Publishing on Kindle Books SA

Are you a South African author with an unpublished manuscript? Consider submitting your novel to the Kindle Books publishing platform .We give preference to Southern African authors, and Afrikaans books!

Important: Kindle Books SA reserves the right to accept or reject any book for their platform, and  it is in their sole discretion to decide whether a book or author can be considered South African.

Kindle Books SA is linked to private publishing companies in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. If you are a national or international publisher, please contact us to distribute your authors.

We don’t want to create expectations of instant wealth for authors! Sales here in South Africa are sluggish – people buy but then don’t pay, and many people only download only free books. However we're hoping people will run through all the "freebies" at some point,and then start looking for some good reads!

What do we need

Listing is free - we charge a 30% commission on the selling price of the book. If the book is offered free, we do not charge.

This site is not self-publishing, please email the information listed below to get your book listed on the site. We reserve the right to accept or reject manuscripts - please see "Quality" below.

Please email kindlebookssa@gmail.com

1. The "file". Our primary format is a Kindle AZW or .mobi. Please use Amazon's Kindle Reader to check the quality of your file before sending. If you also have it as an ePub file we will offer that as an option.
2. If you have it only as a Word, Txt, or other format the file will need to be converted. Many companies offer this service. Because of comebacks, we recommend finding a local supplier even if it is more expensive than having it done in India or China.
3. Cover image. We try to maintain consistency to suit the grid - the best dimension is 600 pixels high by 400 pixels wide.
4.  A “blurb” about the book. We reserve the right to edit blurbs for length and content to suit our audience.
5. The price you would like to sell it (Rands) including our handling fee of 30%. See the note on pricing below.If you are building readership, you might be prepared to offer the book free – you are more likely to get readers.
6. A category. Either select one or more of our current categories, or you are welcome to suggest a new category.
7. A paragraph "About the Author"
8. A website or Twitter account for this author

Maintaining Quality on the site

The international market is very quick to take advantage of this type of site (both as authors and readers), but in order to ensure good quality content:

• We do not accept "sponsored" eBooks about Internet Marketing and other non-fiction topics that are thinly disguised advertising (and a great many are scams).
• We do not accept books that have an obvious political or religious agenda,
• We do not accept any book where the “seller” is not the authorised author or proxy (i.e. scanned versions of novels already in print).
• Where books are royalty-free (older books) they are offered free.

Kindle Books SA reserves the right to delete the accounts of readers where we believe the account is being misused in any way.

Publishing Rights

Kindle books SA does not limit your copyright or publishing rights in any way. Due to the small South African market of Kindle and iPad readers, authors are encouraged to publish to international platforms such as Amazon & Smashwords.

Kindle Books SA respects the information provided by our authors that the creative work they provide us is their own, and that they have the rights to distribute it. Authors with publishing contracts should be aware that a print contract might include digital rights, even if the publisher has chosen not to exercise them. Authors, please read your contracts carefully before sending creative work for Kindle Books SA to publish.

If ANY book on the site contravenes copyright law or contract law, please let us know immediately and we will temporarily take the book off our booklist until the matter has been resolved satisfactorily between author, publisher, agent and offended party.

Our Fees to list your book

Listing is free.

This site is not self-publishing, please email the information listed above to get your book listed on the site. We reserve the right to accept or reject manuscripts - please see "Quality" above.

Kindle Books handles the administration of making the book available, handling sales, making files available, checking and approving book reviews, security etc.

If you offer the book as EFT payment only and give us the AZW and ePub format, we charge a handling fee of 30% on sales, which covers bank charges and administration. For higher priced eBooks, the handling fee may be reduced - please contact us.

If you offer the book on free and give us the AZW and ePub format, we don’t charge at all to have the book available on the site.

Payments are made at the end of each month or quarter, depending on sales volumes. Because of bank fees, the minimum payment for a period is R100. Where authors are international, we pay into your PayPal account.

Pricing your Book

In terms of pricing your book, we feel the market could probably carry about R10-R15  for a novel, but a children’s book may well be less. Short Stories and Poetry tend to be offered free, as sales are so low.

It is up to you to make your decision on what the market will bear, based on your objectives. You can also ask us to change the price if we find that the book isn’t selling well, or if you feel that it can carry a larger price.

If you would like any further information please don’t hesitate to ask. If you would like to add an article to the site about your experiences in publishing for the interest of our readers, please email it to us. We give a website link and full credit on every article which is good for your search engine ranking and publicity.

Recommended pricing:

• Novella less than 50 000 words: Selling price R9, author receives R6
• Novel: Selling price R12, author receives R8