Tag: KDP

Amazon’s New Series Pages

amazon book series
Is this really a useful tool?

Last year, Smashwords introduced a neat tool called Series Manager which allows authors to link books in the same series together for better discoverability. Well guess what? Amazon has now done the same thing. Supposedly. But not quite. Frankly – not at all.

To be perfectly honest, Smashwords outguns Amazon with this feature – by a longshot. I’ll explain why in a minute. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty first.

Unfortunately, there is a catch, the same as with Smashwords. If you have books that are in a series which are both self-published and published through a press (which uses a different KDP account), you cannot link those together yourself. You can only link the books under your control through your KDP account. To do that, go to your KDP Bookshelf (dashboard) Continue reading “Amazon’s New Series Pages”

Black Magic – Making your book perma-free on Kindle

Simon GoodsonGuest Post
by Simon Goodson

There’s something strange going on with free Kindle books. You can use KDP Select to make your book free, but only for 5 days every quarter. Yet some books are free day after day, week after week – what is known as perma-free.

Here, in theory, is how to make your book perma-free on Amazon…

a) Publish your book on kindle.
b) Publish the same e-book through another online retailer with the price set to free.
c) Tell Amazon that you’ve found the book at a lower price. Go to the books Amazon page, then to Product Details (third section down). The last line ends with a link titled “tell us about a lower price.
d) Amazon checks the information you provided, then lowers the book’s price to zero.

Easy isn’t it? Well, not quite that easy. There are a few gotchas… Continue reading “Black Magic – Making your book perma-free on Kindle”

Uploading Images and Text to Kindle

So you’ve finished your magnum opus and want to try your hand at uploading to KDP (the Kindle Direct Publishing platform). Congratulations! Except, the upload instructions you’ve managed to find are for text only and your manuscript has both text and images. Or, you’ve found the ‘Zon’s instructions, but try as you might, the images aren’t showing up in the preview.

I’m here to help

First of all, you need to make sure your images have been inserted into your .doc rather than cut and pasted. First, open your manuscript in Word. Place your cursor where you want the image to go in the document. Next, click Insert (at the top of the page), then click on Picture and choose the image you want to insert. Click Insert. Continue reading “Uploading Images and Text to Kindle”

Sell to the World

Author Shaun McLaughlin

Guest post
by Shaun McLaughlin

A few months ago, I suggested here on Indies Unlimited that self-published authors make their work available in epub format, not just Kindle. Diversity can lead to greater sales. Here’s a further tip: diversify your epub vendors to make sure your ebooks reach an international audience.

Recently when IU held a like-fest for Barnes & Noble (B&N), I tried to buy a copy of the first Starship installment by Kevin O. McLaughlin (because I like his last name). B&N uses the epub format, which is compatible with my Kobo ereader. Continue reading “Sell to the World”