Uploading to Amazon KDP The Real Story

I uploaded to Amazon's KDP on 9/13/2011 and I'm STILL tweaking.

There are 4 main areas to Amazon. Your regular Amazon account, where you buy and sell, make reviews. Make note of that email address and password.

Next, is the KDP section. If you don't want to panic and go nuts later on, USE THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS AND PASSWORD AS YOUR AMAZON MAIN ACCOUNT. I messed this up, signing up with KDP with one email address, and Amazon's main site with a different one because I didn't realize the two were linked. I thought I had to resign up. I accidentally uploaded my book under the one email address, then signed in with the other, swapped to KDP to check on my sales (yes I'm a newbie and each sale makes me giddy) and MY....BOOK...WAS...GONE! I fixed it, but now I have 2 email addresses to maintain with Amazon.

Now, KDP doesn't let you edit your author page. For that, you have to go to Author Central. Yeah. Again, sign in with the same email address you used for KDP and regular Amazon. All of these steps require your information, metadata, etc. Your author page should have a professional photograph of you, not a hold your cell phone and take it. People can tell, even if your arm isn't showing from the quality and angle of the photo.

Claiming your Author Central page removes your About the Author on the product description page, BUT it add links to your author page and a photograph of you and information at the bottom. You can add a biography, events (I'm using mine to promote Trick or Treat for Ebooks), links, and an RSS feed to your author blog!

The final place is Shelfari, which you connect through your Author Central profile, and you next perform a book report on your book. It wants characters, quotes, a one sentence summary, synopsis, description, etc. PHEW! I'm only filling out a few of the blocks, as I'm not 100% sure what shelfari does.

So uploading to Amazon is quite an ordeal.

A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby. CANCELLED is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.  WIP: PAST DUE A nurse, crippled by debt, takes a part-time job in medical investigation only to find the man she's dating is a fraud!  (status: outlining)