Amazon KDP Kindle Direct Publishing: Official Overview

Okay so Amazon KDP is basically the self-publishing platform that changed everything for people like us who don’t wanna deal with traditional publishing gatekeepers. I’ve been using it since 2017 and honestly it’s wild how much money you can make if you just understand the system.

Getting Your Account Set Up

First thing you gotta do is go to kdp.amazon.com and create an account. They’re gonna ask for tax info right away which is annoying but necessary. You’ll need either a SSN if you’re in the US or you’ll fill out this W-8BEN form if you’re international. The tax interview seems complicated but just answer honestly and it figures itself out.

One thing I messed up early on – make sure the name on your account matches your bank account EXACTLY. I had my account under “Daniel Harper” but my bank was “D. Michael Harper” and it delayed my first payment by like 6 weeks. Super frustrating.

The Dashboard Overview

Once you’re in, the dashboard is where you’ll spend most of your time. Left sidebar has everything – your bookshelf where all your books live, reports for tracking sales, and community stuff which honestly I never use.

The bookshelf is your main hub. Every book you publish shows up here with real-time data on how many pages people are reading through KDP Select (more on that in a sec), sales units, and royalties earned. I check this probably 5 times a day even though I know the data only updates every few hours.

Understanding the Two Main Royalty Options

This is where people get confused. Amazon gives you two royalty structures for ebooks – 35% and 70%. The 70% option sounds like a no-brainer but there’s catches.

For 70% royalty you need to:

• Price your book between $2.99 and $9.99
• The book has to be available in certain territories
• Amazon charges delivery fees based on file size (usually like 15 cents per MB)
• Your book can’t be available for less elsewhere

The 35% option lets you price from $0.99 to $200 which is crazy wide. I use 35% for my super cheap lead magnets at $0.99 and for my premium guides over $9.99. Most of my catalog sits at $4.99 with the 70% option though because that’s the sweet spot.

Oh and another thing – delivery fees on 70% can actually eat into your royalties if you’ve got a image-heavy book. My first cookbook was like 50MB and the delivery fees were almost $7 per sale. Had to optimize all those images down to get it under 20MB.

KDP Select vs Wide Distribution

Okay so this is probably the biggest decision you’ll make. KDP Select means your ebook is exclusive to Amazon for 90 days at a time. In exchange you get:

• Access to Kindle Unlimited where readers pay $12/month for unlimited reading
• You earn about $0.004 per page read through KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages)
• Free promotion days – 5 days per 90-day period
• Countdown deals

Going “wide” means you can publish on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, etc. You don’t get KU but you’re not locked into Amazon.

I tested this extensively in 2019. Took 50 books and kept 25 in KDP Select and put 25 wide. After 6 months the KDP Select books made about 3x more money. The page reads from Kindle Unlimited are insane – I’ve had months where 80% of my income was KU page reads, not actual sales.

But here’s the thing… if you’re writing fiction with a loyal following, wide might work better. My non-fiction and low-content stuff absolutely crushes it in KU though.

Uploading Your First Book

Click the big yellow “Create” button and you’ll see options for Kindle eBook, Paperback, or Hardcover. Let’s start with ebook since it’s the easiest.

You’ll fill in metadata – title, subtitle, author name, description, keywords (7 of them), categories (you get 2). This metadata is HUGE for discoverability. I spent my first year just randomly picking categories and keywords and made maybe $200 total. Once I learned keyword research everything changed.

For the manuscript itself, Amazon accepts:

• Word doc files (.doc or .docx)
• HTML files
• EPUB files
• Text files
• PDFs (but they can be wonky)

I always use Word docs because they’re the most reliable. Format your manuscript with consistent heading styles, page breaks between chapters, and make sure there’s no weird spacing issues. The KDP previewer will show you exactly how it’ll look on different devices.

Cover design – you can use their free Cover Creator tool but honestly it looks pretty amateur. I use Canva Pro for most of my covers now. The required dimensions are minimum 1000 pixels on the shortest side, and they recommend 1600×2560 for best quality.

Wait I forgot to mention – your cover can make or break your sales. I had this productivity planner that wasn’t selling at all, changed just the cover keeping everything else the same, and sales jumped 400%. People absolutely judge books by covers on Amazon.

Pricing Strategy That Actually Works

This is gonna sound weird but I’ve found pricing at $4.99 or $6.99 works way better than $2.99. The $2.99 crowd expects it to be amateur hour. At $4.99 you’re positioned as a real book but still affordable.

