Last night a package arrived at my house via Amazon delivery. It was the first batch of my author copies for "Pete vs the City of Chicago." The cover was magnificent. The binding was perfect. The back was exactly to order. And so was the inside. KDP really is an amazing service.

But when I opened it to the pages, my heart sank. I had submitted the file incorrectly. When I saw inside the book was my manuscript, the text without page breaks for chapters, no kerning, no copyright page, no acknowledgements, and courier new font.

What did I mess up?

Kindle Create allows you to save your work. When you save a document, it populates in a self-created folder in your hard drive a word document with your manuscript. However, to incorporate the changes you made to your manuscript, like styling and extra pages, you have to generate a .kpf file from the Kindle Create software itself. That file, when uploaded to KDP, brings all the changes you made to your manuscript to turn it into a book. I had missed this step. I could have caught it, but when I previewed the book, I only previewed the cover.

I've learned my lesson. I've changed the file and ordered new author copies. Specifically, one author copy. I'm not ordering ten copies again until I've previewed a single copy myself.

These are the things I learned last night. If you're thinking of publishing on Amazon, I highly recommend it. But make sure you preview your books, and make sure you order a single paperback before you announce to your friends and family that your book is published.

As Always, Happy Reading
-Brian Rosten