There are two options for authors who are ready to publish a book: the standard route, when the book is published by a publishing firm, and the independent route, where the author publishes the book themselves. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a self-publishing platform offered by Amazon that you may have heard of if you’ve done your homework. Since Amazon controls at least 80% of the eBook market, it is imperative that your publication be made available through their service.
How exactly can authors benefit from KDP, though? Here, I’ll explain all you need to know about KDP and KDP Select.
What Is Kindle Direct Publishing? ✨
Kindle Direct Publishing, better known as KDP is a way for authors to self-publish a book on Amazon for the world to purchase. If you are an author, there are generally two ways you would go about getting your book into the hands of customers.
The first is the traditional way where you would go and get a publishing house to edit and publish your books, taking a large cut of your revenue and giving them the majority of control.
The second is called self-publishing, where you will find someplace to publish your book yourself. This is exactly what the KDP platform is, a way for authors to self-publish their books, and sell to millions of customers that are already on Amazon.
Before KDP, if you wanted to self-publish a book, you would use a company called Createspace which would allow you to produce paperback books. Amazon ended up taking Createspace and building it into the KDP platform. This allows you to upload a few things:
- Book cover
- Interior file
- Title
- Keywords
…and publish this book for sale on Amazon. Whenever someone purchases it, AMAZON will then print it, ship it to the customer, and deal with any and all customer service. You check out our KdSpy Review here to know how to find profitable kindle niches in minutes.
You simply sit back and collect what is known as royalty for each product that you sell!
Why Sell No Content Books On KDP?
Alright, so you know where we are going to be selling these books, but WHY should we sell on Amazon and through the KDP platform?
That one is easy. Amazon controls almost half of the market in the United States alone for printed books. They build their company on selling books, and there are a lot of customers out there that are willing to purchase (making you money).
The best part about all of this is that you can start and get into it even if you are NOT an author. That is the entire point of the low content.
When we say low-content books, think of books that have a cover (of course every book will have a front and back cover), but the interior is blank or close to blank.
These could Include:
- Journals
- Diaries
- Doodle Pages
- Blank comic strips
- Notebooks
- Calendars
…you name it, the list goes on and on! When we use KDP, we can simply create a catchy-looking cover, use a PDF interior (which I will show you), and sell them to all of the customers that are on Amazon.
KDP Offers A Ton Of Benefits That Other Platforms Do Not Offer.
These include:
- No barrier to entry
- No upload limits
- No sales minimums
- No removal periods
And just a really clean and simple-to-use backend.
Starting Your Publishing Company ✨
In order to get up and running adding this very easy income stream to your business, you need 4 things:
- A KDP Account
- Designs (for your book cover)
- Low Content Book Interiors
- Research
All of these are important, but one of the most important is probably research. We have to figure out what people WANT to buy on Amazon so that we can offer them products that will put money in our pockets.
Let’s Work Our Way Down This List!
A KDP Account
Before we can even begin, you will want to get yourself a KDP account. These accounts are 100% free to get, are from Amazon, and will not expire. I would suggest if you are just starting to put this account under a new email so that you can keep all of your businesses separate.
You can get a KDP account here: https://kdp.amazon.com/
When you get logged in, you will then want to click on the name you see in the upper right-hand corner because you will need to fill out some information before you can begin uploading your first book.
They will want you to fill out the information about yourself such as your author/publisher information, how you will get paid, and a quick tax interview.
For the author and publisher’s information, make sure to put in your country, full name, phone number, and address. Make sure this is real information because if not, there is no way for you to collect your money.
Second, fill in your payment information. You will want to enter your bank account numbers so that Kindle Direct Publishing can simply deposit these funds directly into your account when you earn royalties. After a while, you will start getting monthly deposits and it feels pretty good earning these and seeing the emails come in on autopilot.
Next, all you have to do to finish up is to take the Amazon tax interview. They will ask you some simple questions and once those are completed you will need to sign the document.
That’s it, you should now have a brand new KDP account that you can start using to make money!
Book Cover Designs
Once you have your KDP account, the next thing you need is some designs that you will put on the cover of your books.
These can be ANYTHING you want. They can be text only, funny sayings/phrases, or actual artwork. This is really up to you.
However, if you are brand new and just starting, you will need to make sure all of your designs are in the proper dimensions that KDP accepts in order for the files to be uploaded properly.
If you have Photoshop or another design tool, feel free to use those. Today though, we are going to go over a cheaper, and much easier tool that you can use to create these book covers with a few clicks and dragging and dropping. This makes the entire process MUCH less painful and actually pretty easy.
Quick Links :
