It’s done! I uploaded my story, “Conduit: The Beginning”, to Amazon yesterday. I had a lot of questions related to posting my work to Amazon and other platforms. Many blogs out there have advice on why to self-publish through the Kindle or other platforms such as the Nook, but I had a hard time finding any step by step directions and tips on how to do it.
I really didn’t want to look like a fool and make some stupid mistake. I’ve written my story, gone through countless edits, and even worked to get a nice cover. The last thing I wanted to do was send it out there for the first time with problems. I scoured the internet looking for tips on how to proceed and most of the time I would find conflicting advice from one blog to the other resulting in aggravation and bad headaches.
Hoping to save others the cost of several bottles of Tylenol, I decided to devote some of my blog to explaining the steps to getting a story out on Amazon and show some of the issues I ran into along the way. I will be categorizing my tips under the category labeled “Self-Publishing Tips”.
I already mentioned how I hoped to avoid making any silly mistakes with posting my story. I haven’t said yet that I already did make a silly mistake. As I anxiously waited for my story to move from the review stage to the publishing stage, I wondered why it was taking so long. As it turns out, I checked everything twice to make sure I had everything correct before hitting the submit button to send my story for review. What I hadn’t checked was where I was supposed to enter my name as the author. Needless to say, I felt brilliant after realizing why Amazon ended up sending my story back to the draft state for resubmission.
So there is my first tip for submitting a story to Amazon as commonsensical as it sounds. Make sure the author’s name field is completed.
Now, I’ll cross my fingers once again and anxiously wait for my story to magically appear on Amazon.com!
