Open a record to "Add a New Title" on the digital-text-platform Bookshelf page. Fill in title, author, series information and catalog copy to appear in Amazon.com's sales pages.
Upload a prepared JPEG image for your book's cover. It does not need to be elaborate and may contain only text. If it does contain photographs or drawings, you must hold the rights to use them, either because you created them or because you've purchased rights from another creator.
Upload your text file from any supported format, including Microsoft Word, PDF or HTML.
Enter your preferences to restrict access to your book, and choose how much Amazon.com will charge for downloading your book. If your price is between $2.99 and $9.99, you can select to receive a royalty of 70 percent on sales, but you can price your book for as little as 99 cents, or indeed more than $10, and receive a royalty of 35 percent. Amazon.com collects the sales price for you and pays your royalties into your Amazon.com account. For uploading a large book, a small delivery fee may be deducted. Your book becomes available on Amazon.com within 48 hours.
Lay out any combination of text and illustrations, even high-resolution photographs, in a multiple of four pages, including covers, with each page measuring 8-1/2 by 11 inches. MagCloud provides templates for Adobe InDesign, as well as generic formats for other desktop publishing applications. The printed magazine will be trimmed, so you can have full bleeds, where illustrations go all the way to the edges of the page. Export your file as a PDF.
Log on to MagCloud.com and click "Publish." Enter a title, optional subtitle and brief description of your magazine.
Click "Create First Issue" and enter an optional issue title. Set visibility as public if you plan to market your publication widely on the Web, or private if it will be available only to a list you determine.
Upload your prepared PDF file from your hard drive. When it finishes and your front cover appears, click "Show Preview" to page through your magazine as it will appear to customers.
Order a free proof of your magazine or go ahead and publish it for immediate availability on the MagCloud website and also through a link you can use on your site and in social networking and blogs. Go back to the Publish tab and set any price you want for your magazine. When you or any customer orders one or more copies of your magazine, your PDF will be transferred to an independent printer that uses high-end Hewlett-Packard equipment. Just the copies ordered will be printed, bound and mailed directly to the person or entity that ordered them. MagCloud will send you the money paid by your reader, less a fee of 20 cents per page, as of 2010. The reader pays for the postage.