Zero carbon. So there's a lot of resources out there about self publishing. And maybe there's too much information. And maybe that's why people get overwhelmed and don't end up writing books and getting self published. And I hope I'm going to help you simplify everything here. And I'm doing this video, just to include all helpful links and resources for anything related to self publishing that I've mentioned in other videos.

So first of all important stuff, how to publish your books. For the book, The E book, go to KDP amazon.com. For the paperback go to create space calm. Remember, you can actually do the paperback through the previous KDP link now, but I am still sticking with CreateSpace it does exactly the same thing. And the audio book, go to AC dot com. Now all of these three resources are all linked to Amazon.

And once you've uploaded the files that these three places, they will all collect on the same listing at Amazon. So a couple of really important links here. First of all, there's a Facebook group, you don't have to join it, but I find it very useful. And I've been contributing. And also, I'm an admin there. And I've been doing that for two or three years now.

And if you go to link, Pat's first book.com there that will redirect through to the Facebook group, and you can ask to join, and you'll be letting within 24 hours, and you can ask any question you like about self publishing and you will get a good answer. Secondly, another website that's linked to Amazon is also Central, or central comm is where you set up your author page@amazon.com. So when you've written a book, and you've uploaded it on Amazon And you want people to buy it, you're going to be posting the link everywhere in social media, and in emails and in other places. And there are many, many different ways of doing this. And in order to show you the full URL and the short URL, I'm going to go over to the Amazon website. So here's one of my books, new freedom.

You see, I've got a Kindle here, and a paperback that I uploaded it CreateSpace and an audible book that I uploaded at a cx. Also, you can also buy that@audible.com, of course, but the listing really starts with the Kindle. And this is the link that I tend to share. But if you look up the top here, you can get rid of the bit at the end there and just share that the long link. But you could also if you wanted to shorten the link, you could get rid of all these words here. And just have the DP slash, followed by the asi n. And that's a unique number for any Amazon product.

So that link goes to the same place. So you have a full URL and a short URL. Next up, you can have an URL with a keyword. Now I need to explain what I mean by this. And I'll show you on the Amazon site. So let's search in the Kindle Store for sell video courses online.

And when you've done this, you will find one of my books coming up first in the results, very important that you get your books ranking very well for popular keywords. But of course, that's all about Kindle SEO and I'll be talking about that in another video. However, if you click through to that book, and have a look in the link at the end, you'll see The keywords that I typed in just now. And that's all in the link through to my book. Now, why is this relevant to us? Why do we need to know about this?

Well, if somebody has searched for certain keywords on Amazon, and then makes a purchase, the Amazon algorithm notes that, and we'll make sure that the product the customer purchased will rank better for those keywords in future. It stands to reason, they can see they've made a sale with this particular product from those particular keywords. So they're going to encourage that in future. So a way of getting your products ranking better for certain keywords is to give out these URLs with keywords in them to buyers. So this is what I mean by a keyword URL. And you get a keyword URL by searching for your book with a good keyword.

Finding the book and then clicking on it. And then that's your keyword URL. You share that with people who want to buy it. And hopefully that will mean you rank better for that keyword in future. Now, I must say that it is against Amazon's Terms of Service to try to manipulate the rankings on Amazon. However, this is something that everybody does.

Going back to the short URLs. There's another issue with Amazon that you probably already know about. And that is that everyone shops in their own local Amazon store. I'm from the UK. So when I go to Amazon and buy things, I buy things@amazon.co.uk I don't buy them@amazon.com because my account is@amazon.co.uk so there's a problem here. When you give someone from outside the United States a.com link, they won't be able to buy the book.

Let's go back here, here. One of my books were on amazon.com. And I can't buy it, there's no Buy button. There is a link here to continue shopping on the Kindle store as Amazon co.uk. I clicked that, and there is the buy button. But not everybody notices this.

And it's an issue every time I have a book and I post links, I get people from all over the world writing to me saying they can't buy the book really is amazing when you think about it that Amazon is such a successful site. But a lot of people actually won't be able to buy your book. One of the solutions to this is to give out country specific links. So if you're from Canada, click this link. If you're from Australia, click this link. But that still has its problems.

There is another solution and that is to go to a site called book linker. And there you can make up your own link that's meant to take people to their relevant Amazon store so they can buy The book easily. And another great thing about it is that the link looks quite nice. As you can see my book the new freedom, I made up the link to say my book dot two slash the new freedom looks, it looks quite nice. And hopefully it takes you to the correct page on Amazon. You can test this out if you want.

I think it works sometimes I don't think it works all the time. And this is just an issue that I've been struggling with for three years. But I hope there's some advice there that will help you make sure that everyone around the world who wants to buy your book is able to with one click. So now I want to talk about services. And there's a lot to talk about. Because when you're writing and publishing a book, you need a nice cover.

You need it edited, and you need the correct format for the ebook and the paperback. So there's a lot to do. I would recommend you if you're starting out and you don't have a lot of money to invest in This project at first, I would suggest you try and do as much as you can yourself but you will need help and there are a lot of services out there on Fiverr on Upwork that will help you with editing and formatting and cover design. But I want to recommend a few services first, first is by my friend and this is an affiliate link. So if you go to happy self publishing and they do everything they do book cover design, editing, formatting the lots. If you go there through this link, Rob cabin comm slash go slash h SP.

