Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1

Publishing Your App to the Google Play Store

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating a developer account

Prepping your code

Uploading your app

First-time app publishing is both exciting and scary. It's exciting because, after months of development work, you're finally doing something “real” with your app. It's scary because you're exposing your app to the public. You're afraid of pressing the wrong button on the Google Play developer page and accidentally telling the world that your app kills kittens.

Well, you can relax about killing kittens. The Google Play developer page helps you get things right. And if you get something wrong, you can correct it pretty quickly. As for the excitement of publishing, there's nothing quite like it.

In this chapter, you take those courageous steps. You create a developer account and publish your first app.

Creating a Google Play Developer Account

Choosing Android for your app platform has some distinct advantages. To develop for the iPhone, you pay an annual $99 fee. Over a ten-year period, that's about a thousand bucks. As an Android developer, working over the same ten-year period, you pay $25. That's all.

To create a Google Play developer account, ...