Introduction

This is the #1 question aspiring authors ask me on and offline.

The challenge of uploading a book to Amazon is very pervasive that many are scared of getting started on their book journey.

I have a student who paid a huge sum of money to an “expert” to upload her book to Amazon and the “expert” disappeared with her money.

The process of writing and publishing a book on Amazon, more correctly, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), is as straightforward as flying from Lagos to Kano.

But first, you must book the flight, with your airline of choice, buy your ticket and hop onto the plane at the appointed time and terminal.

So, this answer covers the entire process of writing and publishing a book on Amazon. First, you must have a book.

The part of Amazon that you can publish your book is called Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Until now it was meant for e-books only to be read on Amazon’s Kindle but now you can also publish your paperback on KDP (following the merging of Amazon Create Space with KDP). The hardcover option is in Beta form. So, soon you will be able to publish your hardcover.

If you’re not interested in reading over 2,000 words, jump straight to the last paragraph, The Fastest Way to Get Your Book Published is Amazon KDP.

But I’d like to encourage you to read everything here to be prepared as an author.

Why Write a Book?

A book is one of the most lucrative products you can create to position you as an expert.  Your book can get to the White House, Kremlin and Buckingham Palace, some of the most secured places on the planet, which you may not be able to get to.

Yet, a book is a low-value product selling at an average of $10 – $15. So, what makes a book so powerful a tool all over the world?

*A book is an art and people all over the world treasure arts.*

Since a book is a low-value product, you need to sell thousands of copies to really make money. Here I’m talking about really good books: well researched and written with a mind-stopping story-line.

An average book rarely sells more than a few thousand copies so you need to put in your best effort to ensure your book makes it to the best seller list. This is easier said than done, but it can be done.

When Should You Write a Book?

There are many schools of thought on how one should approach the issue of book writing. Should you write a book after you have achieved fame or should you write a book to achieve fame?

I believe it’s an egg and chicken argument.

I strongly believe any person who has a story to tell should write a book to bring his or her story alive. Fame is secondary but it may as well follow if you pursue the right strategies before, during and after your book is published.

Your Book and Your Expert Strategy

Your book should be at the centre of your strategy as an expert. With your book, you can launch courses, mount seminars, join the speaking circuit as a motivational speaker, turn your book into a film, and turn it into several formats like eBook, paperback, hardcover, and audio book.

So, writing a book is very pivotal to your quest to building an expert empire. Indeed the easiest, fastest and boldest way to position yourself as an expert and influencer is through a book.

If you look closely, the fame legendary personalities such as Tom Peters, Simon Sinek, and Peter Diamandis, to mention just three, have achieved was aided by their books.

Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence (written with Bob Waterman) propelled him to stardom. So did Start With Why by Simon Sinek. And it was not until Abundance became a New Your Times’s best-seller than we started hearing about Peter Diamandis even though he’s the founder of the $10m X-Prize.

Again, Why You Should Write a Book
As I indicated above, you don’t write a book to achieve fame. If you do it well, the fame will come.

You write a book to share a compelling message. John Kremer is a well-known authority in the book business. He is the author of the best-selling book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Book. Here are his top 10 reasons why you should write a book:

1. Become an expert
2. Support a cause
3. Share a message
4. Change lives
5. Attract better customers
6. Build your list
7. Establish an institute
8. Build a tribe
9. Create wealth
10. Sell rights

There is no feeling more exhilarating than stumbling on the world’s most iconic airports, libraries, shops and websites and finding your book displayed alongside those of the planet’s most revered authors like Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Ferriss.

Books capture our imagination. Emily Dickinson said, “there is no frigate like a book”, and an unknown author said, “if you drop a book and three pounds of gold, pick the book first before the gold”, while Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said, “of all the things in this world, only two will have the greatest impact on your life, the books you read, and the people you meet.”

Nothing else comes close to giving you inner peace and satisfaction that exceeds all understanding than a book. So get up and start writing your first book.

Writing Your Book
A book is basically a story about yourself, others, events, phenomena, situations and the like that you pick up the threads and convey to others in the most poignant way that instructs, informs, motivates, inspires, entertains and educates.

