How to Make a KDP Hardcover Book for FREE

Summary

Learn how to self-publish a hardcover book on Amazon's KDP platform! In this informative video, Paul Marles introduces the exciting new capability of publishing hardback books. He guides viewers through the creation of book interiors and covers, focusing on a basic blank journal project. With step-by-step instructions and tips on using tools like Canva and resources like Creative Fabrica, even beginners can create professional-looking hardcover books for free. This comprehensive guide prepares you for your self-publishing journey on Amazon.

Highlights

• KDP now allows the publication of hardcover books - an exciting update for authors! 🎉
• In Part 1 of this tutorial, you'll learn to create a book cover and interior design. 📖
• Discover the ease of using Canva to craft a beautiful book cover without costs. 🌟
• Explore Creative Fabrica for a vast array of book interiors and design elements. 🖌️
• Understand the process of uploading your completed book design to the KDP platform. ✔️

Key Takeaways

• Hardcover publishing is now available on Amazon KDP! 📚
• Create book interiors easily with resources like Creative Fabrica and Book Bolt. 📝
• Use Canva to design your book cover with precision and creativity. 🎨
• Understand the importance of trim sizes and page counts for your book. 📏
• Get ready for part two, where you'll upload your creation to Amazon and set your publishing journey in motion! 🚀

Overview

Amazon's KDP platform now supports hardcover book publishing, opening new doors for authors who wish to present their work in a more durable format. In this excitably informative video, Paul Marles breaks down the process of creating a hardcover book from scratch. As you embark on this journey, you'll learn essential details like book trim sizes and page counts to fit your publishing needs.

Paul gives a clear walkthrough of using Canva - a free, accessible tool - to design a professional book cover. With a few clicks and creative tweaks, you've got a stunning cover ready to captivate readers. The video also introduces resources like Creative Fabrica and Book Bolt, making the hunt for book interiors a breeze and ensuring your book looks polished.

Gear up for the next steps in your self-publishing adventure. Part one arms you with the skills to create your book's physical attributes. In Part two, you'll learn about finalizing your project with titles, descriptions, and pricing before uploading it to Amazon. With Paul's guidance, you're on the path to becoming a successful self-published author!

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to KDP Hardcover Publishing The chapter introduces the exciting update that Amazon's KDP platform now allows self-publishing of hardcover books, in addition to previously available paperback options. It highlights the significance of this for authors who wish to publish various types of books as hardbacks, such as journals, diaries, planners, or both fiction and non-fiction books. The chapter sets the stage for demonstrating how to create and publish a hardback book on the platform.
• 00:30 - 03:00: Creating the Book Cover and Interior The chapter introduces the process of creating a book cover and interior for publishing on Amazon. It highlights that this is the first part of a two-part series. The first part focuses on designing the cover and interior elements, while the second part will cover assembling these components, adding title and description, setting pricing, and uploading to Amazon. The chapter also caters to those who have previously published on Amazon KDP. The video is created by Paul Marles, who creates content about financial management.
• 03:00 - 05:30: Choosing Interior Options In this chapter, the creator discusses exciting news related to the Amazon KDP platform, which is allowing the upload of hardcover books. These hardcovers, referred to as case laminate covers, are plain hardback covers without a soft paper dust jacket. This development is considered a significant step forward. The chapter encourages viewers to engage with the content by liking, subscribing, and enabling notifications for future updates.
• 05:30 - 11:00: Creating and Uploading Book Cover in Canva The chapter titled 'Creating and Uploading Book Cover in Canva' covers the initial steps in crafting book covers using Canva. It begins with the decision-making process for determining the type of book to create. Options include non-fiction or fiction works that have already been written and formatted, or alternatively, puzzle books, planners, diaries, log books, etc. The example in the chapter focuses on a basic approach, possibly implying a step-by-step guide or tutorial format.
• 11:00 - 16:00: Final Thoughts and Next Steps This chapter focuses on the basics of book creation, particularly useful for beginners entering the publishing business. The discussion centers on creating a simple ‘blank line journal or notebook,’ emphasizing its ease of creation. It explains that while these types of books are easier to start with, the principles discussed can be applied to other types of book projects. Key initial steps in book publishing, such as developing the book's interior content and designing the cover, are highlighted as the primary elements.

