Chennai: Success stories of unknown writers becoming published authors often have a common recipe: they were nobodies who wrote every day.
They tailored their manuscript to perfection, submitted it to hundreds of traditional publishers and carried on with their lives. Finally, after months or even years of waiting, their work is finally accepted.
But thanks to self-publishing, writers don’t have to face the hurdles of traditional publishing. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Pen to Publish 2018 offers a wonderful opportunity for writers to self-publish their work.
KDP is a platform for authors to publish their books across the world on Kindle. Writers can earn royalties of up to 70 per cent. They also have control over where to sell their books, retain rights, marketing, the book format, and language. The best thing is that it is entirely free.
Sudha Nair, who won last year’s edition of Pen to Publish, said KDP helped her to kick-start her writing career. “I am inspired to write more stories,” she adds.
Rules
For this year’s edition of the Pen to Publish contest, the book must be an original work, never published previously in both physical and ebook format. Translations are not eligible. Writers can submit their entry as an ebook in any genre via KDP till 9 February 2019.
The participant should include a keyword ‘pentopublish2018’ along with six other keywords of their choice while entering the ebook’s information. The ebook should be enrolled under KDP Select program that gives authors the chance to reach more readers and earn more money. Also, there is no limit to the number of ebooks submitted by an author. The works can be in English, Tamil or Hindi.
More opportunities
Based on the word count, Amazon Kindle will classify the ebook as either long form (more than 10,000 words) or short form (between 2,000 and 10,000 words). The winners will be chosen based on the commercial viability of the ebook and the reviews received.
According to Amazon Kindle website, three winners of the long form category will be given a cash award of Rs 5 lakh while three winners of the short form category will receive Rs 50,000. Up to 30 finalists will get Kindle E-reader device.
For details visit, www.amazon.in
| Books to read in order to hone your craft of writing |
  * ‘On Writing; A memoir of the craft‘ by Stephen King* ‘Self editing for fiction writers – How to edit yourself to print‘ by Renni Browne and Dave King * ‘The complete handbook of novel writing: everything you need to know to create and sell you work‘ by Writer’s Digest Editors * ‘On writing well‘ by William Zinsser |