For low-content books like journals and planners, I go between $6.99-$9.99 depending on page count. My 200-page planners are usually $8.99 and they sell consistently.

Paperbacks are different – you gotta account for printing costs. Amazon calculates this based on page count, ink type (black or color), and paper type (white or cream). A 200-page black and white paperback costs about $3.50 to print. I usually price those at $12.99-$14.99 to leave room for decent royalties.

The Publishing Process Timeline

Once you hit publish, your ebook usually goes live within 24-72 hours. Paperbacks take longer, sometimes up to 5 days because they do a more thorough review. Hardcovers are the slowest at like a week.

Amazon reviews every book for content guidelines. They’re looking for:

• Public domain content that’s not in public domain
• Low-quality or nonsense content
• Trademark or copyright violations
• Content that violates their policies (adult content without proper categories, etc)

I’ve had books rejected 3 times total out of 200+ uploads. Twice it was because I used a celebrity name in my keywords (apparently that’s a no-no even if the book is about them). Once it was because my interior was “too low quality” – I had accidentally uploaded a draft version with lorem ipsum text still in it. My dog had jumped on my laptop right as I was uploading and I didn’t notice.

Reports and Tracking Sales

The sales dashboard updates throughout the day but isn’t real-time. You’ll see orders from about 8 hours ago. Month-to-date sales are pretty accurate though.

The reports section has everything:

• Sales by marketplace (US, UK, Germany, etc)
• Prior month royalties
• Ad campaign performance if you’re running KDP ads
• KDP Select performance showing page reads

Payment happens about 60 days after the end of the month. So January sales get paid out in March. They’ll deposit directly to your bank account or you can get paid via check or wire transfer.

One annoying thing – you need to hit minimum thresholds. $100 for direct deposit in the US, higher amounts for other countries and payment methods. When I first started I’d have these tiny amounts sitting there for months before hitting the threshold.

Print on Demand for Paperbacks

Amazon’s POD system is honestly incredible. You don’t hold any inventory – they print books as people order them. The quality is pretty solid too, I’d say 8/10 compared to traditional offset printing.

For paperback setup you’ll need:

• Interior PDF with proper margins and bleed
• Cover PDF that wraps around (spine width is calculated based on page count)
• ISBN – Amazon provides free ones or you can use your own

The cover calculator tool is super helpful because getting spine width wrong means your cover gets rejected. I’ve learned to always add an extra 0.5mm to Amazon’s calculated spine width just to be safe.

Trim sizes available are pretty standard – 6×9 is most common for non-fiction, 5×8 for novels, 8.5×11 for workbooks and planners. I’ve published in probably 8 different trim sizes at this point.

Marketing Tools Inside KDP

Amazon has built-in promo tools that are actually useful. The free promo days through KDP Select are powerful – I’ve given away 5,000+ copies in a single day which then boost your rank and visibility when you go back to paid.

Countdown Deals let you temporarily discount your book and Amazon shows the regular price crossed out with the sale price. These work great during holidays.

KDP Ads is their self-service advertising platform. You bid on keywords and your book shows up in search results and on other book pages. I spend about $300/month on ads and it’s usually profitable if you target the right keywords. But that’s a whole other conversation we should have sometime.

Common Mistakes I See People Make

Using the same keywords in all 7 slots – Amazon wants variety so you can rank for different searches. I use a mix of broad and specific terms.

Not filling out the book description properly – you get HTML formatting options here. Use headers, bold text, bullet points. Make it scannable.

Choosing terrible categories – you get 2 but you can email KDP support and ask for up to 10 total categories. More categories means more chances to hit bestseller badges.

Ignoring the “Look Inside” feature – the first 10% of your book is previewable. If your first chapter sucks or you frontload it with too much filler, people won’t buy. I always put my best content early now.

Publishing without an author profile – Author Central lets you add a bio, photos, and links to your website. It makes you look more legit and professional.

International Marketplaces

Your book automatically goes live on all Amazon marketplaces – US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, and Brazil. You earn royalties in local currencies.

I make about 30% of my income from non-US markets. The UK is huge for me, probably 20% of total sales. Germany and Japan are surprisingly good too even though my books are in English.

You can set different prices for different markets or let Amazon automatically convert. I usually just let them handle it because trying to optimize pricing for 13 marketplaces is exhausting.

Okay so that’s the main overview of how KDP actually works from someone who’s been in the trenches for 7 years. The platform keeps evolving – they just added hardcover options last year which opened up premium pricing opportunities. There’s honestly so much more I could say about algorithms and ranking and specific niches that work but this covers the foundational stuff you need to get started and actually make money.