Two months ago my novel, Jess Sayin’ – A Grace Texas Murder Mystery, was published on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s available as an e-book and as a paperback. The whole experience has been fantastic.
Using Kindle Direct Publishing (or KDP) is easy to do but there is a lot to learn. You have to take the time to learn how to format your book, create your cover, publish and market. There is plenty of information in KDP University. There are webinars and I recommend all of them. I took some of them twice. Read the help pages because that will tell you everything you need to know.
For me, this has been a real grassroots effort and the support from friends and family has been incredible. For years I was afraid to let people see what I had written for fear of harsh criticism or even anger. I imagined that people would be offended by some of the themes. I shouldn’t have worried.
I did not have money for an editor, a cover artist, or any advertising. I found good beta readers in several facebook groups. I swapped manuscripts sometimes so we could edit for each other. Several friends read it before publication to give me their input. For all of them I am very grateful. Even so, after publication I still continued to find mistakes. I have had to make corrections after publication and re-upload my manuscript a few times to correct spelling errors or even more glaring content errors. One friend told me to change the pie crust recipe, so I did.
I created my own cover from a photo I took of my daughter holding a beaded cross which I crafted. Like I said, it’s a grassroots, do-it-yourself kind of thing. I hope that doesn’t make it too unprofessional. I’m doing the best I can and learning as I go.
I did my own promoting, mostly through Facebook. I got an Amazon Author page and a Goodreads Author page. I asked friends who had read the book to leave reviews and they did. I am also very thankful for all of the reviews. Recently I got myself a WIX website and I’m working on perfecting it.
I have also been working on my second book, Chace Scene. This one is about the wedding of Chace and Jack. I finished the first draft and am now ready for the revisions.
Before I decided to go with KDP, I wasted a couple of years querying agents and publishers first. I took classes, joined groups, and kept working on it. I didn’t have a lot of time for that because I was working full time.
Most people I know have at least one book idea, if not several. My advice is; write it. Don’t wait. Then, if you want to go through KDP to get your book out there, I highly recommend it.
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