What is Kindle direct publishing (KDP)?

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a direct book publishing platform on Amazon. You self-publish your book here without going through a publisher, and customers can purchase an ebook or a paper version. Currently, it is one of the leading self-publishing companies and is dominating the worldwide self-publishing book market. Amazon KDP currently holds at least 80% of the e-book market. Since the launch of Amazon KDP in 2007, Amazon has paved the way for book authors to have new choices, they are no longer dependent on traditional publishing methods, do not have to go through the selection process, competition between books. other writers while still ensuring copyright issues. As a result, e-books and printed books have increased sharply in recent years through self-publishing.

Join the blog to learn about what Amazon KDP is, the types of books and the royalties received when selling books!

What is Kindle Direct Publishing?

Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is a platform built by Amazon. Here you can self-publish your book on their website. That way, people all over the world can find your books.

When you post a book here, you don’t need to pay anything. Only when you purchase the book and the order is successful, Amazon will charge you and pay you a fixed percentage.

The operation of Amazon KDP is similar to dropshipping. That is: you register 2 files including the book’s core file and the book’s cover file. Once approved, you’ll see your book appear on the web.

When a customer orders, Amazon will print, deliver the book to the guest house and collect money. Amazon will then deduct fees, taxes, and pay you recurring royalties through your bank account.

How does Kindle Direct Publishing work?

KDP allows you to self-publish books in two formats: ebook and paperback.

For the ebook version, the author will post the book file to KDP and the book will appear on the Kindle store for readers to buy and download directly.

For printed books, the book author also uploads the book file and KDP Publishing will print the book in the style you suggest, the printing cost will be deducted directly from the money you sell for each book.

Here’s how KDP Publishing works:

• The author uploads the book to KDP Publishing
• Author self-publishing books on KDP platform
• If readers buy the ebook version, they will download it directly after paying
• If a reader buys a print copy, Amazon will print the book and deliver it to the reader’s home
• Amazon will pay you book royalties on every book sold on the KDP platform

How to publish a book on Kindle Direct Publishing?

After creating a successful book selling account, how to publish books on Amazon KDP is the next issue that you are very interested in, right? The following article will answer this question for you.

However, before uploading your book to Amazon Kindle, you need to fully declare your personal information, tax, and pay for the book selling account. Once you have a complete KDP amazon book selling account, you can put your books on Amazon very easily and simply. Let’s get started together!

First, go to the link https://kdp.amazon.com/ -> click Sign in to log in to your KDP Amazon account.

Enter the email address and password of the KDP amazon account you created. After successfully logging in, you will see the Amazon KDP book selling account management interface as shown below.

There are 2 types of books that you can upload to Amazon to sell:

• Kindle eBook: This is an e-book for reading and listening on Kindle or other electronic devices. If you have compiled books you like, click + Kindle eBook to upload your book to Amazon. For this type of book, in order for your customers to read your books clearly and easily, their format needs to be compatible with current electronic devices. Especially for ebooks and audio books. Therefore, before publishing your book on Amazon, you can use the Kindle book tool to configure your book in HTML, XHTML or EPUB formats.
• Paperback: a paperback book that will be printed by Amazon and shipped to customers if there is a buyer. This is a form of print-on-demand (POD) product.

Before uploading books to Amazon, you need to prepare some important issues as follows:

• Design a beautiful book cover, notebook, suitable for the purpose and preferences of the customer.
• Text file inside the book, PDF/Word format.
• The title is attractive, and contains the main keywords related to the topic and content of the book.
• Description (up to 4000 characters) is short, attractive, and contains keywords related to the book.

7 keywords related to the book that customers can use to search on Amazon. When readers want to buy a book on Amazon, they will search with keywords related to the topic and content of the book they like. Amazon will list all the books related to that keyword for customers to choose from. Therefore, you need to carefully research the topic of your book’s content and choose the 7 best keywords that customers often use to search.

Pseudonym – name of book author, name of graphic designer, photographer, translator or any other role if applicable.

You need to have the above to put a paperback book on Amazon KDP. These are the key issues that determine whether your book will sell or not. Therefore, you need to research the topic, content, keywords of the niche you intend to sell on Amazon carefully. Only then will you know how to write the right title, description and keywords. What images and content should be included in the book cover design to match the customer’s preferences?

