KDP, or Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is a platform for self-publishing eBooks as well as physical copies using a print-on-demand process. Print-on-demand means that a copy of your book is only printed when an order is placed. This allows you to sell physical copies of your book without spending thousands of dollars upfront on inventory.

Amazon! This is the best part about Kindle Direct Publishing – your books are printed on-demand. When a book is ordered Amazon will print, package, and ship it to the customer. Later, you will receive a royalty payment for the purchase.

Nope! Not if you don’t want to. As we go through the process of publishing your book, Amazon will give the option to either use your own ISBN or be automatically assigned one. After being assigned an ISBN (or using your own purchased ISBN) I will make sure the back cover is formatted to the ISBN/Barcode requirements, as well as ensuring the ISBN placement in the interior of your book is where it needs to be.

If you’ve already got the hard part finished (writing your book) there are only a few steps left before I can take over for you. You will need to set up an Amazon KDP account – this is a step I can’t do for you because there is required banking and tax information that needs to be entered (so you can get paid!)

Sending me your interior and exterior files is another step you’ll need to take that I can guide you through. And of course, if your files need to be converted to a different compatible format – I will take care of that for you.

My publishing prices are ABSOLUTELY a one time fee, all of your book sales royalties go straight to you as the author.

Your books amount of pages, color vs black ink, book size, hard vs soft cover, paper weight etc.

For eBooks – you have two different options for royalties, a 35% royalty option and a 70% royalty option. The higher royalty option comes if you exclusively offer your eBook on Amazon. You can read more about that option here.

For paperback books – you have two different options for royalties, a 60% royalty rate option and a 40% royalty rate option. The 60% is standard, and the 40% option is for Amazon’s Expanded Distribution option which you can read more about here

Keep in mind – on physical copies of your book, the cost of printing is subtracted from your royalty.

(Royalty rate x list price) – printing costs = the royalty you get paid from Amazon

For example, your list price is $15. Your book is a 333-page paperback with black ink which has a $4.85 printing cost:

(0.60 x $15) – $4.85 = $4.15 royalty payment to you. 

If you’ve been browsing this site for long, you will know that I love Amazon’s KDP. But if I had to point out some drawbacks… I would say:
1 – There is no way to see who is buying your book, Amazon doesn’t provide this data to you, so there is no way to follow up with readers to ask for reviews or share updates on what you’re working on as an author. (Always remember to put some sort of way for readers to find you inside your book pages – like a URL for your author website, social media pages, email, etc.)
2 – Certain features like spine text and the hardcover option are not available if your book is under a certain page count. This is kind of a bummer if your heart is set on these certain features.
3 – I’ve noticed there are small inconsistencies in printing from copy to copy. They all look great, but there are some noticeable differences in some books such as text placement on the spine. These inconsistencies come because of their on-demand printing process.

But even with these drawbacks – as a beginning author I would still choose KDP 10 out of 10 times.