Brought to you by The Goof Off Club
The slow walkthrough: account, cover, pages, price.
The printing page is the short version. This is the long one, with the four parts that trip everybody up the first time. Do them in order and nothing surprises you.
Part one
Opening your Amazon KDP account
KDP is Amazon's free printing service. Opening an account costs nothing and you are not promising to sell anything. Set aside about twenty minutes and have your bank details handy.
- 1
Sign in at kdp.amazon.com.
Use the same Amazon login you shop with. There is no separate password to remember.
- 2
Fill in your author details.
Your legal name and home address. This is Amazon's paperwork, not what gets printed on the book.
- 3
Add your bank account.
Amazon pays you here if anyone outside the family buys a copy. If nobody ever does, nothing happens. You still need it filled in before you can publish.
- 4
Answer the tax questions.
A short form appears. For most families the answer is that you are an individual in the United States. It takes about five minutes and it is done once, forever.
Do not start uploading until the tax form says complete. Amazon will let you build the whole book and then block you at the last button.
Part two
Making the cover art
The cover is one flat picture that wraps around the whole book: back, spine, front. Amazon makes you a template once it knows your page count and size.
- 1
Lock your size and page count first.
The spine gets wider with more pages, so the template only works once those two numbers stop changing. 8.5 x 8.5 inches square is what we use for family books.
- 2
Download the cover template from Amazon.
On the cover step there is a template calculator. Put in your size and page count and it gives you a file with the exact shape, including the fold lines.
- 3
Put your strongest painting on the front.
One painting, big, filling the space. Pick the one where you can tell what the adventure was from across the room.
- 4
Keep the words simple.
Title, and your family name underneath. On the back, two or three sentences about the trip. Nothing else — a busy cover looks homemade in the bad way.
- 5
Stay away from the edges.
Keep anything you care about at least half an inch inside the outer line. The trimming machine is not exact and a sliced-off title cannot be undone once it is printed.
- 6
Save it as one PDF.
Not three files, not a photo. One PDF, the full wrap, at the size the template gave you.
Before you upload: does your cover contain anything you did not make or pay for? A cartoon character, a sports logo, a stock photo. Amazon rejects those and it is the most common hold-up.
Part three
Laying out the inside pages
The inside is a second PDF. One painting per page, with your three lines of words. The rhythm that reads best is picture on the right, words on the left.
- 1
Put the pages in reading order.
Name your files page-1, page-2 and so on before you start. Fixing the order inside the layout is slow and easy to get wrong.
- 2
Start with a title page.
Page one is the title and your family name, on a plain background. Page two can be a dedication — who the book is for. Then the story starts.
- 3
Give every picture the same margin.
Half an inch of empty space all the way around, and a little extra on the side where the book binds, so the picture does not disappear into the fold.
- 4
Keep the words short and in the same place.
Three lines per page, always in the same spot. When the text jumps around from page to page, the book feels restless to read.
- 5
Make your page count even.
Books print in pairs of pages. If you end up odd, add a blank page or a closing page at the end that says where you went next.
- 6
Export one PDF, highest quality.
Choose print quality, not web or small file size, when you save. Paintings go muddy if the file gets squeezed.
Click through every single page in Amazon's online previewer before you go on. This is the step people skip and the reason most first books come back wrong.
Part four
Setting the price
Amazon charges you for printing each copy. Whatever you charge above that printing cost is split — you keep sixty percent of the list price minus the printing cost.
- 1
Read the printing cost Amazon shows you.
It appears once your page count is known. For a color family book of thirty to fifty pages, expect somewhere around eighteen to twenty-eight dollars per copy.
- 2
Decide who this book is for.
If it is only for your family, price it a dollar or two above the printing cost. You are not trying to make money, you are just allowed to list it.
- 3
If you want to sell it, add real room.
List it around thirty-nine dollars. After printing and Amazon's share you keep a few dollars a copy, which is normal for full-color books.
- 4
Order author copies for the family.
Author copies are sold to you at the printing cost with no markup. This is how you get the copies for grandparents cheaply.
- 5
Choose how public it is.
You can publish it so only someone with the link can find it, or let it show in Amazon search. Family-only books usually pick the quiet option.
Once you hit publish, Amazon reviews it for up to seventy-two hours. Changing the inside pages after that means a new review. Read it once more first.
Or let us do the whole thing.
Send the photos and the words. We paint the pages, build both files, handle the printing, and a finished book shows up at your door.