Use Canva to publish your book on Amazon KDP!
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Have you ever wanted to get published? It’s not as difficult as it seems with Amazon KDP! Of course, that depends on if you’re writing your own book or not too but for this instance, it’s not so bad.
If you are writing your own book it can get a little complicated, but it doesn’t have to be beyond the difficulty of writing your own book. Although, you can outsource that part of it, just like you can outsource the rest if you wanted. However, if you want to do the writing yourself, this is how can!
What size do you want your Amazon KDP book?
Depending on what kind of book you want to make, I would choose a different size for what you’re planning on making. I used the same size for both my book that I wrote, Fireflies, as well as my Gratitude Journal. If I were you I would research what the best size was for your book in your niche.
What I will show today is specifically for low content books but you can take the same applications and use them for any Amazon KDP book you want to publish. It’s important to have a Canva account for this too.
If you’re unfamiliar with Canva, take some time to get used to it before you get started. I have the free version and though there are minor limitations, it’s really an amazing tool!
Create your Amazon KDP cover.
When you’re making the cover again, use the right size for the book that you want to make. For me, with a 6 x 9-inch book, if I were doing an ebook cover it could be just that, 6 x 9. But since I’m doing only paperback, the dimensions are actually 12.485 x 9. 250 inches.
That’s because I’m making the whole cover out of one sheet of paper, that wraps around the whole book. Be sure to download it as a PDF print so that it’s high quality when it’s printed!
Create the inside pages.
Depending on what you’re making is what you’ll go with. Are you creating a lined journal? Or a daily planner? Canva only allows you 100 pages, though I’m sure you could combine them if necessary. Similarly, Amazon KDP has a minimum of pages allowed.
Canva has tons of great templates for all of that, or you could use Book Bolt. Book Bolt has the advantage of the stats on different keywords as well as beautiful templates you can use for both inside of your book and the outside cover.
A workaround for the keywords is to look on Amazon at the best-sellers in your book’s niche and see what they rank for. That’s a great way to find good keywords even if they may be difficult to rank for. Then use those words in your Amazon KDP description of your book.
How to hit publish.
Be sure to fill in your information with the necessary things like your name and the other mandatory elements. If you’re writing your own book it’s recommended to buy your own ISBN from Bowker so that you have the rights over your book.
If it’s a low content book and it doesn’t matter that much, feel free to use both Amazon KDP’s free ISBN and bar code. You’ll see you can also create your own cover in Amazon KDP but it’s way less editable.
Furthermore, if it’s your own book and you want to get it into Barnes and Noble and other major retailers, you can publish through Ingramspark as well. If you’re not, you may want to click ‘extended distribution’ which is the same thing but Amazon takes a bigger cut. You’ll still be able to sell everywhere else though which is awesome!
Or do none of the work just have the idea!
Yeah! Crazy right? There are people that will take your idea and make it a reality for a price. Including an entire book if you want to.
You can find ghostwriters on websites like Fiverr and Upwork as well as designers! So You can create your own books, journals, and so on, without ever doing anything yourself!
So what do you think? Are you ready to hit publish on your new book?
Grab my Gratitude Journal here!
I’ve been looking for an additional form of passive income, and Amazon’s low content books have been an idea I’ve been toying with. I appreciate the information and the links.
Of course! I definitely recommend you give it a shot glad you enjoyed Brian!
I have seriously been considering doing this for while so these tips are great! The formatting always scares me a bit.
Don’t worry it’s not nearly as complicated as it seems and if you have any questions feel free to ask!
Hi Shea! Both my daughter and I are pondering over writing short books. Neither of us have any idea of where to start, so your post arrived right on time! Bookmarking this post for use in the near future. Thanks for sharing!
Amazing! So happy to help and I wish you luck! If you need any help feel free to reach out!
Interesting idea, I would want to publish my own book someday
Definitely do it Jeannie it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding!
Great post, thank you for sharing your process! This is going to be very helpful for my new project!
Happy to be of service! Best of luck!
This is very helpful, I have been wondering how to have an ebook on a platform like amazon and what some of the hiccups would be. Thank you for this.
You’re very welcome thank you!
Such a helpful post, thanks for sharing!
Happy to be of service!
Great post! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you!