Promote U Guru Blog

How to Sell, or Make Your Free e-Book Available, on Amazon

January 28th, 2011

Hi All!

Recently, this question has been posed to me a lot: “I want to sell my e-book on Amazon, or I have a free e-book that I want to make available on Amazon. How do I do it?”

So, I decided to write a quick blog post to answer this question for authors. This isn’t intended to give you the step-by-step instructions! It’s intended to give you the general info you need to get started:

TIP ONE: Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) Service: This enables you to self-publish ebooks for Kindle downloads: https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

Note: This is for whether your ebook is free or you plan to sell it. It also has directions for getting your ISBN and provides that info once you’ve logged in to your account (IBSN info is also provided in the 2 article links below). Directions for log in/account set-up are provided on the link above. This page also provides info about Amazon’s DTP compensation program when you’re selling an ebook.

Also, read this short “how to” article. It says that in order for your ebook to be SOLD on Amazon for download on a Kindle an ISBN IS REQUIRED: http://www.ehow.com/how_5740131_sell-ebook-amazon_s-kindle.html

TIP TWO: Here’s a good “how to” article about creating and distributing your ebook through Amazon. It states this info is for whether your ebook is FREE or to be sold. According to this article, an ISBN number is NOT required for FREE ebooks on Amazon (but I’d get an ISBN for an ebook even if the ebook is free): http://www.ehow.com/how_4489551_sell-book-kindle-format.html

TIP THREE: If you’d prefer NOT to do all of this yourself, here’s a turnkey service that will layout/format your ebooks, get your ISBN numbers, and set-up your ebook with major online retailers. They handle all of it for $149 per title (plus 15% commission of net per sale): http://www.ebookit.com/

Okay! That should take some of the mystery out of this process for you, and hopefully saved you time in researching the answers on your own. Good luck!

Cheers & Happy Marketing!

Lisa

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 4:48 pm and is filed under authors, book marketing, Business Tips, marketing, sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “How to Sell, or Make Your Free e-Book Available, on Amazon”

  1. Kristen Eckstein says:
    January 31, 2011 at 10:25 am

    These are great ways to get an ebook out quickly on Amazon. Keep in mind there is a lot larger world than only Amazon, and to reach everyone you either have to set up the ebook through several different services (some of which require a “share” feature that sends your ebook around for free), or there is another option.

    You could get an account with Ingram Book Group and handle every ebook setup at one time, making it available worldwide through everywhere from Barnes & Noble to Amazon to about 25,000 other online retailers. This option also keeps you in control, so there are no commissions paid to others.

    There are also hundreds of “author services” companies that will charge you a fee to set up your ebook, then take a commission off each sale. This is a pay-now-pay-later scenario equal to vanity publishing in the print realm. It does have its place, though many authors end up hurting because of bad deals, so make sure you thoroughly read any terms/conditions/contract before signing on the dotted line.

    Just presenting another option. For Amazon only, Lisa’s post definitely shows you the way to go!

  2. lisaorrell says:
    January 31, 2011 at 11:08 am

    Hi Kristen!

    Yes, this was just a quick “how to” angle for Amazon. So thanks for adding all the other great info. If you have additional tips around any of this and would like to write a guest post, just let me know!

    Thanks,
    Lisa

  3. Brenda Violette says:
    February 9, 2011 at 10:20 am

    Thanks for the post Lisa. Kristin Eckstein told me about your post when I was sharing a challenge that one of my clients was having.

  4. social media agentur says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:27 am

    seo…

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  5. harold says:
    January 17, 2013 at 5:28 am

    hey as far as I can tell you can’t actually put books onto kindle/amazon for free. The lowest price it can be listed as is $0.99 . Apparently deluxe customers are allowed to occasionally list books for $0.00 but this is not an option for new authors/distributors

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