How to Make a KDP Hardcover Book for FREE Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 up until now it's only been possible  to self-publish paperback books   on amazon via the kdp platform and i say up until  now because now it's possible to publish hardback   books which is very exciting particularly  if there are certain books that you want to   publish in hardback version and it may be journals  diaries planners your fiction or non-fiction book   so in this video i'm going to show you how  to create your own hardback book to publish
• 00:30 - 01:00 on amazon and in this part one video we're  going to go over how to create the cover   and get the interior and then in part two to this  video i'll show you how to put it all together   with the title description the pricing and upload  it to amazon and then you can become an author or   publisher and this would also be useful if you've  already published books on the amazon kdp platform   now if you've not been to this channel before then  welcome my name is Paul Marles and i do videos on   how to make it to keep it and grow it and that's  your money i'm talking about if you do like videos
• 01:00 - 01:30 like that then please do give it a thumbs up hit  the subscribe button smash that notification bell   to receive notification of when i produce more  videos like this so this was exciting news when on   the amazon kdp platform they enabled this section  here which is the upload of hard cover books and   these books have what is known as a case laminate  cover which is just a plain hardback cover but it   doesn't have that soft paper dust jacket if  you like so this was quite a big move and a step
• 01:30 - 02:00 up from just being able to publish paperback books  now when creating your books you first of all have   got to decide on what type of book you want to  create now this may be a non-fiction or fiction   book that you've already written and had  formatted or it could be things like puzzle   books planners diaries log books but in today's  example i'm going to show you a basic what we
• 02:00 - 02:30 call a blank line journal or notebook which is  a very simple book to create and it's especially   useful if you're just starting out in this  business because i say they're very easy to create   but you can apply what i'm going to show you  today to any type of book that you want now   when it comes to publishing books the initial step  is getting the interior that's the contents within   the book and it's creating the cover those are  the two main components of a book the cover and
• 02:30 - 03:00 the interior now when it comes to the the interior  and publishing in hardback version there are five   five trim sizes you can choose from and today's  book is going to be a six by nine inch book then   we have to decide on the number of pages in our  book and most books when it comes to things like   log books journals notebooks planners they tend  to be 120 pages but the page number may vary   depending on on the type of book you produce  things like culling books will usually have
• 03:00 - 03:30 less pages things like non-fiction and fiction  will have more pages but the page numbers of a   hardback book have to be somewhere between 75 to  550. now when i first started in this business   there were no resources to getting interiors  to these types of books and you had to make   your own and using powerpoint or keynote you  get a blank page draw the lines and then copy
• 03:30 - 04:00 and paste that page 120 times then download it  as a pdf and you'd have your interior now it's   a lot easier in fact i've got a gumroad shop and  there is a lined paper interior which is 120 pages   6x9 inches and that's absolutely free so you can  just go along there and download that and you've   got your interior straight away ready to upload to  the kdp platform and create your line journal but   if you wanted to create something different you  have some other options now one of these options
• 04:00 - 04:30 is creative fabrica which is one of my go-to  sites for for graphics and interiors and also   fonts i'll leave a link to it down below i think  they're running a special offer at the moment   dollar for the first month and here i've just  put in the general search for kdp interior   and you can see there are over 46 000 results so  you've got a lot of interiors to choose from and   you could narrow down your search by putting in  something like you know recipe planner handwriting
• 04:30 - 05:00 book coloring book whatever you want to create  your book on and a lot of these interiors are   downloadable as in pdf format and again are ready  to upload straight away to the amazon kdp platform   the other option to get some free interiors is  also book bolt at book bolt dot io you can just   click on resources go to interior wizard scroll  down a bit click on interior wizard and here   you have a lot of different interiors that you can  download for free it's a case of clicking on one
