Uploading your files for the first time
The files are finished, the cover is done, and now there is a button. This is the step authors put off for weeks.
The fear is misplaced. Nothing on an upload form is permanent, nothing goes on sale before you say so, and a file the system does not like gets handed back rather than published badly. What follows is the sequence, in the order you will meet it. The details differ between stores; the shape does not.
First: the account, and the money paperwork
Before any store will pay you, it needs to know who you are and where the money goes: identity details, bank or payment information, and a tax form appropriate to your country and to the country the store pays from.
Do this part first, on a separate day if you can. It is the only step that can stall — a form may need a number you do not have yet, and verification is not always instant. Everything else takes minutes.
What is required varies by country and by store, and the rules change. Read the store's own guidance, and if your situation is unusual, ask an accountant where you live rather than an author forum. A book that is otherwise ready can sit for a week waiting on this.
Then the record of the book, not the book
Next come the fields: title, subtitle, author, series name and number, description, categories, keywords, language, publication date. This is your metadata, and it is the version of your book that every search index and catalog actually reads.
Have the exact strings written down before you start, and paste them in — the title on the cover, on the title page and in this form should match character for character. Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book covers what each field does, and Categories and keywords, without the folklore covers the two authors most often guess at.
The identifier
You will be asked for an ISBN, or offered a free one the store assigns. Decide which before you are sitting at the form with a cursor blinking at you — see Do you need your own ISBN?. Whatever you choose, the number you enter must be the number printed inside that specific binding.
The files themselves
Here is the part people brace for, and it is two uploads, not one.
- Print. The interior as a PDF with fonts embedded, and the cover as a separate PDF. The cover file is the full wrap — back cover, spine and front cover as one flat piece of artwork, plus bleed on the outside edges.
- Ebook. An EPUB for the text, and a separate cover image. The EPUB has a cover inside it; the store still wants its own copy for the listing thumbnail. See Ebook cover size, and why it is not your print front.
File size limits, accepted formats and the exact upload order vary between services, and they are stated on the page you are looking at. Read that page rather than a checklist someone wrote two years ago.
In the tools. Every export is built to the geometry of the printer you picked — trim, bleed, safe area and a spine computed from the real page count and paper color — and the final page count flows from the Interior Formatter into the Cover Maker, which is what makes the two files agree. Start a book → · about the tools
Price and territories
You set a list price, usually per currency or per market, and you choose where the book may be sold. Rates, bands and terms differ by store and change often, so read the current page and do the arithmetic there rather than trusting a remembered number. Pricing a self-published book covers how to think about the figure itself.
Processing, then the preview
When the files are in, the service processes them — checking page geometry, fonts, resolution — and then shows you a previewer. Expect to wait, and expect at least one message about something. Most of what gets flagged is small and fixable.
The three things that trip people here
The cover is one file, and it is the whole wrap. Uploading just the front is the most common first-time error. A wrap includes the spine, and the spine has a width that depends on your page count, your paper and your printer.
The page count and the cover are locked together. A cover is built for a specific number of pages. Change the interior afterward — add a dedication, fix a widow, insert an image — and the page count can move, which moves the spine, which means the cover file is now wrong. If the interior changes, rebuild the cover. In that order it costs nothing; discovering it on a proof costs a week.
The previewer is approximate. It is a rendering, not a printed book. It will not show you how the paper takes ink, how dark your grays go, or how far the cover shifted on the trimmer. It is useful for catching a wrong-way-round wrap or a missing page, and it is not the final check. Order the proof. Then read it in daylight is.
After you press the button
The book goes into review. How long that takes varies by store and by format, and any number you have read is a guess. If something is rejected, the message usually names the file and the problem — Why print files get rejected, and how to not be rejected covers the usual causes.
Then it appears. Look at the listing on a phone before you tell anyone it is out.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Order the proof. Then read it in daylight · More: Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book · Preflight: what to check before you upload · Where to print: KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu and B&N Press