How to Write a Book and Sell it on Amazon

It is very important to get the logics and reasoning right for the readers to believe in your story. I have received a lot of compliments for all the characters in the story as they seemed very real.

In a recent interview I was asked, what is more important...the story or the characters ?

My answer was that the story is like a drawing one creates but characters are like paints which add colour to the story. Both are interdependent on each other and the success of the book lies in both the story and characters complimenting each other.


Originally the book, It Happens was 10000 words as I explained in my earlier blog. It took me five weeks to rewrite and convert it into a 38000 word book. On one Sunday in the month of June with the rain pouring, it was a nice day to sit home and do some reading. I was recommended a few management books by my Ascent business group colleagues which I decided to take up. While browsing through the Kindle library I came upon a book nam
ed ‘How to write a Book and Sell it on Amazon' by Jenny Loveless. The title intrigued me and I ended up reading the book over the next 4-5 days.


The book excited me and showed me the outlet for the stories I had written more than a decade ago. I also recommend this book to any budding authors out there. More than the writing part, it gave me a lot of inputs about how amazon works, marketing and promotion tips and much more. After reading the book my mind was made up for becoming a published Author.


Subsequently I got in touch with Create Space a publishing company owned by Amazon which specialises for releasing paperbacks for first time authors. They also undertake book editing, cover design, book interior layout, conversion into ebook format and distribution. Kindle is a separate company and they are more focussed on the digital publishing and areas around it. Simultaneously I did my research on the length of the fiction books which pointed to an average of 70000 words as a good length which in turn translates into approximately 280-300 pages of a standard 5x8 book.

I had a few late nights on phone due to the time difference between India and the USA discussing various issues with the Create space and Kindle teams and understanding the whole process of self publishing. I have to appreciate that the customer service was very helpful. Since I was doing a lot of research on the book writing process, Google through its target marketing put an ad of Notion Press in my inbox. Notion Press is based in Chennai and specialises in publishing books especially for first time authors and works in a way very similar to Create space. They too gave me a quote for various activities in the book publishing process.

However in the end I decided to go for Notion Press as it would be easier to coordinate with an Indian company rather than an American one especially given the time difference. Notion Press too were very professional and accommodating in their approach. They asked me to initially email them the first two chapters of my book along with the blurb to assess the writing style, flow and marketability of the story. I received their positive response within 2 days which indeed was very quick.


Editing the book is probably the most boring but important work. It took Notion Press three weeks to come back to me with the first round of edits. Every subsequent round took lesser time and in all there were 4 rounds of it. The issue while reading the book again and again with every subsequent round of editing is that as an
author you always keep on adding new things. Addition of anything new means that editor needs to relook the same again. By the end of it, I had to literally force myself to stop making any more changes.

Just to give you an idea of the changes, in the 4th and final round of editing I decided to change the name of Gautam’s best friend to Rohit from the original name Malav. I thought that Malav was a slightly uncommon and a more Gujarati name rather than a North Indian and hence Rohit seemed to be more apt. At the end to build a little suspense I added the part of Payal boarding the flight back to Mumbai for Gautam’s wedding. For the final read before the book went for print I actually had to ask my friend to do it as I had developed a blind spot for my own story.

Thus it may feel very boring to read the book again and again but it is definitely worth it as the whole process of editing makes your manuscript even better. A crisply edited book adds to the reading experience.

The book cover was being simultaneously developed while the edit work was on. One of the important points during my research about covers was you should avoid dark covers as in dark blue, black etc as they don't stand out on the colour screens of the kindle app where the background is black. The kindle app has recently updated and now offers both black and white background options to the readers. However my personal opinion is that you should stick to colours which will be easily seen against a black background.

Hence I went with a golden yellow cover. The significance of the two women was to bring out the confusion in Gautam’s mind about the older and the younger woman. I deliberately refrained from mentioning the second woman in the blurb thereby adding to inquisitivity of the reader about her presence on the cover.


The cover is made using silhouettes so that the look of every character is left to the imagination of the reader. Giving a particular face to the character somehow takes away the element of creativity from the reader. I remember when I watched the movie Pelican brief based on the book of the same name b
y John Grisham, I was left very disappointed with the choice of actors as I had developed a different image in my mind while reading the book.

Keep reading the blog and sharing your feedback as my writing experience continues...