How to Sell Books on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing in 4 Steps

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing was launched in 2007 and has since grown to become the world’s largest book retailer. With its success, Amazon is looking towards increasing sales through digital publishing methods. In order to sell your books on this platform, you’ll have to do a few things first – find out more about Amazon KDP here!.

The “kindle direct publishing login” is a process that allows users to sell their books on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. The process is easy and can be done in 4 steps.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing allows anybody to sell books (KDP). It’s completely free to create an Amazon KDP account, list your books, and sell them on Amazon—and you get paid every time a book sells. We’ll teach you how to create an Amazon KDP account and how to sell books on Amazon in four easy steps.

What is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and How Does It Work?

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is a free platform that allows independent writers to sell e-books and print-on-demand books on the Amazon platform. Joining KDP and selling e-books on Amazon is free, and you’ll be paid a royalty ranging from 35 to 70% of the price of your book every time it sells.

You may sell on Amazon and other marketplaces like Smashwords as a KDP author. Alternatively, you may enroll any or all of your titles in KDP Select, Amazon’s exclusive sales program. Only Amazon may sell KDP Select titles, but in return for exclusivity, they are eligible for additional incentives, such as:

• Amazon’s successful subscription reading service, Kindle Unlimited (KU), compensates writers per read rather than per sale.
• Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) listings — Gives every Kindle owner access to your book, and you’re compensated per-borrow, much like KU.
• Inclusion in KDP Select Promotions — Limited-time free pricing and special price countdown offers engage readers and help you increase your book reviews rapidly.

KDP writers have the option of listing all, none, or just some titles in KDP Select, giving them complete control over where and how their books are sold on Amazon. Now, in four simple steps, we’ll teach you how to get started with KDP and start selling e-books on Amazon.

1. Create an Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account for free.

Whether or not you have a book ready to sell, you may create an Amazon KDP account. It’s a good idea to create an Amazon KDP account even if you don’t have a book ready yet, so you can take use of KDP’s many useful tools and publishing lessons. This way, when you’re through with the book, your account will already be set up.

Go to kdp.amazon.com to create your Kindle Direct Publishing account, and you’ll see this screen:

In a brief video, the KDP sign-in page walks you through the basics.

To establish a KDP account, you’ll need an Amazon account, as shown by the yellow Sign-in button. It’s crucial to understand that having more than one Amazon account is frowned upon by Amazon. “Authors may register a second account under a business company, and this is a fantastic approach to segregate your book revenues from your personal Amazon account,” says Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur.

“Writers or business professionals who have their own company organization with its own tax number and bank account may sell books on Kindle Direct Publishing without having royalties withheld,” explains Chesson. “Of course, royalties must be reported on company taxes, and Amazon supplies the necessary tax form.” It’s best to manage it in a separate Amazon business account for professional writers or those selling books on Amazon for a living.”

You’re ready to establish your Kindle Direct Publishing account after you’ve selected whether to continue as an individual or as a company. To complete your KDP account sign-up, you’ll need the following information:

• Author’s or company’s name
• Your address and phone number (for Amazon’s use only; not available to the general public)
• For royalty payment deposits, your bank routing and account information are required.
• Your tax details (SSN for individuals, EIN for businesses)

With these information, you can sign up for a KDP account in roughly five minutes using only one screen:

It’s free to create an Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing account, and it just takes a few minutes.

After you’ve finished setting up your Kindle Direct Publishing account, go to your KDP dashboard, which is seen below.

To rapidly discover the ins and outs of selling books on Amazon, go to the Amazon KDP help site.

Upload, price, manage, and monitor sales for all of your Amazon book titles on your KDP dashboard. You’ll also discover a variety of tools to let you develop and publish e-books, print-on-demand paperbacks, and audiobooks, as well as advertise them throughout the Amazon marketplace.

Even before your book is ready to publish, it’s a good idea to look into all of these resources and lessons. You should also study Amazon KDP’s content and quality requirements to get a better idea of what the company wants from writers in terms of writing quality.

2. Create an Author Central page for yourself.

It’s an excellent idea to construct your Author Page on Amazon’s Author Central once you’ve set up your Amazon KDP account. This is an Amazon website where you may list all of your works in one location, as well as include your biography and interact with customers looking for books on Amazon.

It just takes a few minutes to set up your Author Page in Author Central.

Joining Author Central is required to build your Author Page, but it just takes a few seconds. The whole procedure is rather automatic since Amazon takes your information from your account.