*A book is at the intersection of ideas, information and knowledge packaged as a story.*

You package your story by exploring questions such as the following (first suggested by Brendon Burchard, the best-selling author of several books, including The Charge, Life’s Golden Tickets, and The Millionaire Messenger):

• Who are you and what have you been through in life that others can relate to in their own life?”
• What have you overcome and how?
• What did you figure out along the way?
• What did you succeed at and what results did you get?
• What are you going to teach me that I can apply now to make my life better?

Arising from the above questions, Brendon suggests asking secondary questions that will enable you flesh out your ideas, such as:

• A story of struggle from my past that my audience might relate to is…
• Something I have overcome in my life that others might find inspiring or feel a connection with is…
• The main lessons I have learned from my journey include…
• Accomplishments and affiliations I have in my life that help further my credibility include…
• Lessons I can teach people that will help them in my topic area and their life situation include…

Your Keys to Success
John Locke, who sold 1 million eBooks within five months and then wrote a book, How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks In 5 Months, suggests the following:

1. Have a plan
2. Know your target audience
3. Take a business approach
4. Use the right tools and use them properly

The Three Ps That Bring Your Plan Alive
According to Brendon Burchard, one of the top 100 most followed online trainers on Facebook, you need the following:

• Positioning
• Packaging
• Promotion

Three Cs That Show You Are Out There Only For Your Audience
Brendon further recommends the following:

• Care
• Compassion
• Consistency

The Seven Simple Steps to Writing Your Book
In my interaction with friends, associates, strangers alike the top question that usually crops up is “where do I start?”

Briefly you should follow this seven-steps:

• Step #1: Decide What You Wish To Write About
• Step #2: Decide The Title & Sub-title of your Book
• Step #3: Decide The Content
• Step #4: Research Your Book
• Step #5: Decide Who Will Write The Book
• Step #6: Write, Proof Read & Edit Your Book
• Step #7: Publish & Release Your Book To The World

The Seven Sections of a Typical Book
A typical book will have the following sections but note that nothing is cast on stone:

1. Acknowledgements
2. Foreword
3. Introduction
4. Contents
5. About the book
6. About the author
7. Index

Five Steps to Structuring the Book or the main contents
Based on our experience from Book Writing Clinic alumni members, this is the section most would be authors struggle the most with.

Indeed, other than a book, you can use this approach for any product if you’re a beginner. It requires limiting your book to five or seven chapters.

This is how it’s done. Pick a notebook and divide it into five or seven sections (corresponding to the number of chapters you wish to write) and write the section or chapter headings and then follow that up with the five points you wish to make per chapter.

Then begin writing. As a beginner, it’s important you don’t stretch beyond five major points per chapter to avoid repeating yourself.

If you follow the sequence above, your notebook will look something like this:

1. Chapter 1: Point #1. Point #2. Point #3. Point #4, Point #5.
2. Chapter 2: Point #1. Point #2. Point #3. Point #4, Point #5.
3. Chapter 3: Point #1. Point #2. Point #3. Point #4, Point #5.
4. Chapter 4: Point #1. Point #2. Point #3. Point #4, Point #5.
5. Chapter 5: Point #1. Point #2. Point #3. Point #4, Point #5.

If you write about 5 to 7 pages per point, you’re already looking at a book with 125 to 175 pages, excluding the introduction, foreword, about the book, about the author and index.

The Three-Step Formula for Writing Each Chapter and sub-headings
This is nothing more than the basic tool we use in every conceivable endeavour to generate ideas and it goes by the fearful name brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a simple process for thinking about, listing ideas and grouping similar ideas together into buckets. This is how it is done:

1. Step #1: Draw a circle and write the main idea you wish to brainstorm on in the center of the circle, example, “how to cook mouthwatering coconut rice.”

• Step #2: Write or list everything you know about coconut rice, with each idea sticking out from the circumference of the circle as legs. For coconut rice for instance, it will include rice, coconut, fish, and so on.

• Step #3: Start brainstorming.

