Well, given I have spent all morning wandering around the Amazon (website that is!) - it sometimes certainly feels like a jungle!
Amazon has an uncanny ability to anticipate your needs - want a shop front (sure!) want an author profile (be their guest!) need to set up accounts in foreign countries (like Australia - absolutely), loading books like 100,000 others this month (easy) - yet there are a couple of things you can do to make life noticeably simpler.
1. Plan! 'Pantsers' can find it challenging!
Before you even start - have a good look at the site, the shops, the services. Decide what you want from Amazon. It is really important to set up your account with the end goal in mind. I did the opposite (learning the hard way) and have been winging it - which is tricky! Now I can't set up an Amazon page, because the brand 'Boogie Books for Child Writes' is not clear defined! I have two email accounts linked to Amazon - one for my Kindle and so my own reading, and the other with Child Writes. Of course, now I want to use the Boogie Books email to set up a page... and it goes on!
2. Know your file extensions!
PDF can load to kindle - did you know that? If you go into your own Kindle account settings, you will see your unique email address. If you send yourself a PDF, it will load to your kindle. Easy? Not so fast Mario! It is not flow text (it is fixed page) so you may not want to 'share' beyond the need to satisfy your own curiosity!
You need a '.mobi' file and there are certainly conversion tools available on Amazon and yes, it can convert PDF fixed page picture books. So much easier to deal with a novel - why didn't anyone tell me this earlier :)
3. Share, share, SHOUT!
As I was typing this catastrophe, demonstrating how little I know about Amazon, but how much fun I am having... there were 3,418.594 eBooks available. How is that for competition! It is important that you already have set up your web page, your Facebook, twitter, instagram, linkedin - whatever social media, as well as having prepared press releases, blogs, and you have in hand reviews. You cajole your nearest and dearest to start writing reviews for your book and you share this too - and it goes on.
What is deeply satisfying, is once you have gone through the process of sending your book to Amazon, having decided if you are going to be a member of Author Central and offer one location only for your book to be sold (Kindle Select), or choosing the general option, so you can continue to more broadly distribute your book... you will hopefully experience delight in seeing your book being available, should sensible shoppers choose it, in countries around the globe!
Remember though - it is just like any other means of distribution - you can't rest on your laurels. To be successful with Amazon means a lot of hard work!
Now, where is my vine - I need to swing out of here and get back to Amazon :)