• 05:00 - 05:30 putting in the size of your trim six by nine put  in your page count 120 download you've got your   pdf again ready to upload to the the platform  so that's quite simple when it comes to the   interior obviously if you are creating a fiction  or non-fiction book you're going to have to have   it all formatted correctly so the next stage when  we're creating our book is the cover now the cover   is going to be created from a template and this  template includes the back cover the front cover
• 05:30 - 06:00 and the spine down the middle and we need to get  this at the correct size kdp have made this very   simple for us because they've created this new  cover a calculator and template form and all   you need to do is select your binding type so  we select hard cover interior type and most are   black and white unless you want to create a color  interior however i do warn you if you do create a   cover interior the print costs are going to be a  lot higher which may then cause issues with your
• 06:00 - 06:30 pricing you may end up pricing it too high and  pricing yourself out to the market so most books   no no content books and low content books will  be in black and white now paper type i normally   just choose white paper page turn direction for  normal books is left to right measurement units   we're going to would be working in inches interior  trim size six by nine inches and the page count as   we've mentioned is 120 we can click on calculate  dimensions and then click on download template
• 06:30 - 07:00 and when we've downloaded our template this is  what it will look like now the background of the   book has to go to the edge of this pink border  which is called a bleed area and any content that   you don't want to lose any important content such  as the title of the book any particular graphics   has to be within this pink margin anything outside  or in this pink margin does risk getting cut off
• 07:00 - 07:30 so all important content should be within  this white area and the same goes for any   title that you write down the spine here now the  important data we want from this is this here   which is the overall dimensions which is going  to be the overall size of our template so we're   going to make a note of this here which is 14.034  inches by 10.417 inches now in order to create our   cover we're going to be doing this in canva and  you can sign up for free on canva get your free
• 07:30 - 08:00 account and the reason we're using this is because  it's accessible to most people via the internet   it's free of charge and it's a very simple way  of creating a basic book cover when you do get   more advanced and want to try new things you can  then go on to use things like adobe illustrator   or affinity designer which is what i use or  software like graphic designer or inkscape so now   we've got the dimensions for our template cover  we go over to canva and here in the top right
• 08:00 - 08:30 right hand corner we click on custom size now this  step is important because a lot of people make a   mistake here straight away and that's the units  here it says px for pixels we want to change that   to inches if you don't change it you'll end up  creating your cover and when you try to upload   it it will come out all wrong on the platform so  in here we put in the size of our cover and click   on create new design and it will give us our  blank template from which we're going to work
• 08:30 - 09:00 now what we need to do is just click on the upload  box there on the left hand side and we want to   upload that template to the canva platform so just  find where you've downloaded it on your computer   and you want to upload the dot png version so just  drag that across i've already done this once but   we'll do it again and we can click on that or just  drag it across and we'll move that into the top
• 09:00 - 09:30 left corner it will click into place and we drag  that down to the bottom right hand corner and we   want to lock that into place so just click on the  the lock top right hand corner next is we want the   background for our cover now you could do this  simply by clicking on elements clicking on the   square shape and just moving that to the top  corner and just dragging into position like so   and changing the color to whatever you like but  i want something slightly different so it's going
• 09:30 - 10:00 to delete that and are going to go back over to  canva now on canva i went to the graphics menu   and clicked on backgrounds and here we have a  variety of different backgrounds we can use and   i quite like the look of this old vintage style  background so i'll go ahead and click on that   and download it now you'll notice here it says  commercial and full pod usage allowed pod stands   for print on demand so it means that you can use  these graphical elements in books that are print   on demand so you've got the full license to do  that which is important so go ahead and click
• 10:00 - 10:30 on download then we'll go back to canva click on  the upload tab again and from where i downloaded   the background it's going to drag that across into  our upload file again and you can see here i've   already done that so i'm just going to before it  downloads go ahead and click on that so now what   we can do keeping that in the center just drag to  the top then just enlarge it by dragging down drag