In practice, 5 – 7 people should participate in a typical brainstorming exercise. Follow brainstorming rules, which I suppose you know. If you don’t know read it up.

Typically, avoid criticizing any idea, just keep bringing out the ideas no matter how outlandish. At this point we are looking at quantity, not the quality of ideas.

The rule is, the more the ideas the better. After you have exhausted all the ideas, start eliminating repeated, unworkable and impracticable ideas, and then group related ideas into buckets. With your brainstormed ideas at hand, you’re ready to write your book.

The book expert, Nicolas Cole, has a tool called the “idea generator” that can help stimulate ideas. You can get it by ordering his book, The Art and Business of Online Writing, on Amazon. Get also the book, Snow Leopard, Nicolas Cole co-authored with Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon.

7 Mistakes to Avoid in Becoming an Expert Author
Book writing is a creative endeavour so the tendency as a beginner is to start doubting yourself.

You start asking, what credentials do I have? You start fearing that people will laugh at you when your book comes at. This is what experts call imposter syndrome. It’s Lack of self-belief.

My advice is to think of the opposites. Think of the applause you’ll get. Think of the new opportunities that will open up for you.

Brendon Burchard, the founder of the now defunct Expert Industry Association, has the following advice for new writers trying to hammer out their first book. He says, don’t:

1. Let your inner critic take over.
2. Fail to keep your readers engaged.
3. Write and edit at the same time.
4. Forget to track your results.
5. Add too much irrelevant details.
6. Publish before you’re ready.
7. Stop learning when you know enough.

The Fastest Way to Get Your Book Published Online is Amazon KDP
As a beginner, your chances of landing an agent and getting you book published by one of the top three global publishers are slim.

However, you can enlist Amazon’s vast resources to release your book to a global audience by using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon KDP).

*Amazon KDP to me is Amazon’s best gift to authors and writers.*

When I started out about 10 years ago I didn’t know how to navigate Amazon KDP and had to enlist the help of experts. But using the platform is very simple and straight forward.

Amazon KDP enables you to create four variants of your book at the same time: E-book, paperback, hardcover and audio book.

You can even publish a book when you don’t even have a manuscript! All you need to do is tell Amazon your manuscript will be ready in say 6 or 12 months’ time. Amazon will start promoting and selling the book for you in advance by putting it in preorder”.

You must publish your book on or before the due date you have indicated otherwise Amazon will penalize you, including denying you the facility for one year.

Having said that, how do you go about publishing on Amazon?

Follow these 5 steps:

• Step 1: Login to Amazon and create an account.
• Step 2: Login to Amazon KDP by scrolling to the end of Amazon’s website and clicking Amazon KDP
• Step 3: Once you’re in the KDP ecosystem, click CREATE and begin the process. (Once you click CREATE, you’ll get 4 options:

a) Create ebook

b) Create paperback

c) Create hardcover

d) Create series page

• Step 4: Click Create ebook and you’ll be taken inside the ebook creator interface. (It has 3 sections):
• Kindle eBook Details
• Kindle eBook Content
• Kindle eBook Pricing

Each section is easy to navigate.

• Step 5: Follow the prompts, create and publish your book.  (If you do everything correctly, the system will move you forward, and if you make mistakes, you will see an error message and you’ll not be able to move forward until you fix the error.

The section on uploading your book cover and manuscript can be problematic.

For your book cover, ensure it’s in PDF or JPEG format. Your manuscript should be in WORD or PDF and should be well formatted to fit into the space.

You need the help of a graphic designer who knows how to design cover and interior formatting for Amazon KDP. You can download the specifications from Amazon and give to the graphic designer.

You don’t need help if you’re already an expert in cover design and book formatting.

I hope this helps in getting you started with your book.

Paul Uduk

Author of 8 books, including The Perennial Winner

(Get The Perennial Winner: https://bit.ly/3RiBhIA

Creator Book Writing Clinic (BWC)

PS: If you would like to register for BWC Click this link: https://bit.ly/3IamWYd

PSS: If you would like to register for iBMC-9 Click this link:  https://bit.ly/iBMC2023