So just after Christmas I decided to write up my Baby Lovey patterns into a book. You can find this book and the couple of others I have done by clicking on the shop tab above. I had stopped taking orders for a while and had some spare time on my hands after the Christmas rush. I looked into publishers but really wasn’t sure how to proceed, but then I came across Amazon KDP. On there you can upload the transcript and cover for your book and they do all the rest (print, send out to customer etc.).
You can find the books on Amazon by clicking on the images below.
It was a bit tricky at first. Writing up the patterns were the easy part, then uploading them to Amazon KDP was where it got a bit tricky. I should have researched a little better when I started. The transcript would upload, but then when I used their own software to create a cover, it kept coming up with an error message. However, it took me quite a long time to figure out that the error was with their cover software and not my manuscript upload. I tried redoing it so many times, saving it as different documents etc. I tried to Google the answer but nobody seemed to have the solution. After a while, I realised that my manuscript uploaded perfectly fine, it was only when i added the cover that the error was coming up. So I decided to try making my own cover from scratch. This was simple enough to design (or so I thought).
I uploaded the manuscript and the cover…they uploaded perfectly fine this time. Then it goes onto the preview of the book. Well my manuscrupt was a little bit out the margins, but that was an easy enough fix (it gives the option for them to try amend this for you, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. So I had to go back to my manuscript and amend it on there and re-upload). The cover was a mess, I had put the size as the same as the manuscript but it needed to be slightly bigger, it was also placed in upper left side, so the bottom right had nothing on there and you couldn’t read the writting as it was all cut off.
It took me many, many tries at redoing the cover to get it right. The background for it had to spread right to the outskirts of the page, some of this would be cut off during making the book though, to you had to make sure that there was no writing or anything important near the edges. Then you had to get the photos and writing positioned correctly. I eventually did get it sorted and it was finally ready to do the final upload (after putting in price etc).
It stated that it could take up to 72 hours for the book to be live on Amazon. This felt like such a long wait! However, on my first book (the baby loveys), I had an email the next day advising that something needed to be amended before they could proceed. I went on and amended this and had to click to redo final upload. The following day the book was live! So this one took less than 48 hours. The next 2 books took near the full 72 hours to become live. I was then able to purchase my Author copies for the printing costs and was so excited for them to arrive. The journal and challenge book I really want to use as they are so helpful and fun but at the same time I want to keep a copy un-touched, so I may have to buy myself another copy.
If anybody buys any of these books, I would love to hear your feedback (whether positive or negative) and let me know what I could improve or do differently. Or any ideas for new books would be great too 🙂 thank you!.
MyBelle Creations 