Self-Publish Your First Book for Free

1. Intro: Hi there, my name is Machias, and I'm the author of self published books like A Plant Sale, shine brighter Firefly, animals from A to Z, and many more. On this course, I'm going to show how YouTube can self publish your books easily and for free. To do that, all you need is your manuscript and a free software called Kindle Create. As the final project of this course, we are going to create and edit to the final version of your book so that it's ready for publishing. You can even go ahead and publish it if you're ready. Isn't that exciting. Let's get started. 2. Downloading Kindle Create: Install Kindle Create, you can just go on Google and search for Kindle Create and click on the first link, which will bring you to this page, and then you can click Free Download for PC if you have a PC or free download for Mac if you have a MAC. After clicking Free Download, just follow the instructions to install the software in your computer. Kindle Create is a software that allows us to edit our manuscript easily in a way that is compatible with Kindle devices. We also need a second thing, which is your book. Your book could be on Google Docs or Word or any other platform. I'm using Google Docs. And one thing that can make it easier to edit your book later is to format all your book titles with headings. It doesn't matter if it's heading one, two, or three, but all my book titles here, you can see that they are tagged as heading two. I also have other types of headings, but we can clean them up later and you can see how it's organized here. So this will make it easier later, but I can show you more details later on. To export your book using Google Docs, you can go to File, download Microsoft Word, and this will be in a format that is compatible with Kindle Create. 3. Importing Manuscript: Time to edit your book. This is the first screen you see after you open Kindle Create. You can see some of my recent projects here, but if you're starting from scratch, just click Create New and choose. And this will allow you to choose what type of book you are creating. In our case, since we are using a Word document, we will choose reflowable if you have a PDF for other types of books, you can choose comics, kids, or print replica. But to be honest, I think there are other tools that are better for these scenarios. So in our case, let's choose reflowable and continue. Here you can fill up the book title, your name and publisher, or you can leave this for later. For now, this is optional. In my case, we publish a book called How to start your career in SEO. And this is my name. I'll leave the publisher field empty. If your document is in another language other than English, you can also choose your language here. And then you can click Choose File to select your manuscript that you just exported from another platform. That's it. Now Kindle Create is importing and converting your document. This might take a minute. The Import is complete after you see a checkmark and the message saying Import successful. Then you can just click Continue and get started. 4. First Look at Kindle Create: After importing your book, you will see this little window with suggested chapter titles, and these are based on the headings you had on your original document. Here you can select or deselect your chapter titles. Don't worry too much about it because you can always change this later. In my case, differs to our chapter titles, but these are not. They are sections on this chapter, so I'm deselecting them. I'll also de select one chapter title on purpose. So I can show you how to change this later and you can click except selected. Okay, so this is our first view of Kindle Create. It will prompt you frequently with messages reminding you to save your work, which is good. On the left, you can see an overview of your book with front matter, body, all your book chapters and back matter. On the right, you can see some book elements, and here you can see options for thin, save, preview and export. The body is the core of your book where you can see all your book chapters and we can work on front matter and back matter later. You can see it preformatted all your book chapters like this. If you don't like how it looks, you have some other options. You can click Tin and choose between modern classic, cosmos or this other word that I will not dare pronouncing. 5. Elements Overview: Let's work on polishing some elements. Let's start with Chapter title. In this case, the chapter title is already created, and you can see here, it says current element Chapter title. If this was not the case, this is how it would look like, and then you can select your chapter title and click Chapter title. It's very intuitive. Now let's add a subtitle if you use subtitles in your book. You can just press Enter. Let's say the subtitle would be my first chapter. You can select and click Chapter subtitle. Thing that I always like to do in my books, but this is optional. It depends if you like it or not is to select the first paragraph and click Chapter first paragraph. So it makes the first letter look bigger, and I think it looks nice. You can also change the formatting of your book in other ways by selecting a piece of text and click formatting. And here you can apply bold, italic, underline, change size, change color, change alignment, changing in dens or spacing. But personally, I don't meddle too much with this. So 6. More Elements: Okay, now let's move to