My husband, Lin, had offered the same advice while we discussed this in the hot tub on Monday night.

So somehow, while I was resizing the pictures, I forgot about changing his name in the revisions Tuesday night. Good thing I brought it up to my book coach.

On Wednesday morning, I knew I had to change my first husband’s name. I researched safe names to use for men characters in a book and came up with Alex. Lin came upstairs to my computer, and I told him what I was doing. He came up with a great idea: use a Christmas name. So, I researched Christmas names: Joseph, Nicholas, Rudolph, etc. Our decision: Rudolph!

So that ended the saga! I uploaded the new version of the e-book on Wednesday afternoon and it was ready for purchase shortly!

Finally, I’m waiting for the final cover of the print copy with the description, my picture and brief biography and the ISBN number. Hopefully, it will go smoothly! You never know! Moving parts!!

Did you know all the moving parts of publishing a book? If so, what was your experience?

~Jump in on my Book Launch special next week. From Wednesday, September 13 – Sunday, September 17, Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir will be FREE on Amazon. Click here!

Download new launch: Hair on Fire. Moving parts
One Year Later! Let’s Celebrate Flippo’s Biography!
Book Production · Marshall Flippo · My Thoughts

One Year Later! Let’s Celebrate Flippo’s Biography!

Larada Horner-Miller3 Comments
One Year Celebration!
Photo by Rakicevic Nenad from Pexels

Let’s celebrate one year since I released Flippo’s biography!! So much goes into publishing a book! Here’s what I did with Flippo’s. On May 3, 2020, I uploaded three formats of Flippo’s biography to Ingram Sparks’ publishing company. Flippo wanted hardback copies available, so that’s why I selected Ingram to publish his biography. I also published the paperback and Kindle e-book version through KDP on Amazon with the publication date of May 8, 2020. Whew! A year ago, I met myself coming and going for sure!

One year—that’s hard to believe! Because I self-publish, I do all the work to prepare a book to be released: create the cover and the interior. What made this an outrageous task is I had three covers to make: the hardback, paperback and e-book formats. Then I had to format the interior for each also, making sure each version had its own unique ISBN number! I really worried about messing up on that!

COVERS

Dust jacket for Flippo's hardback book
Hardback Dust Jacket with Template from Ingram Sparks

The hardback version required a dust jacket, which is a much larger space than a paperback cover, so I had to alter it considerably. (See image above.) I battled with the layout, making sure the title stayed on the spine and the text didn’t run over on the folds of the dust cover—tricky for sure!

Previously, I had laid out paperback and e-books covers for my other books, so I had less trouble with these two, and their dimensions were similar, so that helped!

But prior to the actual layout of these, I had to come up with the design. John and Neeca Flippo and I wanted the picture of Flippo calling as a young man with a live band. What a wonderful picture depicting Flippo calling as a young caller! It needed to be the focus point of the cover. Then I searched for the background graphic, and I wanted something that looked like a dance floor and found that.

Then, I experimented with the font and the color of the title, arriving at the one I felt stressed the title and went with the color scheme of the picture and the background. I love all these parts of design work!

Bryan and Kenta Swift helped me with the back cover. I wanted to feature Flippo’s favorite places he called, and they suggested I cluster them around the edges. I first added the four on the top: Asilomar, Kirkwood Lodge, Wagon Wheel, and Chula Vista. Flip had identified those four as his favorites. Then I knew I had to add Japan! He loved his trips to Japan and the Japanese people.

Early in my self-publishing career, advisors encouraged me not to write the book description on the back of the book, so I paid to have someone do that.

INTERIOR OF THE BOOK

Vellum app - One year later

For the interior layout, I used an app, Vellum, which is only available for Mac computers, and I love it. That took time too, though, doing the three formats! Then I decided because this was a history book of square dancing and people might be interested in looking for a specific person or places, it needed an Index. I found an app to help index the keywords, but what a grueling experience that was!

UPLOADS

Finally, I was ready to upload the covers and the interiors for each format. Before this book, I’d only used createspace.com which has become KDP, and I knew their upload process. Ingram Sparks was totally different. It required the .pdf documents for the covers and interiors to be in a specific format, PDF/X-1a:2001.

Adobe’s InDesign app is the publisher’s standard and creates that format, but I don’t have it because of its expense. So, I researched every nook and cranny on the Internet and found a solution—I outsourced my covers and interiors to fiverr.com and someone there converted my files.

So, after I successfully uploaded the documents to Ingram Sparks, I uploaded them to KDP, as well. Each of these publishers provided me with a “eproofs” to look over and give my final approval.

SALES

Stack of books - One year later
Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels

After that, the sales poured in from the pre-order list, word-of-mouth and my advertising on the Internet, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, I had a heck of time getting the shipment of books. After several weeks’ delay, I’ll never forget opening the box of hardbacks and holding that precious book in my hands for the first time. I think Flippo would have been proud!

Also, because of the pandemic, CALLERLAB was canceled, and I had planned to release the book there. So, the travel restrictions forced me to have the release party online with Zoom, and we had a fabulous time swopping Flippo stories that night.

With the continued restrictions and no dancing, the sales have dropped off, but I keep Flippo’s biography in front of the dance world on square dance Facebook pages and through emails to possible interested parties.

ONE YEAR LATER

Release party for one-year anniversary of Flippo's biography

Here we are one year later. I know the sales will spike once we dance again. Also, I’m having a Zoom celebration on May 10, 2020 7:00 PM MST to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Flip’s biography, so join me for a fun-filled night. Go to the Facebook Event page and click you are going or email me at Larada@icloud.com

A year later—so much has happened! Have you ever self-published a book? If so, how did it go?

Have you bought your copy of Flippo’s biography yet? If not, now’s a good time!

(Scroll down a little farther below to make comments!)

Previous Blog Posts You Might Have Missed

Just Another Square Dance Caller cover one year later!

~HAVE YOU ORDERED YOUR AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE FLIPPO BIOGRAPHY? AVAILABLE NOW! Go to the homepage on my website & pay for it there: https://www.laradasbooks.com

~One-Year Anniversary of the Release of Flippo’s Biography! Join me to celebrate on May 10, 2021 from 7:00—9:00 PM Email me at larada@icloud.com if you are interested!

~Here’s Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When Its Christmas Time in Texas”: https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A

ALL FOUR E-BOOK FORMATS OF FLIPPO’S BIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW:

~Visit my website for all the information you need about me & my books: https://www.laradasbooks.com

~Visit my Amazon Author’s Page: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B00LLQTXSM

~ Give Mom a gift for reading this year! Visit my Etsy Shop for a Mother’s Day sale of 20% off select titles and bundles:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/LaradasReadingLoft

~VISIT MARY ZALMANEK, A FRIEND’S BLOG: Cooking in a One-Butt Kitchen | Eating Well in Small Spaces: https://cookinginaonebuttkitchen.com/