A book can go live on Amazon with only three or four of these ten jobs done, and nothing stops it. What the missing jobs change is what happens after someone finishes reading. A reader who enjoyed chapter forty and then finds no next book, no series order and no way to hear from you again is a reader you paid to acquire once.
So the running order matters. The rule this post uses is connect before feed. Connecting means the machinery that catches a reader who liked the book: the next title in the back matter, the series page, the signup that gets them onto your list. Feeding means traffic, whether that is Amazon ads, a BookBub Featured Deal, newsletter swaps or a promo stack. Feed a book that has no connection layer and you are buying one-off readers at full price.
Moves one to four: the book itself
Professional editing comes first because everything downstream is built on it. Whether you need a developmental edit, a line edit, a copy edit or all three depends on the draft, and a good editor will tell you which after a sample.
Then commission a cover that reads as your genre at thumbnail size. Browse the top fifty in the category you actually want to sit in, note what the covers have in common, and brief your designer against that rather than against the scene in your head.
Format for ebook and print as separate jobs, because they are. An EPUB reflows and a paperback interior does not, and print needs trim size, margins, gutter and a wrapped cover with a spine measured to your page count.
Write the sales description last of the four. It is ad copy for the book, so it opens with the hook rather than a synopsis, and it earns the click that everything else depends on.
Moves five and six: where the book sits
Choosing your best entry point means deciding which book a stranger should meet you through. For a series that is usually book one, priced low or free, with the series clearly labelled. For standalones it is whichever book converts browsers best, and that is worth testing rather than assuming.
Retailer metadata is the plumbing. On KDP you get three categories per format, so an ebook, a paperback and a hardback each carry their own three, and Amazon stopped taking emailed requests for extra categories back in 2023. You also get seven keyword fields, which work best as reader-language phrases rather than single words. If you have a series, set the series name and numbering so Amazon builds the series page for you.
Moves seven and eight: the connect layer
Build the list with a reader magnet, which is a short prequel, a bonus scene, a starter library or a genuinely useful resource for non-fiction. The magnet needs to attract the reader who will buy your next book, not the widest possible audience, otherwise you are paying to host people who will never open anything.
Then wire the back matter. The last page of book one should offer the first chapter of book two, a direct link to buy it, and a signup for the list. Do that in every book you have, including the ones published years ago, since it costs an upload and nothing else.
Moves nine and ten: launch and measurement
Plan launch emails as a short sequence rather than one blast: an announcement, a reminder near release, and one after. Pricing sits alongside that. Amazon pays 70% on ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 in eligible marketplaces, with a delivery fee deducted from that royalty, and 35% outside the band. Amazon has said the upper limit rises to $12.99 on Amazon.com from July 2026.
After launch, track read-through instead of launch-week sales. The rough calculation is book two sales divided by book one sales over the same period, times one hundred, and you compare like periods rather than lifetime totals. If you are in Kindle Unlimited, page reads belong in that picture too. Read-through tells you what a new reader is worth, which is the number that decides whether ads make sense.
If you feed first
Running ads before the connect layer exists is not wasted in the sense that you learn something, but you learn it expensively. Get the back matter, the list and the next book in place, then spend.
•BulletPoint Publishing gives you the connect layer in one place: author website, mailing list, direct ebook sales, ARC distribution and press kit, for one flat monthly fee instead of five separate subscriptions. Have a look at the Toolchest and see what you would be replacing.