How to Self Publish on Kindle

Right now I am in the process of getting my first Grady Harrison PI novel, Requiem for the Puppet Master, ready to upload to Kindle, and thought that I might share the high points this process and some helpful links.  I have thought about my book as a Kindle book for a long time but just recently bellied up, and got underway with the project.  If you are thinking about self publishing I suggest you just do it.  There can be quite a bit of detail but it really isn't that hard to get the job done.

• Of course, the first thing you need to do, if you haven't already, is to finish your book and get some input from friends, teachers, writing support groups, anyone who is interested enough to read your manuscript and to give you some feedback.
• Use Word to create your manuscript.  There is a great little free book, available from Amazon, called Building Your Book for Kindle, which tells you exactly how to create a Word document that will be compatible with Kindle.
• Have someone copyedit your manuscript.  You and you alone are responsible for every missed coma, misspelling, lost quotation mark and all other glitches in the book.
• I've contracted with Hitch at Booknook.biz to convert my word file into files for Kindle and Nook.  $150 gets your files ready to upload to Kindle.  Hitch is very helpful.  So far, she has found a cover artist for me, has recommended copy editors, and will help with meta tags, author blurbs, font ownership, and other detail items about which I know little.
• My book cover was created by Todd Hebertsom who can be reached at MyPersonalArtist@hotmail.com.  The fee for designing a custom cover can go to $250, but Todd is currently running a $99 special.  I sent an email to Todd on July 20th describing what I thought I wanted in a cover and received the final product yesterday July 26th.  I highly recommend this artist.

That's what it took to get things really underway.  When my manuscript comes back from the copyeditor I will read the book one more time.  When I am satisfied that every thing is just right I will send it off to Hitch at Booknook.biz along with a picture and some background information on the author (me).  I will also be sending a list of key words, or meta tags to Hitch.

Next steps include more proofing and finally uploading to Kindle.  Will write more about finishing off this project once the book is online.  Hopefully you will find it on Kindle  by Labor Day 2012.