Authors who have a book that they are ready to publish have two paths: traditional publishing, where a publishing house publishes the book, or self-publishing, where the author publishes the book themselves. If you’ve done research into self-publishing, you may have heard of Amazon KDP, or, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Since Amazon holds at least 80% of the eBook market, you definitely want to make sure that your book is available on their platform. But what is KDP, and how can authors take advantage of it? In this article, we will explore the ins and outs of KDP and KDP Select.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): How Authors Publish Their Books
Amazon’s KDP is one of the tools authors can use to publish their work online. Publishing through KDP makes an eBook available on Amazon to Kindle readers. KDP includes a variety of useful features, including free file conversion, sales tracking, and additional tools to help you format special types of books, like textbooks and children’s books.
KDP’s Self-publishing interface is very straightforward and easy to use. Once you log into the KDP dashboard you’re greeted with the prompt to Create a New Title.
Before you start the publishing process, you want to make sure that you have everything ready. The items that you’ll need when uploading your book are:
1. Your book’s title, subtitle (if applicable) and series name (If applicable), as well as the author name you want to use (whether it’s yours or a pseudonym).
2. A marketing optimized book description.
3. The categories and keywords you want to use. (More information here)
4. The text of your book.
5. A book cover.
6. Which price you’d like to sell your book for.
Once you’ve submitted the above information and hit “Publish” your eBook will be accessible to the Kindle browsing public! For all book alterations, like switching covers, updating descriptions, and changing prices for promotions, authors can use KDP.
But what about KDP Select?
KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited
Once you have uploaded your eBook in Kindle Direct Publishing you have the option of enrolling it in KDP Select. KDP Select is a program that offers a series of additional tools to its partaking authors.
To enroll a title, go to your KDP “Bookshelf” and select the ellipses (…) button to the right of your feature. The fourth option listed is “KDP Select Info.”
Amazon’s guidelines for the eBooks it accepts into KDP Select are stringent, so it would be best to know these before deciding to enroll. Some important things to know include:
1. Enrollment makes your eBook exclusively available in Kindle, meaning it cannot be available for sale on Nook, Apple, or Kobo retail platforms.
2. Enrolling your title in KDP Select gives you the opportunity to earn higher royalties, see more book sales, and reach wider audiences.
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- Once you’ve enrolled, you’ll have access to Kindle Count Down Deals and Free Promotions, two promotional tools available only to members of KDP Select. However, these promotional tools are limited to a certain number of days out of every 90-day enrollment cycle, so promotions of material in KDP Select should be organized and planned well in advance.
- A possible explanation of this claim to higher sales can be found in the terms and conditions. For books enrolled in KDP select, Amazon holds the right to market those titles as they see fit.
3. Any books enrolled in KDP Select are also available to readers through Kindle Unlimited.
If you’d like some more information on Amazon KDP, Kindle Unlimited and what it means for authors you can read more about that here.
Keep in mind, authors do not need to place all their books in KDP Select. Authors can pick and choose which titles they’d like to enroll. We decided to enroll our Holiday cookbook in KDP select, so you can see on the Amazon listing that it is available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
If you’re looking to self-publish your book, KDP is absolutely one of the tools you should use to make your book available to readers. If you’re looking for help with marketing your eBook, enrolling it in KDP Select will provide you with promotional tools and a wider reach at the cost of exclusivity. If you’d like to learn more about how to self-publish, check out the 5 best guides on self-publishing.
I’m already a KDP author and have not received the support I thought I’d get from.Amazon considering that the largest percent of my royalties goes to Amazon. Why do we have to pay for promotion when it would benefit Amazon to make that part of the deal since they get a share of the profits? I refuse to give Amazon money to promote books that they profit from, in my case a high percentage since my books are presented to foreign markets?
What happened to my ebook that I signed up to direct publish, I don’t see it ?
Nice article helped us a lot!
Am a beginner how do I start
Thanks a lot for the overview. Could you also please let us know about the charges in KDP (if any).
If I choose to have my book published as an eBook may I later decide to have it published in paper book form?
Hey Charles, Yes! As long as you maintain the rights to your book, you can always publish as a paperback later on.
My book was published in kindle e read. I would like some papers back covers. I aiso need to include some more pages.
My 2 books in the Library of Congress as well as several of my other e books are all non-fiction. Yet it seems that KDP places all emphasis on fiction. Am I overstating an issue or not ? Thanks in advance.
Sorry, longer question. I’ve spent three decades as a successful screenwriter, but I’m a novice at any kind of e-book publishing. I have a science fiction thriller about halfway finished on Scrivener, but am completely lost when it comes to fonts, file conversion, formatting, keywords, meta marketing?, you name it. I definitely want a professional proofreader/editor who will give me feedback for a Kindle specific final draft. Will also need help building a web page which integrates all the ways oy should. Lastly, I plan to pay the going rate for a killer producer/narrator to perform a Kindle word-synced audible book that rocks. Big Question: Is there a sweeping soup-to-nuts option that will cover all the bells and whistles, so I can simply concentrate on putting the best words on the page as possible, and have someone very good dispatch little elves to magically do all the other stuff? (Just like they do in Hollywood.)
Hi Clayton, thanks for the article. I have a question about KDP select. Is it possible to do a free book promotion for 2 days, followed by a 99cent book promotion for 3 days, followed by it going up to it’s regular price of $4.99? Or is my promotion period limited to one price.
Hey Darren, for books enrolled in KDP select, you can either run a kindle countdown deal OR a free promo in each ninety day period. So with a Countdown deal, you could drop the price to $.99 for 2 days, bump it to $1.99 for 2 days and then go back up to $4.99. But you wouldn’t be able to make it free unfortunately.
If you decided to use your free days instead of a Countdown Deal, you could make your book free for up to 5 days in a row before it reverts to it’s original price. You could try to change the price to $2.99 etc before going to $4.99. But unfortunately a price change can make your book unavailable for purchase while amazon works it out, so this could cause you to miss sales after your free period, so it’s likely not a good idea.
Personally, I would recommend running a Countdown Deal and running a promo with a site like Bargain Booksy to help generate sales and a rankings boost.