Your Complete Publisher Specializing in Unabridged Works

I am an independent publisher, so I don’t like to see any of my business go to Amazon. Having said that, we do perform writing, editing and formatting services for independent authors who seek to self-publish on Amazon’s kindle platform. We take your work and get it ready for conversion to Kindle.

I bet you asked yourself “why don’t I like Amazon?” Like most publishing houses, they keep the lion’s share for themselves while performing little for it. The author must do all the work. Do all the marketing too and for what? If you publish your work inside their $2.99 policy, you receive 70% of the royalties minus fees. Otherwise you get 30%. Which is how the eBook revolution has changed the publishing world.

Once upon a time, when all books were printed, the author received 30% of the royalties. Now they get offered 8% if they are lucky on print books.

A little side bar here. When President Ulysses S. Grant finished his memoirs and sought to publish them, he was offered at most 30%. Several publishers offered far less. It wasn’t until Mark Twain offered to publish the work that President Grant signed on the dotted line of his contract. See, Twain offered him 70% of the royalties knowing full well the book would sell like crazy based on Grant’s name alone. Twain made a fortune off the work.

Back to Amazon. You don’t get paid until you sell at least $100 dollars’ worth of books and you don’t get the email information about who has bought your book so you can’t do follow ups as part of your marketing. They keep all purchasing information. A necessary bit if you plan on marketing to your sales.

Once you set up your author platform on Amazon it is on there for life. It is their policy to keep it live. I could go on, but it isn’t necessary. Amazon’s Kindle platform is the greatest publishing house on the planet. If you choose to publish there, then let me make a few recommendations.

First, download their Kindle Create program. Use this to set up and create the book to their specifications. This is the best option. Don’t bother with Mobi conversions or other file types. Nor do you need the standard formatting tools in your word document such as headings 1 and 2.

Instead, place all those areas you wish to turn into chapters in bold. The tool will pick up all bold type as a chapter heading. Once you upload the document into Kindle’s create program it is easy to follow and easy to edit or make changes.

However, you must have your document in the correct structure you want for the book. All spaces, indents and grammar need to be corrected prior to uploading. You can make some of these changes inside the tool but then you don’t have them on your original.

Follow the help guidelines and you will have a Kindle book ready to upload onto Amazon. It will be formatted to work on tablets, phones, and e-readers.

Or you can publish with us and collect 50% of the royalties. Just saying.

I’m Ross, the Editor at The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.