• 10:30 - 11:00 to the right drag to the left and that will make  sure that this is all in the center and we want   to make this a bit transparent so click here top  right hand corner on transparency and reduce that   to around about say 50 percent and that is so that  we can see our template underneath and make sure   that our content that we want to keep is within  this area now first of all we want to title so   we're going to go to text and you've got all  these different texts that you can choose from
• 11:00 - 11:30 and these are all free now as a side note when  using elements from canva i would suggest making   sure you make yourself familiar with the licensing  agreement and here you have the basics and the   free content licenses you can upgrade on canva to  the pro version and that gives you extra licenses   if you like but for the free versions it's all  explained here now a lot of people do ask me about   licensing and can i use this can i use that  unfortunately i'm not a trademark or copyright
• 11:30 - 12:00 lawyer or licensing lawyer so i wouldn't take my  advice as a legal advice anyway but it's something   that you do need to make yourself familiar with  but most of the free content here you can use   to create your books so we're going to use this  font here so i'm just going to click on it and   i want to get rid of this bit at the top here  where it says happy so it's going to delete that   i'm just going to drag that  across make it a bit smaller
• 12:00 - 12:30 and this is going to be a travel journal now  holding down option left clicking my mouse i   can drag that above which will create a copy don't  double click on that click on the bottom section   writing journal and i'm going to move this just  across like so shift click on both of them just   reduce the size slightly and move that to around  about here when i'm positioning text on a book   cover i tend to divide the book into thirds and  have the title either along the line of the bottom
• 12:30 - 13:00 third or along the line of the top third it's  just tends to be a bit more visually appealing   now we want some graphical elements on this now  on canva you've got these free graphical elements   available and click on see all and you can see  what's available here anything with a crown   like this one here is only available in the pro  version but the others are available in the free
• 13:00 - 13:30 version and to get information on each graphical  element you can click on the three dots like so   and it will give you a bit of information about  the licensing for a particular graphical element   and you can just click on those drag them across  change the size rotate it etc but i want something   a bit more fancier so i'm going to go back to  creative fabrica and this time i put in travel   and i like the look of these travel sketches  clip art so i went ahead and downloaded those
• 13:30 - 14:00 going to go back to my travel journal cover go  to where i've downloaded my graphical elements   and again drag a few of these into the upload  box and it's very simple you just drag across   and it will find itself into the upload section  and then when you've done that it's just a case of   clicking on them like so and then just changing  the size moving it into the position that you   like so i'm going to have this airplane  here move that like so and have this balloon
• 14:00 - 14:30 it's going to move into place down here suitcase  again i'm doing this very quick you'll probably   want to spend a bit more time than what i'm doing  and we'll have this picture of a camera here and i   think this will make you know decent sort of cover  like so now if we click away from our graphics   click on the background that we downloaded  go to the transparency box at the top
• 14:30 - 15:00 and just increase the transparency and there  you can now see that we have our cover for   our travel journal and the next thing is  we need to download this as a pdf file   which will then be ready to upload to amazon now  in order to do that top right hand corner click on   download and we want to choose pdf you have two  options here pdf standard pdf print click on pdf   print this is the high quality version which  is what we want and you just click on download
• 15:00 - 15:30 that will download the pdf version of the cover  that we've created which will be ready to upload   to the amazon platform and then in part two to  this video i'll show you how to take this cover   take the interior put it together with  all the other elements and upload it to   the kdp platform and then you'll become your  your own self-published author or or publisher   now when that video is published i'll leave a link  to it up here in the meantime you might want to
• 15:30 - 16:00 check out the book tutorial playlist that i've  got down here which goes through other aspects   of publishing books in more detail so thank you  very much for your time it's very much appreciated   don't forget to hit the subscribe button and  turn notifications on and until next time goodbye