My (very irritating) Experience With Kindle Direct Publishing

in #blog4 years ago

A few days ago I was talking to a friend who suggested I make my future books available as paperback as well as ebook. "What a grand idea!" I thought to myself. Especially after discovering the cost of my local printer. 😬

Let's see. $3.96 printing cost taken out of the profit of each book printed via Amazon? Or nearly $1000 upfront for 75 books?

My choice was clear.

The only thing that had been stopping me before was really the cover creation, the formatting of the document, and hoping that once it was all together it would actually print properly. Luckily, Amazon has TEMPLATES! And I decided to test the process out with Half Past the Moonfall, especially since I had edited it recently and decided that it's actually worthy of other human eyes. Thanks @lacking, thanks @carolkean!

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I rather like the cover. It's been entirely revamped! Looks much nicer, more professional. A cover worthy of gracing someone's bookshelf. AND I followed the template to a T. It was perfect. All I had to do was turn the PNG file into a PDF...

I was uncertain how to do such a thing, so naturally, as a normal person does in this situation, I turned to the great Google. I then discovered something called IrfanView which actually sounds very familiar, like I've used it once before but can't quite remember why I would have used it. So I turned it into a PDF and then focused on my document.

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"Yessssss!" I thought to myself. "This is going swimmingly! Thank God Amazon had these templates available!"

Confident that all was going well, I proceeded to the paperback publishing page, inputted my information and uploaded the files, when, this happened:

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"What!?" I screeched. "I used the correct template. What the hell is wrong with you? Maybe the PDF failed..."

So I turned the original PNG into a PDF with Windows Photo Viewer instead. Uploaded it. It was even more off-kilter. So I tore my hair out and found a free online converter tool. THAT WAS EVEN WORSE.

I spent hours trying to fix this damned cover image. Hunting for programs, free online tools, everything, that could turn this cover image into an appropriate PDF file for Amazon.

Nothing. Worked.

Finally, with my back aching from leaning of the laptop, my head pounding because I was getting pretty frustrated, I just clicked on the inbuilt Amazon Cover Creator thing, deleted all the garbage they threw on my image, and uploaded it that way instead.

It worked.

FAR OUT. What is the point of having TEMPLATES if they don't bloody work?? At least I know when I go to do Vengeance and future books, but, DAMN.

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After that experience I took a nice hot shower, poured myself a whisky, then sat back, relaxed, and played some Enderal. Haha. It was going to take up to 72 hours for Amazon to verify my files and make it available for printing. It was time to play the waiting game.

Last night just before I went to bed, I was having a grand Twitter extravaganza with some fellow Hiveans and a couple bought my ebook and I was so super chuffed. @gastontrussi and @nathanmars, I hope you like the story!!! 🤗 It's definitely not a... conventional story, haha.

Then!!! My email booped. My book was available for printing. "Yes!" I shouted. There would be no bed just yet, I needed to order my author copy!!

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Oh. For. Fuck's. Sake. What is this, Amazon?

So after another hour of investigating, I discovered that because the Australian government was getting pissed at people buying overseas, they forced international sellers to slap the GST on things under $1000 so the government could still collect the tax money.

Apparently Amazon didn't want to deal with calculating an easy 10% and decided to just not sell to Australian customers via their international marketplaces anymore.

I was so angry. Still am, truth be told.

My partner is stuck in the US at the moment so I ordered my copy to be sent to him instead. It'll take about 20 days to be printed and shipped to him, and then he'll send it to me which will take another 2 months judging by the last physical correspondence he sent.

So. Frustrating.

I hate Amazon. I hate dealing with them. First they remove @carolkean's glowing review of my book, and now they won't even send me my OWN author's copy because the Australian government are a bunch of tools.

All of a sudden, I am remembering all the reasons why I stopped being exclusive to Amazon last year.

Sigh.

That's it, thanks for reading my rant! ❤️

If, perchance, you're interested in your own copy, you can find it on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MPZC8D7

Just, if you're Australian... good luck.

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All images in this post are courtesy of myself.

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It's always good to get things out of your chest.

Better out than in! Haha. 🙃

I figured if anyone else was planning on making a paperback book with Amazon though, this information would probably be handy. Don't rely on templates!

Man, that sucks that what should be a simple task, at least outwardly appearing it should be simple, has become such a frustrating fight. v.v Not going to lie, I was kinda disappointed you went with an exclusive Amazon deal because I chose to go the Kobo route with my e-reading. 😩

I finished reading Half Past The Moonfall last night and really enjoyed it, but wish that last scene went on another half dozen pages. But that's what my imagination is for 😅

I'm sorry! 😬 There's a method to my madness though!! I'm heavily Twitter-promoting at the moment and most of the people there only seem to read books that are available on Kindle Unlimited. Which I can understand.

I'm putting Vengeance up on Kindle Unlimited because of it, hoping that it'll garner reviews as a new release thanks to subscription readers, then after a couple of months move it everywhere else -- Kobo, Smashwords, etc -- Moonfall was best put up as well so there would be more than one book by the same author.

It'll likely be going back everywhere else too after a few months. 😊

I'm so so glad you really enjoyed it though!! 😁 I get a bit worried about it because I'm not exactly the most politically correct person in the world and I'm preparing myself to get lamb-basted, LOL.

Crazed Millennial Voice: How dare you mention drag queens in your book! How dare you make fun of vegans! THAT ORGY WAS DISGUSTING -- HOW DARE YOU!!! 🤣

ahhhhhhhh that's why I couldn't buy Moonfall on Kobo! I checked for it last night so I could review it but it was gone :(

🙁 Eeek, I'm sorry.

If you'd still like to write a review, Good Reads is still an option! 🙂😀

Do Amazon Australia offer anything similar? I guess they're not as adaptable yet considering they're not so mainstream?

Nope! The only marketplaces that printed the books were international -- US, UK, Canada, Italy, France, a couple others; but no Australia. 🙁

They should really get their act together and get us a printer. 🤣

haha, goto Officeworks Amazon.

It's like when the board kicked Steve Jobs from the company he built! lol. You cannot be a publisher and a buyer at the same time.

I'm glad to see that you went through it! kudos to you. Now you know :)

Haha! No, no, in this case buying author copies is a valid option on their site. I can buy my a whole box of my own book for a print-cost of $3.96 each and distribute them myself if I wish. But. There's no printer in Australia. 🙁

But yes, now I know. I'm still going to turn other books into paperbacks too, but it's SO disillusioning that I have to do it this long way.

Perhaps you can target Facebook ads to returning US citizens who visited Australia, Until you figure out who to have a valid option for Aussies.

I can imagine it is all too exciting, turning those pixels into Paper books!

That...had to be super frustrating! Still it was fun to read it, lol! (I'm sorry)

I knew amazon does paperback publishing too but didn't know anyone who've done it or showed any demonstration. Thanks for this. Also I'mp pretty darn sure they don't ship them to my country. We usually have to rely upon third party companies. We give them the amazon link, they buy the item and ship it to us for a small fee. In this lock-down even they aren't available.

Do you have the same sort of services? Might not be too bad as future alternatives.

It's okay, haha! I laugh at it now too.

We might have a similar service -- I'll have to have a look! -- if we do have a service like that, it'll be good to know for my future books. The series I'm working on means so much to me that I'd even be willing to fork out the excessive fees for the local printer, lol!