Kindle Direct Publishing condensed the entire publishing process to hours: J Alchem

Alchem is a finalist in KDP’s Pen to Publish contest.

“If I said that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has changed my life completely, it wouldn’t be wrong,” says J Alchem, a three-time author and a finalist in KDP’s Pen to Publish contest.

He attributes his success to how quickly and how easily the portal allowed him to get his book out into the wider world. He says his first book – A Road Not Travelled – was published traditionally in 2016. While he says that it was a good experience, he feels the reach was limited. “I had heard a lot about self-publishing and wanted to know how it works,” he says. So for his second and third books – The Highwayman and Undelivered Letters – he opted to self-publish with KDP. Today, he has a global readership. The other advantage: the entire publishing process has been condensed to a matter of hours, instead of months or even years as in the case of traditional publishing.

Alchem, who has written for several magazines, newspapers and has been published in anthologies, says his family was his inspiration to start writing. “As a child, I remember many of my relatives and distant cousins being avid readers. All their homes had bookshelves filled with books. I would see them get lost in a different kind of fantasy world, and wanted to know how it felt. So, what started out as curiosity, ended up being the biggest passion of my life.”

The MBA in Finance and International Business with a corporate day job says a Facebook post about KDP's Pen to Publish contest prompted him to participate. “My entry created curiosity, and I ended up gathering many readers,” he adds.

Sharing how his KDP experience has been different from traditional publishing, Alchem says, “When you submit a manuscript to traditional publishers, it takes months, sometimes years, to get a reply from them. With KDP, you don’t have to wait. If you believe in your manuscript, upload it on the portal and it is available globally within a few hours.”

“The experience was good with every book I have written. I have been continuously learning, and I hope to do so in the future as well,” he says.

He continues, “The best part of KDP is that you are involved in every single step of the journey, both creative and otherwise. In traditional publishing, if you want to make changes to your manuscript, you have to wait for the publisher to do it. But in KDP if you want to add a chapter or change the cover, you can login to the portal, and easily make the changes yourself, which then goes live in a few hours. Further, in traditional publishing, your book is available in some stores only. With KDP, your book is easily accessible by global readers. You can even manage your sales, check the royalty, and find out who your readers are.”

“A writer is hungry for readers, he is hungry for appreciation. Through KDP's Pen to Publish Contest, I’m expecting a huge amount of love from readers across the globe,” he signs off.

Watch this video to know more about how Kindle Direct Publishing helped J Alchem fulfil his dream of easily reaching out to a global reader base.