You’ve taken the first step in submitting an app to the Amazon Appstore – you’ve created a compelling app or game for Android!  Either that or you’re reading this post to learn more about what’s to come in the store itself – we understand, it’s exciting.  Regardless – if you’re an app developer or you’re just plain old curious, we’ll bottom line the submission process for you.  It’s straight forward – you did the hard work and we want to make submitting to the store easy.

There are three steps to getting your app into the Amazon Appstore for Android: create an account, submit your app, and make your app available.

The first step is creating an account.  This is the easy part – you can create an account directly on the Amazon Appstore Developer Portal.  For a limited time, we’re waiving the $99 program fee to make getting started even easier (or at least cheaper … free) . It’s free to register for a developer account. Go to the Amazon Appstore Developer Portal to create your account. 

You’ll be asked for the following information:

• Profile Information: this is the information we’ll associate with your account and use to talk about you, the developer; in the Profile Information section is a “Developer Info” field – this is public facing and should be a short blurb about who you are
• Acceptance of our agreement (you can also print and save the agreement from the Portal)
• Payment Information: this is what we need to be able to pay you based on app sales

After setting up your account, you’ll need to submit your apk file as well as marketing materials that complement your app.  Marketing materials include details about your app, images, and video.

We will ask for the following details about your app:

• Application Information: The application title, category, and description will help with the marketing of your app and may show up on product detail pages.  If there are keywords you think will help with the discoverability of your app, include them!  Do make sure the keywords are relevant, though (don’t put multi-player if it’s truly a single player app).
• Product Availability Schedule: This information lets us know the earliest we can display an application in the store as well as when/if we need to pull the application down. 
• Application Support: The contact that Amazon should work with to troubleshoot any problems with the application.  This information will not be listed with your app.
• Content Maturity: When you post your app, you will select different content ratings as applicable.  We’ll also check these when we’re testing the app.  Some developers have ESRB ratings for their app – if you have one, include it!  That too will help with the marketing of your app.

You can find out more about what’s specifically required for images and video online here.   It’s important that the images and video you submit are yours (you have the rights to use these images and video) and that they’re reflective of the app itself.  An image with some upset birds for a finance app that helps with taxes wouldn’t do anyone any good.

That’s it – after you open up your account and submit your assets you’re app and details will be in review.  You can track the approval status of your app at any time by logging into the Developer Portal and finding your app in the “Dashboard” on the portal home page.