Below are tips from my experience with self-publishing.

According to various sources 30 - 34% of the ebooks sold on Amazon are written by self-publishing authors. Amazon adds approximately 4 million books to its site annually. That's a lot of self-published books.

Amazon offers a free publishing platform that permits authors to upload their manuscripts and covers to Amazon which publishes the books as ebooks and physical paperbacks/hardcovers on Amazon. The publishing platform, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is separate from the Amazon shopping site but can be accessed with one's Amazon shopping account ID after creating an account on www.KDP.Amazon.com.

In theory, an author can upload their manuscript and book cover through KDP. Many authors do that but the manuscript and cover must be on files formatted to KDP standards. For me, the word format is a red flag because I know if an error is possible, I'll make it. So I worked with a group, Word2Kindle which for a fee formats and uploads manuscripts and covers to KDP. For a fee W2K offers other services including editing, cover design and creates advertising files featuring the book that can be added to webpages, facebook pages or any other site.