39. How to upload your completed textbook to Amazon

AI-generated transcript:

Okay, hello.

Are you ready for some exciting times at freetalktefl.substack.com?

Today, tonight, it's kind of late.

I've just finished teaching all day.

I'm going to upload a file for a book.

This is actually an older book.

I've got the book here.

100 English Phrases.

But I wanted to update it.

There are a few little things on the inside that I wanted to update.

Now, as you know, as I've said before, any file that you update to Amazon, any book has two files.

There's a cover and the interior.

And I'm going to, I don't need to change the cover.

I just want to update the interior.

So that's what I'm going to do.

But while I'm doing that, I just happen to be doing that and I thought, well, I might as well just show you how you go about uploading a new title, completely brand new title.

So I'll do that.

It may look really complicated, but you're just uploading something to Amazon.

You're not doing anything.

It's not, it's not, it's not rocket surgery.

brain science no okay let's uh let me see now let me share my screen hopefully there's nothing too private something here and hopefully it will work with amazon i

I was playing around with it earlier and I think it will.

Okay.

Hey, here I am.

Let me just, you don't need to see me much, do you?

Let me just move it out here.

Okay.

So now what we've got here is I've just previously, I've gone to kdp.amazon.com.

I have a KDP account.

If you don't have one, you need to have one before you upload anything to Amazon.

If you go to Amazon, somewhere on the Amazon page, if you have an Amazon account,

There's something about KDP, which is Kindle Direct Publishing.

It was originally all about just Kindle, but now they've tied in their print books.

Getting tired, sorry.

They've tied in their print books.

So anyway, kdb.amazon.com.

Now you can use the Japanese one.

If your Japanese is a bit better than mine, you might be fine to use kdp.amazon.co.jp.

but I started doing this a while ago and I just went straight to the US one and so I'm doing it through the US you could do it through there's no real advantage of using the Japanese one except they are a bit better with dealing with Japanese obviously I did have a problem originally getting getting Amazon to pay me from from America there was just some problem with the account

They could never figure it out in America, but the Japanese people sorted it out, so there was that advantage.

But I prefer to use English just because I do, but if you don't have that problem,

probably .co.jp okay right you can go to your when you go into your account um it's got all the details up here um there's a the there's the bookshelf which is all your titles that you've got there's the reports which tells you what your sales are community is a bunch of nonsense and marketing is a waste of time but these two are really useful now i'm in the bookshop here and whenever you do something um it's best to go to this page

Let's say you wanted to make a brand new book.

You would click on here, create.

That's what you'd do.

And then it would take you through all the procedures that you need to do.

So just click on there.

If you have your title ready to go, if you've got your

your interior file either for a KDP for the Kindle if it's a e-book you'd have the e-book I think it's an EPUB Kindle version if you've got that ready then anyway you go to the create and it'll ask you do you want to do Kindle or paperback once you've uploaded it and it's in the system you can find it on your bookshelf and this is where this is the book

and here it is once you've uploaded it and it's got the file and everything it's got the cover you can easily find it and so here you see I could create a kindle book I've only got this as a as a print book one day I could create a kindle book but I'm not I'm not bothered with it right now

um you can create a hardback i've never actually done that um it looked a bit of a faff but you could and then uh paperback actions continue setup okay yes i'm in the middle of setting this up but let me just show you i'm gonna edit paperback content let me just click on there

and it should okay files up and don't worry about this when you first set up a your file it will go to paperback details continue without saving don't worry about it when you first set up a a book it will take you to this page and you have to fill this all in yourself this is already filled in for me because it's it's an existing book and i can't change it once i've done it and once i've printed it you know it's like it's like copyrighted now

these main things but don't worry about it when you upload a file it would come to here you put it in English enter your title as it appears on the cover 100 English phrases for a trip to the UK it's got a subtitle I'm just typing in what's on the front here right if it's part of a series I put in there details put my name anybody else who's written in the book you can write you know this is the blurb that appears on the

Amazon page, you can change that easily.

I'm not going to mess with it.

You know, by the way, you can always come in and change this if you don't like what you've written, you can, you know, it's not permanent.

So, you know, whatever.

Publishing rights, I own the copyright.

Yes.

Click on their prompt.

Primary audience sexually explicit?

No.

Reading age, I could choose to have reading age for this, I didn't.

I think that helps with search engines, but I'm not really fussed about that at the moment.

Primary marketplace, I think that's just really for the interest of Amazon.

Okay categories you can put this is to help the search engine you can go in there and you're going to click on to choose categories I've done education, reference, foreign language study, English as a second language, non-fiction, travel, Europe, Great Britain.

You might want to put something in Japanese in there actually thinking about it but not today.

A bunch of stuff here.

If you're printing diaries or journals or things like that, that's low print quantity, you know, there's not much words in it.

I think you click on here because it can affect your tax taxation, I think, in some countries.

Don't worry about it.

Keywords.

This is to help the search engine in the Amazon.

You can have up to seven and seven phrases.

It could be a phrase or something.

So I've just put some stuff in there.

