Publishing on Amazon’s Kindle – An Experience

Posted by Mike Crane on Jul 15, 2010 in Apps, Mike C., Self Publishing, Social Media & Tech, Writing | View Comments

PUBLISHING ON THE AMAZON KINDLE:  MY EXPERIENCE

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been in somewhat of a writing rut lately.  Don’t get me wrong, I did finish a new story and am working on a new one as we speak, but this was a pretty nasty rut.  I was getting rejections for all of my short story submissions and I don’t care how many times you get a rejection or how used to it you’ve become, it still stings and can really leave you feeling unmotivated.  I think that was my problem for a while.  Sure, there’s the drive to write because I’m passionate about it and it’s what I enjoy doing, but feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere with my submissions left a dent in my desire to write.

And then, it hit me.  I found out that Amazon has a self-publishing program where you can self-publish your writing exclusively for the Kindle free of charge.  Not only that, but you get to have more of a say when it comes down to pricing, something I was never comfortable with on my previous short story collection, Falling Apart.  I was proud of the book and all (and still am), but I was never comfortable with the pricing of it, which is why you don’t see me plugging it all that much.  Hell, I even think the Kindle edition of it is still nowhere near the price range I’d like it to be—and it turned out horrible looking (it’s readable, but it should’ve turned out a lot better).

That’s when the desire returned.

I decided I was going to give this new adventure a try.  What the hell?  I certainly wouldn’t be losing money on it like with my other self-publishing experiences.  I love the Amazon Kindle and I know a lot of people who now own one (you can also download a free Kindle app for the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Droid).

So, I have put together a new short story collection called, In Decline.  I submitted it to Amazon dtp (Digital Text Platform) once I had everything all sorted out.  At first, I thought this would be a small project, maybe consisting of five stories or so.  Then, I ended up having total of nine.  I was a lot more selective this time around than I was with Falling Apart, since that was more of a physical publication I felt like I had to make sure it was at a reasonable length.  Since this is an e-book, I really didn’t have to worry about how long the overall book would be.  There are stories that didn’t make the collection, but not because they aren’t good.  I just picked the ones that I felt went together well.

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