Kindle won't let me sell my e-book for less than $2.99. I'm sorry; I really didn't want to go over $2, but Amazon has left me no choice. (Then again, if the book sells at $3, I won't complain.) Anyway, the good news is that I've uploaded the e-book after using the Kindle Create software, which proved easy enough to figure out. I did have to spend a lot of time tweaking the original MS Word doc, though, to get it right (creating table-of-contents links to individual chapters was a pain). Luckily, Create comes with a preview function so you can see what your e-book is going to look like on tablets and cell phones. This allowed me not only to iron out alignment issues, but also to let me figure out front-matter formatting. The Amazon site had helpful hints on how to format your MS Word doc to make it easier to convert to Kindle's .kpf format. Turns out I didn't need Bowker's .epub software, after all. Kind of a waste to shell out all that cash. Caveat emptor. Of course, .epub is a more general file format while .kpf is specific to Kindle, so if I decide to diversify and sell my e-book through different e-book sites, I'm going to have to make an .epub version at some point.
The Amazon site says the e-book can take up to 72 hours to appear on Amazon.com. I still need to get my book copyrighted (I bought Bowker software for that), and I have to confirm my "worldwide distribution" rights, but aside from that, the e-book is, in theory, good to go.
There were a couple quirks that I couldn't iron out, but I shrugged and decided those quirks were too minor to sweat over. They mainly had to do with bulleted lists: sometimes, the space between a bullet and a list item was wide; sometimes, it was narrow. Nothing I tried could correct the problem, so I guess it's just a quirk of the conversion process from MS Word to .kpf format. In other words, the e-book will have some flaws not of my making.
What an intense few days this has been! As you might imagine, I'm ecstatic right now: my little book is going to start selling, and I'll get right to trying to market it. I'm not a fan of Reddit, but I might dip my toe in whatever homeschooling subreddits exist (and I'll probably be deluged by the tidal wave of good material already out there), but if I get a few nibbles, and those nibbles become word-of-mouth, maybe this will lead to something. Selling even a couple thousand copies would be very nice, indeed, although that may be a lot to hope for. Still, I think the time is right, and I'm far from the only one jumping on the homeschooling bandwagon. We'll see how sales go. Try me again in a few months. Meantime, once the link to my e-book is available, I'll be sure to slap it up right here.
UPDATE: copyright-filing process initiated. I've submitted my info and have to wait 24 or so hours before receiving instructions on fee payment. Not long after, I ought to end up with an official certificate of copyright.
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