Amateur To Published: The Fiction Writer's Guide To Publishing

8 - Uploading Your Book

As soon as your book is complete and you've createddifferent versions of it, it's time to start thinking about publication.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY DATE OF LAUNCH

Before you publish your book (and all its versions),you need to first decide when you'll officially launch your book. This launchdate will affect when you publish each version of your book.

The eBook for instance needs to be published atleast two days before your official publication date because of the time ittakes for KDP to check and approve it. Also, if you're going throughaggregators, they'll need at least seven days to make sure that your booksappear in all their partner sites.

The paperback will require 5-10 days while the audio-book can only be published after the eBook is live. As you can see it's a delicate balance. Worse, all these versions ride on each other's popularity so their publishing dates need to be as close as possible for your launch to be successful.

The launch date will also influence how much time you havefor your pre-launch marketing tasks like distributing ARCs, organizingnewsletter swaps, showing book trailers etc. If you're distributing ARCs forinstance, you need to hand them out two weeks to a month before the launch dateso that your readers have time to read the book and leave reviews.

STEP 2: COMPLETE YOUR PRE-LAUNCH TASKS

Wouldn't it be nice if successful publishing was only aboutuploading your books onto the retail sites? Unfortunately, it's not. Evenbefore you upload and publish your books, you need to start working onmarketing it so that by the time it actually hits the stores, there are peopleeagerly waiting to buy it. In future chapters I will talk about all the tasks you should complete before launching your book so keep an eye out. But in general, these tasks include:

- Distributing ARCs

- Creating and distributing a prequel

- Creating and distributing marketing material like banners,book trailers etc

- Organizing newsletter swaps with other authors

- Organizing giveaways

- Organizing promotional and advertizing pushes

etc, etc

STEP 3: UPLOAD PAPERBACK

The fact that paperbacks take the longest time to get approved means that they need to be uploaded first. However, that's not the only reason. Once you start distributing ARCs, the advance readers will need somewhere to leave their reviews. If the paperback is already up, they can leave the reviews without the eBook having been published.

Before you upload your paperback make sure that both the interior and the cover are properly formatted so they don't get rejects. Just go to the KDP website, get into your author account, click on 'bookshelf' then navigate to 'create a new title' and click on 'Paperback'. From there on follow the guided process to publish your book. When filling in the metadata/information sections, refer to the document you created that listed all the book's metadata.

Note that since paperbacks aren't the traditionalmoney-maker for self-published authors, you can even upload it two weeks beforeyou publish your eBook while you're carrying out your pre-launch tasks. Justmake sure you don't advertize it until you've got your eBook published too.

STEP 4: UPLOAD EBOOK

Ebooks are the self-publisher's daily bread. For thatreason, its timing is very critical. If you upload it too early, it will affectyour ranking on your launch day but if you publish too late, you might missthat launch day altogether. Two days before the official launch date is themost ideal time. This way it gives the book time to get reviews but doesn'tmess with your preliminary rankings on online retail sites.

To publish your book just go to the KDP website, navigate to your account then got to 'Create NewEBook'. The set-up process is guided so you shouldn't have too much troublepublishing your eBook. If you already have the paperback up, then don't start a completely new book just click on the same book but instead go to 'Kindle eBook'.

As you're filling information in the title, blurb,category and keyword fields, make sure it matches the information/metadata you filledout when publishing your paperback. Why? To make it easier for the Amazon botsto recognize that this is the same book as the paperback and combine them sothey all appear on the same product page.

STEP 5: UPLOAD AUDIO FILES TO ACX

Now that you've recorded and edited your book, you'llneed to upload to AXS. Whilethere are a lot of steps, uploading youraudio-book is a user-friendly and self explanatory guide. All you need to do isgo to the ACX website and you'll find step-by stepguidance to help you publish your audio-book.

Make sure all the metadata/info from your printed book and eBook matchthat of your audio-book. Your author name should be the same and the bookcover should be the same as appears on your eBook. ACX will not allow youto continue if there are discrepancies in identifying information.

Your audio-book will not post immediately. ACX willhold your submission to confirm that all is in order before it posts youaudio-book. Don't be alarmed if you see an ACX note telling you "This title is:Pending audio review." That's a normal part of the process and not somethingwrong on your end. When ACX approves your book, you'll then have the greenlight to sell the audio copies online.

STEP 6: THE DOUBLE-CHECK

Don't forget to double-check all your files and thepublished versions of your book to make sure that everything is exactly as youwant it and as it should be.

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