In order to have an attractive text book, you need to invest a lot of effort, time and even money. However, there are low-content books that anyone can create and sell. For example, notebooks, notes, coloring books… Most of these books have no or very useful content. Inside are usually blank pages for customers to write down what they want. Just design a beautiful cover page, right to the customer’s taste, you can sell the book. You do not need to invest as much effort and time as text books and still have books to sell and make money.

Low-content books such as notebooks, diaries, notebooks, etc. are usually printed out and shipped to customers (Paperback book publishing style). Many people who are just starting to sell books on Amazon KDP will choose this type of book for ease of making.

What types of content can we publish through KDP?

3 types of books authors can sell on Amazon are ebook (e-book), paperback (print book, paperback) and hardcover (print book, hardcover).

In addition, based on the quality of the content, it can be temporarily divided into 3 types as follows:

• Book with no content (no content): the page has textures but no text. For example: checkered notebooks, diary books, drawing notebooks, etc.
• Low content books (low content): very diverse such as forging books, coloring books, subject workbooks, planning books, etc.
• High content (high content): literature books like Harry Potter, cookbooks, Bibles, Dharma, etc. a lot of things.

What are the benefits of KDP?

For the traditional method, for a book to be released on the market, you need to submit the manuscript to the publisher, after the publisher reviews, selects, approves, goes through many rounds, the manuscript will be Yours is accepted. And that is also the most difficult stage for the book writer before the book reaches the readers. After that, you don’t need to do anything else because the next steps, the publisher will take care of such as printing, editing, cover design…

For self-publishing, you’ll be in charge of all of the production of a book and don’t have to go through the approval process. Once you’ve finished the book, KDP Publishing will help you put it on sale on Amazon.

Here are a few reasons why you should choose KDP Publishing if you want to self-publish your book:

• Widely distributed: Amazon is the largest platform today, its coverage is not only worldwide, the level of consumption here is extremely large, which is a lucrative bait for current book authors.
• Higher royalties: With Amazon, authors can earn a higher percentage of royalties than publishers. Depending on the type of book you sell on Amazon, the royalty rate can be as high as 60%. As for traditional publishing, royalties depend more or less on your reputation in the writing market. As a new author, you are unlikely to receive a high salary when publishing your first books.
• Copyright: Even if you publish a book to KDP, you retain the copyright to your book through Amazon’s non-exclusive agreement. Amazon controls copyright very strictly, so you can rest assured about this issue.
• Quick publishing time: Normally, with traditional publishing methods, books can take a long time to bring to the market, from half a year to a year. With Amazon’s platform, the KDP publishing process is very quick. As long as you finish the book and upload it to KDP, only a few days later, your book is on the market.
• No inventory. Gone are the days when authors had to pre-purchase prints to sell. With print-on-demand, books are only printed when ordered, inventory problems will never occur. All printing, customer care, Amazon will take care.

Is Kindle Direct Publishing free?

It is free to publish on Kindle. Authors do not pay to either set up their account or release a book. The only time that Amazon gets paid is when a book is sold. Then, authors receive a royalty, depending on their book price, and Amazon receives the rest.

Kindle Direct Publishing Royalties

The cost of publishing books on KDP is completely free. However, for printed books, Amazon will charge the cost of paper, ink and direct deductions on each book you sell.

Royalties: Amazon will pay royalties to the author. There are two types of royalty costs you need to be aware of: the e-book royalty rate and the paperback royalty rate.

The royalty rate for ebooks is 35% to 70% depending on how well the book meets the conditions. You can read more about the terms and conditions here.

For paperbacks, the royalty is fixed at 60%. You will receive a percentage of the royalties on the list price of the book. You calculate the royalty price here.

KDP will pay you royalties monthly, approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which your royalties were earned. However, your payment amount must reach the minimum threshold before the payment due date is reached.

KDP Select is an authoring program that allows Amazon to exclusively sell e-books on the Kindle platform. This means that the book is only available for sale on Kindle and is not allowed to be used on any other platform. In exchange for exclusivity, Amazon offers authors some incentives such as providing advertising tools, for example Kindle Unlimited, or paying higher royalties.

Amazon KDP will be a good passive income if you are patient, do keyword research, work hard to publish and follow the rules of the game.

Because it is an international platform, cases of stealing brains, piracy, using pirated images, etc. can all be permanently deleted.

Above is an article about what Amazon KDP is and the necessary information for newbies. Hope our sharing is useful for you.