Then I will receive a commission of 10% However, if you're not happy with that, then of course you can just go to happy self publishing.com but there is a link if you want to have a look at the site through my affiliate link. Rob carbon comm slash go slash h SP and here is the site and this is My friend Jyotsna, who I've known a long time through Pat's group on Facebook, and you can get happy self publishing to do as little or as much as you like. Now, the first thing I would look at is book cover design. I have used them for book cover design before. And as you can see, I think their designers very good. Of course, Jyotsna lives in India, and she has years and years of experience of outsourcing to India.

And of course, the prices are very reasonable, given she uses outsourcers from that part of the world. But you can also do editing, formatting, and just about anything else at this service. If you're interested in then I would recommend happy self publishing. But there are plenty other places you can go here's some ideas for book cover design. ebook launch, calm, has good book cover designers, there's a very good guy@fiverr.com so this will be quite cheap, more Like $20 I think it's not $5 but is very cheap. And his name is Mohammed Mustapha.

If you spell it like that@fiverr.com, you'll find him his actual URL is fiverr.com slash Mohammed Mustapha upwork.com. Of course, they have loads and loads and loads of designers, you have to write a good brief for what you want. And this would be the same for formatting and editing as well. And then you have to sift through the various freelancers that apply to your request and spend a bit of time there, making sure you find the freelance said that you're happy with. Or you could go to 99 designs. Now again, if you do want to go through my affiliate link, and if you do make a purchase through this link, then I will receive a commission.

Then you can go to rob coven comm slash go slash 99 designs. However, if you don't want to do that, of course, it's 99 designs.com When your 99 designs, I would advise you not to do a competition many people do competitions on 99 designs. Personally, I think they're very bad. It's never worked for me. I find all the designers spend a few minutes on each design and you never get anything that's any good. But what I do think 99 designs is good for is just finding designers.

Okay, so if you're going to 99 designs if you want to use my affiliate link then there it is Rob coven comm slash go slash 99 designs, I would suggest you look for a designer that has done nonfiction book cover designs, and you don't go for the competitions. So editing, again, editing is very frustrating. You need to get your book read by another set of eyes and corrected and I would advise you if you're writing in English to make sure the editor edits in US English and so it's all consistent and there are as few spelling mistakes as possible, the sad fact of the matter is, doesn't matter how good the editor is, there will always be errors in the final text, I have found, I'm afraid. So get it edited, but don't spend too much money. And if you can find a friend that will do it for you for free, so much better.

Use Upwork to search for editors. But there's also a very good resource at Kindle printer calm. So if you go to kindle printer.com, slash book editors, and if you scroll down, you see a list of approved book editors with their prices. And lastly, marketing and promotion. This is a huge subject. You've got lots to do here.

And of course, there's book promotions. When you're giving your book away for free. You're giving the Kindle away for free on kdp.amazon.com. And there's booked promotions when you're booking is only $1 you're selling your book at a cheaper price than normal for a particular time. And when you do this, you should go to all sorts of places and there are very, very many places you can do this to list your book when it is free or reduced price. And the first couple of links actually are people that will go around to all the relevant sites for you and list your book.

And the first one is a guy called Holger whose pen name is James H. Mayfield. I've been using him for years very reliable guy at very reasonable prices for $5 or $10. He'll go around all the sites and make sure your book is sheduled in to show on those sites on the relevant dates for your promotion, and be nights at Fiverr done does the same sort of thing. And there are even more Kindle printer dogs Calm, a list of top book promotion sites free and paid. So some of these you have to pay for, like I did on my recent $1 launch. And some are free, you just go to the site and you schedule in your book and say it's free on these days or it's $1 on these days.

And so there's lots of sites here. However, that isn't nearly it. I have lists of many many other sites that I will include with this video. And lastly, Kindle SEO. So as I said earlier, and I will be doing another video on this getting your book to rank for popular keywords is the best way to get your book sold on Amazon in order to find out good keywords that you might rank for. Then I found the best site to do that is merchant words calm.

If you go to rob coven comm slash go slash merchant words, then you'll only pay me $9 a month, otherwise, you'll you'll pay $30 a month. And this isn't an affiliate link, it's just a link where you get the service cheaper. So in merchant words, you can put your keywords here. And you can search in Amazon, US and in the Kindle store, and then it'll show you how many searches a month on Amazon or in the Kindle store that these keywords get. So this is very valuable information. And I do think it's quite accurate as well.

So if we scroll down a bit, you know of Obviously, these search terms that are searched hundreds of thousands of times will be very competitive. But if you look for example, Photoshop web design gets 3000 searches every month, that is quite a lot of searches. And it may not be that competitive. So that would be an example of a good keyword to include in your books title. And for kindle SEO, of course you have to put it in Other places, the back end keywords, the subtitle, the description, and of course, in the text of the book. So Kindle SEO is a very important side of self publishing.

And here are a couple of links recovering.com go merchant words, of course to get that cheaply. And if you want a standalone software that will give you great information about keywords and their competition, then go to Rob cabin.com KDP Rocket from Kindle printer. So I hope I didn't bombard you with too many links and resources. These are all mentioned in other videos about self publishing, but I wanted to put the links all in one place, so you have easy access to them. My name is Rob coven. I'll see you in another video.