I'm not sure it really helps.

But there's a whole sort of art and science of getting the correct keywords and stuff.

But, you know, it's

ah not worth my time for me right okay everything's there i'm happy okay i'm going to save and continue next step content it's saving i don't don't think i changed anything did i anyway right now okay now i'm into the the next page back to here paperback content okay

You'll notice I have an ISBN number.

This keeps coming up, people asking me about ISBNs.

I don't want to go into it today, but just to say that KDP will issue a free ISBN.

There are advantages to having your own, but they're so minuscule if you're just interested in selling them on Amazon.

I don't even bother, I just keep discovering this.

The imprint says independently published.

I think if you have your own ISBN you could have your own name like you'd be Tower English International Publishing Corporation of Her Majesty the Queen or something or whatever you can have some grand title but I'm quite happy to have it independently published I don't care.

Right then you'll go down and you'll click on these now I can't change these because it's an existing book but if you put this in the first time whoops

You know, you can choose what you want.

You can have black and white interior paper.

Well, you can see, you can read what it says here.

It depends, you know, if you've got color pictures and stuff.

Mine is just a phrase book.

It's slightly more expensive, the overall cost, if you do have a fancier paper.

I've got the bog standard with cream paper.

I think it looks quite nice with cream paper.

As it tells you, they're typical for fiction and memoirs.

Well, whatever.

I think it looks quite nice.

And it's easy to write on actually, that kind of paper, which is good for my English students.

Anyway, okay, you'll have to choose your trim size.

I can't change it because as I say, it already exists.

Five by eight inches.

I mean, there's all sorts of sizes that you can have.

All weird and wonderful and all sort of standard sizes like real books like behind me.

Bleed setting.

We don't want to bleed.

It explains what bleed is.

It's just like if the picture goes into this centerfold and throughout, you know, like if you have a, if you have a centerfold, if you do such a thing, or if you, you know, if you have the pictures going into the, into the gutter, then you have to have bleed.

It's technical things.

Just avoid it.

Just say no bleed.

paperback cover finish glossy i don't know if you can see that it's sort of a bit shiny they put a plastic film over it protects it i teach lots of kids with sticky hands so it's good to have it glossy if you want matte click on matte that's just a preference really um okay now you're into the this is the nitty-gritty now this is where you upload your manuscript

or upload your cover file.

Now, I'm not going to mess with the cover, but if I had a cover, I could upload it here.

It says upload cover you already have, print ready, PDF only.

Oh, okay.

I thought it was JPEGs that they did.

Oh, eBooks, you need a JPEG, but anyway.

Upload your paperback manuscript.

Okay, let's do it.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

I'm going live.

Okay.

I've already done one before and I've made a mistake.

So I'm just going to upload this one, which is version 3.

Right.

Upload.

And it takes a few moments for it to read the file and to upload it, but not usually very long.

And very quickly you can get on with, it will show you what it looks like.

You can have a screen, what do you call it?

A preview, screen preview.

It will show you what it looks like.

and that's what's going to do okay it looks like it's doing something let's have a look is it doing it okay i don't want to click on cancel upload i don't want to do that save successful hooray okay it's uploading paperback manuscript

um by the way you know like isbn sorry um what you call it barcodes it does it barcode automatically for you if you have your own barcode because you've got your own isbn and all that business you can you just tell it that you do cover uploaded successfully i know it has let's see that's version three that's the correct version okay it's processing um okay uh did you use ai tools no i did not they've started asking that question i wonder if they will

if it affects tax or if in the future if there's a backlash against AI books they may stop any books that have been created with AI.

Anyway just click on yes or no.

I didn't use any AI tools apart from spell check.

I don't think I did spell check even.

But anyway no.

Okay and then it says it looks like you've made some changes to your manuscript or book cover.

By clicking this I confirm that my answers are accurately okay.

I'm going to launch preview.

I think I have to when I've uploaded.

Device is too small.

Yeah, whatever.

Okay, all done.

So yeah, now it's really reading the file and it's uploading it and it's this is where I mean, you could have a you could print out a copy and have it sent to you.

But why would you want to do that?

That just delays it.

It gives you this is what it's going to look like.

This is what the book looks like.

Now that's

that's it yeah that looks nice yep so you're making sure everything's within the dotted lines yep looks okay sorry let me get my face out of the way there we go quality check it says there's no no no problems let's have a look around um yeah that was the page i really wanted to change let me just check just double check it's got the right copyright it should say

Oh yeah, and I've updated the books that I've written.

I've written 36 more books since the last time this was first published in 2018.

Crikey.

OK, where's my copyright page?

It should say 2024.

Yeah, 2024.

OK, that's cool.

Let me just have a quick look on thumbnail views.

Just make sure everything seems to be tickety-boo.

It is tickety-boo.

That's the official term.

Yeah, cool.

And I've got some advertising of my other books in the back.

back of the book yeah that looks right 105 pages lots of cute little illustrations this was back in the day by the way I designed this book myself using pages which now I wouldn't do that as such a faff doing it but it's good to do it at least once so you know how the book is put together

Yeah, that looks all right.

