I wrote my first self-published book around 1995. That was a PDF document sold from my website via a service called Clickbank. Later I 'graduated' to self-publishing via Lulu. I enjoyed both kinds of self-publishing, but recently I decided to write a book and publish it as a Kindle book on Amazon.

The main reason for my decision may be summarised in one word: reach. Amazon has a much wider potential audience than my website. I also believe that the way they market books -- 'People who bought this also bought... -- is probably second to none.

Thus it was that at the start of November 2016 I launched my first Kindle book:

I'm hoping to write about my experiences of the process, eg formatting and so on, as a free report for subscribers to my newsletter, Reviews for Writers.

So far, I'm quite pleased with the way you can publish a book and have it available for sale really quickly. I also like the control you have, over changing the text, the colour, the price and other variables, such as where it's sold.

As everyone says, though, the publishing bit is just the first stage of the process. You have to then market the thing. Whether or not I'm successful at that remains to be seen.

Would I recommend self-publishing with Amazon? From what I've seen so far, yes. I found the process fairly straightforward, but you do have to read their guidelines, eg about cover dimensions. 

Also, although I'm not a tax expert, I think it's a good idea, if you're not a US resident, to go through the taxation exemption form. Basically, if your country of residence has a reciprocal tax arrangement with the USA, you can opt to be taxed by your own counity rather than the USA's. The USA tax withholding is 30%, so this is worth looking into. However, like I said, I'm not a tax expert so I'm not giving advice here!

Now that I've published my first Kindle book I'm intending to post more regularly here -- and to publish my second Kindle book as soon as possible!

If you decide to buy my book, I'd really appreciate a review of it on Amazon. Thanks!