Letters for Creatives #14: Self-publishing through KDP - Interview With an Artist vol. 2
Letters for Creatives #14: Self-publishing through KDP - Interview With an Artist vol. 2
Interview with Charles Edward York
Hello, I am Celeste. Each week I write about marketing, creativity and writing. The first interview with a writer for Interview with an artist series can be found here.
Charles Edward York trained for many years as an artist and for 5 and a half years as a tenor before wholly committing to writing and poetry. He has travelled the globe, including parts of South East Asia, Europe and the U.S. He has published 14 poetry collections on Amazon and Lulu Publishing. We talked about his process in publishing his poetry collections through Kindle Direct Publishing.
You have published 14 books on Amazon. How did it start?
I started the day after I was fired by a corrupt boss at a college library. I made a decision that I was going to dare to do great. It turned out became the title of my second book of poetry, Dare To Do Great.
I have been writing poetry since I was 17 but I did not publish anything until I published my first book Deep Blue Love in 2005. Mostly what I wrote about in the beginning was love and relationship poems with a few poems addressing social justice issues.
Can you talk me through your process of self-publishing a book on Amazon?
Basically it starts off with a couple of poems. Once I get going on a streak, I begin to assemble them in a file on my laptop. Once I get close to 40 or 50 poems, I begin to think about putting them in a manuscript. After having about 60 or 70 poems, I will begin to think in terms of a title for this collection and that is where the book idea is born.
Once I have a book manuscript I begin to think of a title usually towards the end. once I finish the manuscript, I upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing, which is a free self-publishing service.
From there I fill in all the information for the new book. I design the book cover on the KDP website using pre-formatted designs for a front cover and also upload an image that I selected from something that I found online.
I then go through the entire design process. This usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how many corrections I have made. I double-check my work. Once I am through with the design process and uploading the manuscript, I select certain words as search terms to help guide people to the book itself. I also pick the price.
After that things are pretty much done. I post the books online within 72 hours. Most of the time it is far shorter than that since I have very few errors if any.
How do you decide on a book title?