K is for Kindle

By far the greatest retailer of e-books is Amazon by way of its Kindle operation.

And you should always consider self-publishing on Kindle - for there is no charge to do so and you get a royalty for every copy purchased by the public at large.

There are some traps to avoid.

If you do not want, or cannot afford, professional editing of your draft manuscript, you will have to turn your .doct into an old fashioned .doc and make it fit for e-publishing.   This can be a lengthy process, depending upon how many e-publishing formatting rules you unwittingly broke while churning out that draft.   But your helpful e-publisher might be able to help when you load your files:  auto text checking takes place.

The Kindle automatic text vetting system does not pick up very much more than spelling mistakes.   You might consider setting up a Smashwords account (it is free) and using their auto vetter to eliminate all major format errors.   Newbie authors love indenting lines with the tab key and separating paragraphs with the enter key:  both techniques tell some publishing systems to do odd things with the format.   Smashwords makes you take them all out - every single one - so that your text is readable on all devices.  The first time takes so long you make sure that future works enter into the system far more cleaner.

Kindle insists that you only have one account with them.   And each account can only have one bank account to receive the royalties you earn.    And you are not supposed to share your account details with any third party:  all in all it is very tricky to have a partnership  unless you, and they, turn a blind eye.   An account has to have a unique email address, a unique bank account and a unique tax id in order for it to be unique.   Creative people have found ways to provide all three, to the complete satisfaction of all concerned.

Kindle will offer you special deals in exchange for having exclusive rights to publish your book, each deal being a full 90 days with no time off for good behavior.   And this is really simple math:  if you are only using Kindle, you would be mad not to take the special offer.    And if you have multiple outlets, you should totally avoid it:   you might get some extra cash from Amazon, but will have to give up all other book sales by way of compensation.

When it comes setting a price for your work, there are some boundaries you should be aware of.   Kindle is happy with works between $1.99 and $9.99 - they will give you 70% of the take as a royalty.   But between $9.99 and $200.00 you can only have 35%.    Over $200.00 and you are back at 70% again.   So unless you have a really perverse trust in your best lucky number, make he price $9.99 or less - or over $19.98   Once the price gets over $19.98 a 35% royalty is larger than a 70% royalty on a $9.99 work.

If any of this requires deeper explanation, do drop me a line.   After you have dropped in on Kathy to see what she has chosen for her K topic.