How to Create an ebook for Amazon in 2021

 Circa July 2021 BookBaby will charge you $138.00 to create a 300 page ebook. That’s $138 wasted if you have a few hours and the intelligence (and confidence) to do it yourself. At a minimum, you want your ebook on Amazon, and KDP is their platform for doing that. Sign up for a free Amazon/KDP account here. If you already have an Amazon account, use your Amazon login and password.

There was a time when you needed deep technical skills to create an ebook. No longer. There was a time when you had to know the difference between epub and mobi formats. No longer. In the past, you needed specialized software like Canva to do so, and although Canva still exists, you can still do it yourself by following step-by-step KDP instructions. And there aren’t many of those to follow once you understand that an ebook is formatted differently than a print book.

In fact, what you need, all you need, is to know how to use MS-Word properly. All you need to do is to create a properly formatted docx document ready for upload. Most services today worth their salt, like Amazon KDP, accept a docx and they do the rest.

Writers should spend time learning MS-Word the proper way through its tutorials and Help screens. Click MS-Word Help in your ribbon, then Show Training, then select a tutorial. At a minimum, go thru the following. Each has topics you need to get familiar with. Look through them.

• Write and edit. You can also use MS-Word’s Editor, Autocrit, Grammarly, or ProWritingAid to help as you type and edit your work.
• Format text. Important: choose Normal for most text, Heading 1 for Chapter headings, or create and set the Style yourself. Automatically generate the Table of Contents links. Create links for other things as well.
• Lay out pages. Set line spaces, indents, margins, gutter, mirror image etc. Do not add page numbers. Insert Page and Section breaks. Do not have any blank pages in an ebook.
• Insert tables, pictures, and watermarks. All pictures or inserts must be jpg.
• Save and print. With OneDrive on, you don’t even have to click Save. And you should not print a 200-page book on your printer. Staples online print services will do it for $.15 per page, or $30.00, saving you printer cartridges and paper, aggravation, and time.

Always remember WYSIWYG. What You See on your Screen Is What You Get when viewed. In Previewer you can toggle between phone or tablet views to see how it looks.

Trust it.

When your docx manuscript is done, and your ebook/docx formatted, click File in your Ribbon on top-left corner, Options, Save, and check “Embed fonts,” and Save.

Then your ebook docx manuscript is ready for upload to Amazon KDP.

Amazon KDP has three screens to complete, the first with the title, your name etc. The second where you upload file and cover or use KDP Cover Creator. On this page launch Previewer to see your epub book page by page. The third screen is where you set the price, generally between $2.99 and $3.99. You will see how much royalty you will make as you set the figure. On this page also you click “Approve” when its perfect for you. It takes KDP 1-2 days to review your submission and approve it/load it for sale on Amazon. They will notify you by email.

PS And if you do have to change something inside, you can do that, reload, and KDP will do it and review/accept it after a few days.

Creating the front cover, spine, and back cover in one document are different stories entirely and require much more effort to specify and set up. I recommend against doing that. Use KDP’s Cover Creator templates instead, since they are good enough for most purposes. Your back cover will have your author picture (small), short author bio, book blurb, and room for the ISBN/price barcode.

Then, your marketing tasks begin, actually they should have already begun before.