For the past many years, authors like me have supplemented their book and article-writing income by selling e-books. Promoting and selling e-books was a quick and easy way to re-purpose short stories, magazine articles, and books (fiction and non-fiction) with virtually no overhead.

The good news: profits were high; the bad news – - sales were dependent on the author’s ability to drive traffic to a website.

Thanks to Amazon’s Kindle Electronic Reading Device, all that has changed.

Now you can sell your creative works (fiction or non-fiction), set your own price, and have a potential audience of the tens of thousands of Kindle owners.

Because the bulk of my writing career has been in the magazine article writing field, I owned a huge backlog of articles and their electronic rights. When the Kindle was released, I realized I could convert all of those articles to Kindle format, create an attractive cover, and sell them through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform.

A Little Background on Kindle Publishing

I started by converting one non-fiction article I had written a few years ago for a history magazine. The topic was post-Civil War carpetbaggers. Okay, not a sexy subject, huh? That’s why I was shocked to look at my account a few weeks later and realize I’d actually sold three copies.

Since then I’ve posted several more articles and am converting four of my e-books to Kindle format. Hopefully as you read this, those books and even more of my articles will be online in the Kindle store.Before you can start selling your digital documents in the Kindle Store, you’ll need to set up an account with Amazon.

If you’ve been buying books from Amazon, you already have an account. However, you’ll have to take the extra step and give Amazon the business and financial information necessary to pay you.

Setting Up Your Kindle Publisher Account

First, go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform page and sign in with your normal Amazon account username and password. If you don’t have an Amazon account, click the “Sign Up” button.

Once your account is open, log in and click the “My Account” tab. Here, you’ll configure your account details, including your full name or company name, the type of business you have (corporation, individual, etc), and your bank account information. (You DO want to get paid, yes?)

Tomorrow, let’s prepare your book or articles for uploading to the Kindle Store.