I did it!!! And I have a question

[Chiquita Banana]

Folks, I have officially joined your ranks - although I suppose I did that when I published my short story on Smashwords, but this is very different. Been flogging this book like a madwoman. Fingers crossed for lots of sales.

Anyway, I have a question about "editorial reviews" on Amazon. I got some. But there doesn't seem to be an option for me to put them in that specific "editorial reviews" section so they're currently in the "book description" section. Also, I really think either the blurbs or the credits should be bolded, italicized or something to make it easier to read them, but that didn't seem to be an option for me even though I've seen them in different styles for other titles. Does anyone have any experience with this or know how to do it? Here's my link, which might make my question a bit more clear:

http://www.amazon.com/Unmasking-Maya...unmasking+maya

And please let me know if the cover looks distorted on your screen. Have had such a nightmare with that....

Thanks all!!

[J. Tanner]

You need to set up your authorcentral account and link your books. Then you'll be able to do a bit more with your description areas through authorcentral.

http://authorcentral.amazon.com is the proper link if I recall...

[Chiquita Banana]

Originally Posted by J. Tanner

You need to set up your authorcentral account and link your books. Then you'll be able to do a bit more with your description areas through authorcentral.

http://authorcentral.amazon.com is the proper link if I recall...

Hm. You're the second person who's said I need to do this, but I already have an authorcentral account. And an author page and everything. Very strange...

On another note, I live in San Francisco too

Edited to add:

This is really bad, I know, but can anyone tell me how long after going live does Amazon enter you in the rankings? I know I've had one sale anyway - friend of mine who I've been chatting with today bought it. And I'm refreshing entirely too often so I can keep track of them as soon as possible, but for all I know it could take 24 hours to be entered into the system.

[Griffin Hayes]

Sign in to your author central page, locate and add your books and then you can start adding editorial reviews and changing blurbs without going through KDP.

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

[Chiquita Banana]

Cool. Thanks. I got those editorial reviews in the correct place. They say it'll take 3-5 days for them to show up though, so I'll leave them in the main "about the book" section for now. Many thanks!

[J. Tanner]

Originally Posted by Chiquita Banana

This is really bad, I know, but can anyone tell me how long after going live does Amazon enter you in the rankings? I know I've had one sale anyway - friend of mine who I've been chatting with today bought it.

It can vary.

It's often better to check the Sales tab in Authorcentral than the book page, or the sales chart in KDP in my experience, but there are cases where all three can report different info, and where all three can be delayed for days even though an hour or two seems most common.

So try not to get too impatient. Writers going through trade publishers only tend to get info twice a year or so. You'll survive a few days at most.

[Chiquita Banana]

I'm in the charts now. On Amazon US anyway. The UK version is lagging - hasn't added the editorial reviews yet, no rankings even though one of my Brit pals said he purchased it. Anyway, I'm good. I just like to keep track of everything.

[Creative_Solitude]

Originally Posted by Chiquita Banana

Folks, I have officially joined your ranks - although I suppose I did that when I published my short story on Smashwords, but this is very different. Been flogging this book like a madwoman. Fingers crossed for lots of sales.

Anyway, I have a question about "editorial reviews" on Amazon. I got some. But there doesn't seem to be an option for me to put them in that specific "editorial reviews" section so they're currently in the "book description" section. Also, I really think either the blurbs or the credits should be bolded, italicized or something to make it easier to read them, but that didn't seem to be an option for me even though I've seen them in different styles for other titles. Does anyone have any experience with this or know how to do it? Here's my link, which might make my question a bit more clear:

http://www.amazon.com/Unmasking-Maya...unmasking+maya

And please let me know if the cover looks distorted on your screen. Have had such a nightmare with that....

Thanks all!!

YAAAAAAYYYY!!! So happy for you!! Congratulations, girl! I wish the greatest success to you!

I know all that trouble you were having with your cover, but looks great to me. Also, at last glance, your ranking was showing up as 42,792...not too shabby...lol

[Chiquita Banana]

Originally Posted by Creative_Solitude

YAAAAAAYYYY!!! So happy for you!! Congratulations, girl! I wish the greatest success to you!

I know all that trouble you were having with your cover, but looks great to me. Also, at last glance, your ranking was showing up as 42,792...not too shabby...lol

Aww, thanks Creative!!! And right back atcha. I know your releases are coming up soon. Ranking has fallen quite a bit - think I may need to do a promo day in the not so distant future. But maybe all these reviews will start having an effect soon. (Fingers crossed) We shall see. Thanks so much for cheering me on!!!!

[Ann Joyce]

Way to go, Chiq...I'll be cheering for you too!

[Kitty27]

Congrats,Chuiquita!

I'll be watching your progress!

[Chiquita Banana]

Aw, thanks so much, Ann and Kitty! I appreciate it!!

[Creative_Solitude]

Originally Posted by Chiquita Banana

Aw, thanks so much, Ann and Kitty! I appreciate it!!

The one thing I'm leery about when I go to upload my book(s) is the formatting. Is the formatting process difficult at all? I'm just worried my books will end up all askew with misplaced words, missing portions etc.

[Katie Elle]

Whether or not it's easy or hard to convert books for kindle and other storefronts depends on your book structure, what you consider easy, and what program you're using to write it.

Getting something "readable" can be as simple as uploading a docx file. However, if you want something with a functional table of contents and that looks nice, it can be more involved. If you are patient and comfortable using a number of different programs, it's not that bad.

If you upload a docx word file you can have a decently formatted ebook directly. Note, do not upload html. This was what was recommended in the past, and it's still on the KDP help pages, but unless you strip all font-face definitions and change the font-size to em, rem, or % rather than pt, it will cause problems on KF8 capable devices. The problem here is you won't have a table of contents.

The quick and dirty method to get a decent if simple look would be to name all your chapters "Chapter 1" etc in Word, make the chapter heads the Heading 1 style, and insert a page break before them--those things let the TOC get created automatically. Then save the file as filtered html. Then get the Calibre program and Kindle Previewer. Add the html file as a book to Calibre, click on the edit metadata button to add the cover and change the author and title, then convert to mobi and epub--it will automatically create a TOC and strip out the formatting that's a problem for the new KF8 format. Then look at the mobi in the kindle previewer, you should have a book with a working html and ncx table of contents and no font problems. Upload the mobi to kdp and the epub everywhere else.

[Creative_Solitude]

Thanks so much Katie. This information is most helpful. This helps me breathe a little easier!

[Creative_Solitude]

I plan on buying "Unmasking Maya" to read over my Christmas vacation;looking forward to reading it!

[Chiquita Banana]

Aw, I'm so feeling the love on this thread!! Creative, I hope you enjoy Unmasking Maya!

And this was my experience with formatting: I figured out how to get the ARC formatted into several different formats just fine, but a few days before I wanted to upload to Amazon, I could not for the life of me figure it out. One of my author friends referred me to the guy she hires to do that for her. He was very reasonable. If you want his contact info, let me know and I'll send it over. Best of luck with your self-publishing experience! xoxo