Writing and Publishing: Publishing on KDP

I finally published something. After 18 years of wanting to do it and telling people I was going to do it… I did.

Now, nobody knows I did yet. Except if you are subscribed to this blog, of course (and my family). So, my goal now is to market my book without intruding in other people’s lives. If only it were easy.

So, I will talk a little about KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

The first thing I did was create an account on KDP (which is the same one you use to purchase on Kindle). I filled out all of the Tax info, got approved for it and then… the adventure began.

I write in Word and the first page on the “Guided Tutorial”, or whatever it’s called, included a list of downloads to transform your book into the correct Kindle Format.

First of all, I couldn’t open the file. Then I discovered you have to do it on the “Terminal” (I own a Mac). And then… looking around I discovered it was better to edit a html file and then drag it to the previewer. I did that. Took forever every time I dragged and dropped. And then I started to realize the format was all wrong.

I needed the title and chapter titles to be centered vertically. And so I google “how to center vertically on Word” and I found out how to do it. At some point, though, I made a mistake and selected the entire file and so the last page of each chapter centered vertically. To fix this, I only made it worse by selecting that chunk of text and centering Top… this only split my text and would NOT get back together.

So, I took the html again and redid it.

By then, I discovered that I didn’t need any special format. Word was good. Goodness, had I but known!

The endeavor took ages! 

I finally got what I wanted and I published the content. And then I saw a mistake and I uploaded the content again… and then I saw another mistake and… hopefully you get the point.

Now, every time you upload the file it takes HOURS to get approved… *sigh*. Yes, I used a lot of my time uploading content to a website.

I kind of understand publishers now… imagine what I went through but with millions of printed copies. I admire publishers. I still wish they would publish my story 😉
cheers!