subheading. As I said, everything is very intuitive. You can just click your subheading and apply subheading. Another type of element that I like to use in my books are quotes. To do that, I will just paste my quote here, select it, and click opening quote. Doesn't really matter if it's an opening quote or a closing quote. I like how it looks. I'll also write credit and click open credit, and this is how it looks like. So play around with elements to make your book look exactly how you want it. Here you can see a chapter title that was not properly selected. It's not featured here. So I can just click Chapter title, and it will create a new chapter for me with the right fervening and it will also include the new chapter here on the left. 7. Final Body Options: Or other options that you can explore. If your book has parts like Part one, Part two, you can click Plus and Part page. And here, choose a part title, part subtitle, and an image. My book doesn't have that, so I'm just going to click Cancel. Or if you want to create a new chapter, you can click Plus and Chapter page, and here add the content. There are other options that you can explore by right clicking the chapter name. And here you have delete section, which will delete the whole chapter. You can add a Chapter start image. You can click Convert to, which will convert your chapter to another type of element in your book like forward or introduction. You can add a page, or you can merge with the previous section or the next section. 8. Front Matter: So now you should know everything you need to know to format the core of your book. So let's proceed to the front matter and back matter. To add some front matter to your book, you can click Plus and select one of these elements. You don't need to use all of them. Just use the ones that are suitable for your book. I personally like to add a title page, which contains the name of my book. So let's say. My name. You can include a logo or subtitle, if you want and click Create page. This is how it looks like. Another element that I always like to use is a table of contents. So this will create an index of your book. You can just click Okay, and it will create a table of contents automatically based on all the elements that you created before. If the reader is using a Kindle device, all these links will be clickable, which is very handy. But if they have a paperback version of your book, the table of contents will also include the page numbers. There are other elements that you can include in your front matter, and you can see here on the left. You can use them as you see fit. One thing to keep in mind is that the page count will start on the first page of your body, not on the first page of your front matter. 9. Back Matter and Exporting: Now let's explore the B matter. These are the elements that you can include books by this author about the author, books in this series, praise for Altar, epilogue, afterword acknowledgment, or just a standard page that you can use as you like. These are all very intuitive. So for this example, I'm going to show you how to create a books by this Author section. You can click here. Here you can select the number of books that you have, for each of them, you're going to include the book title, the Amazon Store Link, and the description. The only thing that is required is the book titled, but it's very handy to include Amazon ink because then it's clickable this is how it looks like. So explore the back matter section according to your needs. And with this, you should have everything you need to finalize your book. You can always click Preview to see how it looks like on a Kindle device. You can also change the type of device by selecting a tablet or a phone, and you can click the arrows to see how a reader would see your book on their device. Can navigate to different sections, change font and change size. If your book looks exactly like you want, now you only need to export it. To do that, just click Export. Since we're publishing this book through KDP on Amazon, let's select KPF. But for other scenarios, you might need an ePub. So just select the format that you need and click Export. Then your book is already to be published on Amazon. 10. KDP - Book Details: Now it's time to publish your book. Isn't that exciting. You do that visit dp.amazon.com, and click Join KDP to create your account or sign in if you already have an account. Follow the steps and read the terms and conditions to create your account. Then you will land right here, your main dashboard. You can jump straight into creating your first book by clicking Create Here you can select the type of book that you want to create between a Kindle eBook, a paperback, or a hardcover. You can do more than one, but not at the same time. So just choose one of them to get started. I will choose a Kindle eBook and click Create Ebook. Now it's time to add details of your book, such as the book title, novels, how to start your career in a CEO, subtitle, if you have one. You can choose if this book is part of a series or not. An additional number will probably be empty your alter name. And contributors' names in case you have, for example, editors or illustrators or photographers, you can add their names here. And here you can include a description. I created this description beforehand, so I'm just pacing it here. Make sure to keep SEO in mind here. If you have knowledge of SEO, essentially, use words that people would use to search for your book on Amazon here