And it's the smallest size book you can get on Amazon because I want it to be like a phrase book that the kids can take with them when we go to England shortly.

In a couple of months, we're going to England again.

So that's why I'm updating it with the names of the students in the front of the book.

Just here.

That's the key.

That's what I wanted to do.

Okay, it looks good.

I've looked at it previously with a fine tooth comb so I know it's okay.

It's the right file, that's the important thing.

I'm going to click approve.

Approve!

Come on baby!

Did it do it?

Yes!

Hooray!

Okay, it's gone back to this page.

so everything looks okay save and continue next step pricing your print cost 422 yen per book don't believe that because they also take a bit more but i'll show you the the pricing page that's another topic in itself how much to price the book but just just to briefly show you okay now into the paperback rights and pricing all territories yes

Okay, primary marketplace Amazon.

Okay, how much am I going to charge?

925.

Printing cost 422 yen, which means they also take a 60% rate.

What does that mean?

So they, so I can only make 40% off what's remaining of that.

It's confusing.

In the end, my royalty is 133 yen per book.

It won't make me super rich, but anyway, but you can sell it in all different territories.

So you've got in US and GB, Europe, France, Spain, all sorts of places, right?

And you can set the prices.

I'm not going to bother because I don't think anybody's going to buy it, but you know, you could.

Now look, that's what the price is going to be quoted in Amazon.

I think I want to get it to below 999.

So let me just play around with that.

Let's see.

2018 so let's take off 18 let's call that 907 and it will update and it will say that's now 9998 let's make it 999 let's put 908 just I think it looks better I'm not actually sure if Japanese do the 999 I think do the 995

But anyway, that's broken the 1000 which makes it look less more expensive.

I don't think it makes any difference.

But anyway, still get my 123 yen royalty.

Okay, that's fine.

I'm happy with that.

I'm going to say publish your paperback book.

Click.

Right, just a few more minutes, a few more seconds, and it should all be done.

Come on, baby.

There we go.

Yay.

Right.

And it gives you this little thing and it says, blah, blah, blah, 908 yen plus VAT sales tax.

So it will come out at 9.99.

It will be advertised on Kindle, on Amazon.

As it tells you here, it might take up to 72 hours.

It's usually a bit quicker than that, but yeah, allow three days for it to filter through.

Now if you've got a file already made for a Kindle you could start making your ebook now and that's a good idea to do that and the Kindle is a lot faster actually it usually just takes a couple of hours and it's available to buy pretty amazing.

I don't have a Kindle version of this book but if I did I would

upload the files much like I've just done here and they'd be linked so that then when you go to Amazon you'd see oh here's this book in paperback and here's the Kindle book and you can set the price differently obviously make probably make the Kindle book cheaper not necessarily you could make it more expensive but the convention is it's cheaper

Anyway, that's it.

Now I just have to wait and I'll get an email when it's cleared and it'll say, congratulations Patrick Sherriff, your latest ebook, or latest paperback book has been accepted and printed.

If there's a problem, they'll tell you there's a problem.

It's usually if there's some, if there's a corruption in the file or some, usually a technical thing, but it's fixable.

You get a message if something doesn't work and then you fix it.

but from experience, that should be fine.

Everything looked okay on the screen and yeah, just a matter of waiting.

So that'll be ready to order.

Let me close that down.

Let's stop this share.

So yeah, that book that I've just gone through.

So, okay, I was talking through it, but I mean, you could do that.

Once you've done it a few times, you can do it in five minutes or less.

It's less scary when you know what all the boxes are that you have to click.

Click, click, click, click, click.

Okay, that looks fine.

Click, click, click.

Boom.

And then you're ready to order the book whenever you want it.

And it typically takes one day or less for the book to be printed.

If you're in Tokyo area, you can order it in the morning and it arrives in the afternoon.

Often.

The longest it's taken me is like three or four days.

Sometimes when you first upload the file and it's just been approved, I'm not sure why it should take that long, but if you allow that to happen, then, you know, um, and, and yeah, you can order single copies at a time.

You can order one or two copies.

So, you know, so that's really good for a small outfit like myself, or I need, you know, in fact, I'm going to be printing 13 copies of this.

So I just print 13 copies, pay, pay Amazon.

and I'm going to give them as presents to my students who are going to England.

So I'm not going to charge them because they're paying to go to England.

So this is a little bonus.

That's it.

I hope that was not too overwhelming and not too scary.

But trust me, it really gets quite easy once you've done it a few times.

This is probably too much in one go, but, um, you know, rewind it, watch it again.

And, um, when you're ready to upload things might change in the future to Amazon is always messing around with its interfaces and stuff, but it's pretty much been pretty much like that, um, for the last five or six years with a few little changes.

So this, this guide should help you.

Okay, happy publishing.

Thank you very much.

I'm going to have my finish my green tea, get off home and go to bed.

Good night.

And if you're watching this on a Friday afternoon, happy Friday afternoon.

See you.