Saving Time with Kindle Previewer Tool

Kindle Previewer is a free tool that emulates how your book will look on Kindle devices and applications and shows how the text displays for any orientation or font size. Once you’ve finished formatting your MS Word manuscript for KDP and saved it as a filtered web page, you can use Kindle Previewer to check the layout of your book and make sure it’s displayed properly. You can also check that the Table of Contents and any links are working properly.

It’s a lot easier and quicker to make changes to your book now, rather than waiting until after it’s been published to KDP!

Using Kindle Previewer

1. Go to https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A3IWA2TQYMZ5J6 and download the latest version of Kindle Previewer (v2.9 at the time this book was published).
2. Open your formatted MS Word manuscript and select “Save As” to save the document as a “Web Page, Filtered” (for PC) or “Web Page” (for Mac).
3. Open the Previewer and then open your filtered web page. The previewer automatically converts the web page into the mobi file and opens it.
4. The tabs at the top of the document allow you to preview it in several different Kindle viewers. You can also select “Devices” from the menu bar at the top of the screen to see what your file will look like on an iPhone or iPad.
   
   
   For more tips like this one, check out our latest guide on self-publishing “Publishing and Selling Your Ebook on Kindle” available on Amazon’s kindle store at http://amzn.to/1gJSDmj

What is SEO? And can SEO help your ebook sales?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a group of marketing and technical techniques used to bring Internet taffic to your web page or blog.  Websites are ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.  So the first page of search results are the most relevant to the search word or phrase that you typed in Google.  Basically, the whole idea of SEO is to get on those first two pages of search results.  Most people never go past those first two pages.  The way to get your site noticed?  There are so many.  I'm only going to give a very brief overview of the concept in this blog article and expand in more detail in later posts. 
SEO can improve your site's exposure by the strategic use of keywords or key phrases.  These are the words people search for in their Google searches.  They could also use Yahoo or Bing, but for the sake of brevity I'm just saying Google. 
Keywords can be sprinkled throughout your web content, but don't overdo this.  Keyword "stuffing" will get your site flagged and plus it just reads badly; not to mention it looks unprofessional.  You want to shoot for 5 percent (5%) keyword saturation throughout your copy, nothing more.  Keywords can also be placed in metadata such as HTML tags.  More on this in a future blog posting.
Are you noticing through tracking that your visitors are leaving your website quickly?  They aren't hanging around to read?  That's called a "bounce" visit.  You don't want that.  If this happens to you, then you really need to examine the quality of your web content.  People want to learn something from articles they read; not shallow, thin "fluff" pieces that waste their time.
I'll give more details later about how to control your "bounce" factor in your copy.  SEO covers such a wide range of information.  Treating it all in one blog post would be impossible.
The bounce factor leads to another major factor that draws search engine bots to crawl your site as well as visitors--Quality Content.  Without this your website or blog is merely a fluff site where visitors leave feeling deceived and cheated.  Time is valuable to everyone and time is money for many, so don't waste your readers' time.
Links are important in driving traffic to your site.  Make friends with other bloggers who blog within your field of interest.  This is a way to get backlinks which help improve your rankings.

Who gets published on Kindle Singles?

Curious as to whether or not my little book stood a chance of being accepted by Kindle Singles, I did a little digging around on the Amazon Kindle Singles site.  Since it's launch in January of 2011, Kindle Singles has published 3 new titles each week.  Their editor received around 50 unsolicited submissions each week, so Dave Blum's job leaves knee deep in manuscripts every day.  Most of the lucky ones who are chosen to live on this list of Kindle Singles are exclusive to Amazon, meaning this is mostly original material.  Others accepted come from traditional publishers and also e-singles publishers The Atavist and Byliner.  More about those sites later.
Most authors covet the Kindle Singles list over the Barnes & Noble Nook Snaps and Apple QuickReads because they receive more marketing and promotion help from Amazon.  Also, you've got to admit most people use Amazon not only for book shopping but for looking up info on a book in mind.  It's like a library helper site as well as a book seller.
So in a nutshell the answer to the question "Who gets published on Kindle Singles?" is the lucky ones.  Also, I've got to admit the talented ones.  So I guess even if you do have a flashy book cover, it's still not going to fly with Kindle Singles because they are looking for quality; not just bling.