on the description. Here you can select if you own the copyright of your book or if this is public domain work. Here you can choose the audience of your book. You have to select if your book contains explicit content or not, and you can choose a reading age range and also a primary marketplace if your book will be sold primarily on amazon.com or amazon.ca or other Amazons throughout the world. Don't worry. You can choose more than one. You're just choosing the primary one. And you can also choose a category for your book. You can choose up to three. So in our case, let's go to category, business and money, subcategory, let's do marketing and sales, marketing and then choose, let's see, web marketing. You have to click one of the checkbox in the right in order to choose a category, and then you can add another one. I would encourage you to include all the three categories that you can and then save. And here you can include your keywords. As I said before, this would be words that people would be using to search for your book. So in the example that they are giving here would be medieval fantasy books. If you want to know more, click, How do I choose keywords? Finally, you can choose if you're ready to release your book right now, or if you want to make your eBook available for preorder in case you're not ready to release the book right away. 11. KDP - Uploading Your Manuscript: If you were publishing a physical copy of your book, there would be some different options on the content section. One of them would be the ISBN. You will probably not have one beforehand, so you can click, get a free KTP ISBN and click Assign ISBN. And then you have to make an important decision on the print options for your book. Here you can choose if you want a black and white interior with green paper, black and white interior with white paper, standard color interior with white paper, or a premium color interior with white paper. This will depend on the type of your book, if it's a picture book or just a text based book. For this book, I personally want to use a black and white interior because there are no pictures with green paper because I just think it looks nice. Another important decision will be the trim size, which is the size of your book. There are many, many different sizes that you can choose from. If this is your first book, choose one of the most popular trim sizes. Let me show you some examples. This is a six by nine book with a glossy cover. This one is five oh six plus 781 with a met cover. Here is a comparison between the two. Here's a square book that is 8.5 per 8.5 with a glossy cover. Now it's time to upload your book, and here you're going to click Upload Manuscript and select the file that you exported from Kindle Create. Then you can either choose a pre existing book cover that you created using a different platform. I personally like to use Canva for this, or you can use Amazon's own Cover Creator. Here you can select some options from their image gathering. And choose one of their pre designed book covers. Personally, I don't think these look amazing, so it's up to you if you want to use one of these or create your own cover using a different platform. Then you select if your book contains AI content or not, and you can launch the previewer to see if your book is formatted just the way you want it. So this is the cover of my book that I created using Canva, and now you can browse through your book just as if you were using a kindle. If there are quality issues, you will see messages here. After reviewing, you can click back and either move on to the next step if your book looks just how you want it, or you can go back to Kindle Create to edit the original file if you need to make changes. 12. KDP - Pricing: Finally, it's time to choose where your book will be published and how much it will cost. You can decide if your book will be enrolled in KTP select or not. You can read more about it by clicking rules and requirements and then choose where your book will be published by clicking all territories, which means everywhere possible, or you can select individual territories, and then you can choose different countries where you want your book to be published or not. Your primary marketplace was already selected on a previous step, and then it's time to choose your royalty plan and the pricing. This is a personal decision. I cannot provide you guidance here, so read more about it and decide how much your book will cost. Keep in mind that you will not receive the full price of your book. You will receive a different fraction of the price, depending on the royalty plan you selected, and there will also be different costs depending on the type of book you selected. For example, a colorful book will cost you more to print than a black and white. After deciding the price of your book, it's time for the most exciting step, publishing your book. If you are publishing a physical copy of your book, you will also have the option of ordering a physical copy of your book for review before publishing to make sure it looks just right. 13. Thanks for Watching: Thank you so much for watching and congratulations on all the progress you've made. You should now have your book either ready for publishing or even published already. That's huge. If you're interested in publishing a picture book, stay tuned for my upcoming course and don't forget to share your work in the project section so that I and other students can check it out. See you next time. Bye.