Looking for advice

[Rowanblake]

Hello! I recently completed my first book and am in the process of trying to publish it. The book itself is a 18+ Paranormal romance series tha I had been wanting to write for a couple years and finally went for it. I've listed some questions below that I would appreciate being answered.



1. I want to use a pen name. How would I go about doing that? I plan on publishing on KDP, would I just use it? Is there a place I would register it? I've searched it and it hasn't been used in publishing before.

2. If publishing through KDP, how has your experiance been? Is there an option to pay for advertising your book on there?

I would take any advice you could offer to a new writer. Thank you so much for taking time out to read this and reply! 

[guest215]

Hi, Rowanblake, welcome aboard.

You'll sign up for KDP with a master account and you can establish pen names within it.

KDP is KDP. It's its own thing. Overall, it's not hard to learn if you dedicate yourself to the task and keep up to date on changes, which happen all the time.

Yes, KDP provides what is called AMS, or Amazon Marketing Services, where you can run ads on Amazon.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Hello! I recently completed my first book and am in the process of trying to publish it. The book itself is a 18+ Paranormal romance series tha I had been wanting to write for a couple years and finally went for it. I've listed some questions below that I would appreciate being answered.



1. I want to use a pen name. How would I go about doing that? I plan on publishing on KDP, would I just use it? Is there a place I would register it? I've searched it and it hasn't been used in publishing before.

2. If publishing through KDP, how has your experiance been? Is there an option to pay for advertising your book on there?

I would take any advice you could offer to a new writer. Thank you so much for taking time out to read this and reply! 

Congratulations on completing your first book.   

When you open your KDP account, you do it with your real name or with the name of your business (like an LLC or something).  When you publish a book, you simply type in whatever name in the "author" field that you want to appear on the product page.  Using a pen name really is as simple as that.   

As for advertising, there are many ways to go about it.  It depends on how much money you're willing to spend, how much time and effort you want to put into it, and so on.  Many variables.  Also, whether your book is going to be in Kindle Unlimited or not is an important factor.

I know it can all seem overwhelming, but we're here to help.  Don't be shy about asking questions.     And you should give a lot more weight to the answers provided by those writing in the same genre as you, because nothing is uniform across all genres.  Different readers, different markets.

Good luck! 

[Pandorra]

Hey Rowan, good to see you posting. Give me a few to get to your pm, I am slammed right now.. but do more of this ^. Exactly this. Ask questions, read posts, and move around the boards and make friends! Everyone is more than happy to answer questions!!

[Rowanblake]

How does the unlimited work on kindle? I read up on it a little bit and basically got that you allow your book to be free for those who have a membership and amazon some how pays you for it? how is unlimited compared to the normal priced books sold?

[Tom Wood]

How does the unlimited work on kindle? I read up on it a little bit and basically got that you allow your book to be free for those who have a membership and amazon some how pays you for it? how is unlimited compared to the normal priced books sold?

Rowanblake - You are asking a question that is completely valid and which deserves a detailed answer. It is also a question/answer that belongs in a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of this website. It's not set up yet, but is needed.

Timothy - Can you set up a FAQ for this very type of question?

[Jeff Tanyard]

How does the unlimited work on kindle? I read up on it a little bit and basically got that you allow your book to be free for those who have a membership and amazon some how pays you for it? how is unlimited compared to the normal priced books sold?

When you publish your book, you'll be given the option of enrolling it in Kindle Unlimited or not.  (When you see the abbreviation KU used around here, it refers to Kindle Unlimited.)  If you enroll your book in KU, then your book will be available for borrowing by KU subscribers.  You get paid about half a cent per page read.  That "half a cent" number fluctuates slightly every month.  The rate is decided by Amazon.

If you put your book in KU, it will get assigned a KENPC, or Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count.  This is often in the same ballpark as the actual page count that appears on the product page, but will almost certainly not be identical to it.  The KENPC does not appear on the product page.  Only you, the publisher, can see it when you log in and visit your dashboard.  The KENPC has one purpose, and that's to figure out how much to pay you for a full read of your book.

For example, your book might be 300 pages long according to the product page, but you might have a KENPC of 400.  At half a cent per page, a full read of your book would put two dollars in your pocket.  (.005 x 400)

If you put your book in KU, then it must be exclusive to Amazon.  You cannot offer the ebook anywhere else.

If you don't put it in KU, then you can "go wide," or make the ebook available at a variety of retailers.

Those are the basics.  Hope that helps. 

[Rose Andrews]

How does the unlimited work on kindle? I read up on it a little bit and basically got that you allow your book to be free for those who have a membership and amazon some how pays you for it? how is unlimited compared to the normal priced books sold?

Kindle Unlimited is a membership program where the author is paid by page reads. Royalties with KU books vs. regular paid really vary on the KU pot amount each month (what Amazon dictates the payout rate will be), your genre, your audience, how little or a lot you are selling, etc. I would strongly advise you to do your research and read about KU vs wide to see what would work best for your book. This isn't a question that can be simply answered so basically, educate yourself because 100% of this is researchable.

[Shoe]

I would take any advice you could offer to a new writer. Thank you so much for taking time out to read this and reply! 

Don't publish until you have your series ready to publish on a four or six-week schedule.

[Pandorra]

I think the first steps are a cover (you can try your own or we have several cover artists here), choose if you want to be on just Amazon or wide, (which means expanded distribution through Amazon, d2d etc), if your in KU you can't be wide which is why there is a big question mark there for some of us but KU is good for visibility, or you can go direct and then you'll want to decide how long/how many books you want before you start to promote your work through paid advertising. I started with a backlist and am building that and doing social media before I start paying for advertising, some do it differently but most agree marketing one book isn't worth the cost. I am not sure if you have ruled out trying trad publishing yet either... some of the authors here do trad (publishing houses) some do both that and indie... so again, ask around. You will really want to check all of your options and then decide what's best for you as there are several ways to go about it ...but take a deep breath, once you decide, self-publishing isn't too hard. It's all the little details that keep you on your toes!! LOL

[VanessaC]

Hi Rowanblake, welcome!

I got started on my publishing journey not that long ago, and I remember the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed by everything - all the terminology, the options, the different opinions.  Yikes!

A really simple thing that helped me was to get a notebook (I do like old fashioned pen and paper sometimes) and basically make a list of what I thought was involved in publishing an e-book and what I needed to know.  For example: covers, editing, formatting, KU or wide.  I added to the list as I went.

Then I tackled each subject one at a time.  For example, I spent a while looking at cover options, hunting down designers I liked, looking at covers in my genre, etc, etc.  Then moved on to the next thing. That worked for me as I wasn't trying to do everything at once!

For me, I decided to hold back publishing my first book until I had the first three nearly done (although that plan went a bit wrong - book 3 took longer than I'd planned!).  I also published exclusively with Amazon, in KU for several reasons, not least that, as I'm just starting out, it only gives me one platform to learn and get familiar with to start with.

Best of luck.