Publish A Book On The Amazon Kindle

In a fairly short period of time, ebook readers have become accepted by a large percentage of the general public. It's only a little over four years since the original Amazon Kindle hit the market, but today Amazon are selling more Kindle books than they are paperbacks and hardbacks combined.

And it's a similar story over at Barnes and Noble. At a time when books sales are trending slightly downward, B&N's Nook hardware and book sales are rising at an impressive rate.

It's hardly surprising when you think about it. The ability to carry hundreds, thousands, of books around with you in a device which is smaller and lighter than a paperback novel is handy to say the least. Most ebook readers have a battery life which is measured in weeks rather than hours, and if you finish your book at an inconvenient time, when all the shops are shut say, you can download something else to read in less than sixty seconds.

E-ink technology displays are as close to reading text printed on paper as makes no difference. They aren't back-lit, so you won't suffer eye strain as you might if you were reading on an LCD computer monitor. Add in the fact that ebooks don't use ink, bindings or paper and are therefore often (but not always) cheaper than physical books and it's no wonder that ebook readers and the ebooks that go with them are being adopted so readily and so quickly by the book buying public.

So, it's no big surprise that ebook readers are changing the way that many of us are reading and buying books. However, if you think it through, it quite logically follows that they are also changing the way that books are published.

It's interesting to note that, at any one time, there are usually at least two - sometimes three or even four - self published books in Amazon's best sellers list. Some self published authors have sold over a million copies of their Kindle books.

In principle, anyone can publish a Kindle book. So why not you?

Do you have a great novel tucked away in the top drawer of your desk? Maybe you have a collection of short stories or poetry that you would like to share with the world at large? It could even be a biography of one of your family members, past or present.

In the past, you would have needed to submit your work to a publisher and cross your fingers that it was deemed worthy. Some people even used "vanity publishers" if they had something that they really wanted to see in print.

With the advent of ebook readers like the Kindle 4, none of the above is necessary. All that you need to do is type up your book in Word, or a similar word processing program, save it as an HTML file and then upload it to Amazon. There are other sites that will accept your book - but the advantage with Amazon is that you get it out there on the biggest online bookstore in the world.

Not only that, but you can decide what price it is - and if you set the price at $ 9.99 or less, you will get to keep around about 70% of the sales price for every copy that is downloaded.

Obviously, as an unknown author, you may need to set the price fairly low until you build up a reputation and, if you're lucky, your book moves up the bestsellers list for whatever category it's in. However, Amazon makes it really easy for independent authors to get their work out there. They have a special "indie books" page where independent authors are promoted.

They have even published a free Kindle book (download one of the free reading apps for PC, Mac, iPhone etc.) if you don't own a Kindle of your own) which details, in very simple steps, how to get your Kindle book published and marketed by Amazon.

So, it's never been easier to publish a book. Whether it's a novel, a history, a collection of recipes, poetry, short stories - whatever. If you have ever thought that you would like to try it, this is the time.