Amazon will link any books you’ve previously published to your page after you authenticate your author identification, such as my book below:

After you’ve double-checked everything, Amazon will provide you a link to your Author Page setting page, where you can add your headshot, bio, blog entries, and even your speaker or appearance schedule, if you have one. Because setting up your Author Page when you establish your KDP account might take a few days, it’s a good idea to do so when you create your KDP account so it’s ready when you are.

Your Amazon Author Page is hosted by Amazon and includes all of your titles in one location after you’ve put it up.

Joanna Penn, a popular author who writes fiction and nonfiction for Kindle and print, makes extensive use of her Amazon Author page as a marketing tool. It includes links to her Amazon books, as well as a video and a blog post to educate her readers.

Joanna Penn utilizes her Amazon Author Page as a center for her books, as well as her WordPress website to promote her blog articles.

3. Create an Amazon KDP listing for your book.

After you’ve set up your Kindle Direct Publishing account, you can focus on finishing your book. It’s time to submit your book to Amazon KDP and make it accessible on Amazon after your text has been written and edited, as well as your cover art.

To do so, go to your Amazon KDP dashboard and create a listing for your book. To publish a book, go to your Bookshelf and choose the sort of book you wish to publish—for most new KDP writers, that will be a Kindle e-book. If you choose, you may also use this screen to produce print-on-demand paperbacks.

You may establish an e-book or a paperback print-on-demand book listing, and you can add a paperback option to your e-book listing now or later.

KDP walks you through a three-step procedure to create your book’s information, submit your e-book content and cover assets, and establish your price. It’s a straightforward procedure, but it will move much more quickly if you have some information prepared ahead of time, which we discuss below.

If you have everything ready ahead of time, creating a book listing in KDP is a breeze.

Screen 1: Book Information

The first and longest of the three screens is the Book Detail screen. You won’t be able to go on to the next screen until all of the relevant fields have been filled out. Here’s what you’ll need to have ready ahead of time to make this procedure go quickly:

• Include your top keywords or phrases in the book title and a brief subtitle.
• Your book may be listed in two categories; see our e-book publishing guide for more information on researching and choosing e-book categories.
• Keywords or key phrases — List up to seven keywords or key phrases linked to your title in Amazon search to help people locate your e-book.
• Book description — Amazon allows you 4,000 characters to explain the theme or plot of your e-book. Make this attractive to entice readers to want to read more, and sprinkle keywords throughout.
• If your book is part of a series or a new version, you may provide the series and edition numbers.
• Contributors — If you worked with editors or collaborators, you may acknowledge them in your book.

Content of a Kindle E-book (Screen 2)

You’re ready to submit your e-book file and cover art at the following screen after entering your book details. You’ll need the following items for this step:

• Kindle-ready.mobi or.ePub e-book file — This is usually a Kindle-ready.mobi or.ePub file that KDP will automatically convert upon upload. More information may be found in our guide on converting your e-book to Kindle format.
• Cover art – Kindle Direct Publishing accepts.jpg or.tiff files for cover art. In the KDP cover art standards, the ideal picture size is 2,560 px height by 1,600 px width. To produce an eye-catching cover for your book that fulfills the standards, you may utilize KDP’s free cover designer, Canva’s free e-book templates, or hire a design specialist on Fiverr.

The e-book publishing procedure on KDP is a straightforward three-screen affair.

You’ll see a place for an International Standard Book Number at the bottom of this screen (ISBN). ISBNs aren’t necessary for electronic publications, but they are for printed books. If you use Kindle Direct Publishing to create a paperback book, Amazon will give you an ISBN number for free.

KDP indicates that your e-book files have been successfully imported after they have been uploaded. You should have no trouble with this step if you follow our simple Kindle format tutorial. You may use the built-in Kindle Previewer to see how your e-book will appear on different Kindle devices once it’s been uploaded:

You may test drive your new e-book on several Kindle screen sizes using KDP’s online preview.

Once everything looks OK in the Kindle previewer, you can go to the final screen, where you’ll pick your price, finish a few details, and publish your book on Amazon.

3rd Screen: Pricing

You’ll pick the price of your book, your royalty choice, and the Amazon marketplaces where your book will be offered on the final screen. You may also enroll your book in the KDP Select program on this page to take advantage of the perks of Amazon exclusivity.

Ebooks that cost more than $2.99 are eligible for a 70% royalty award. Only a 35 percent royalty is paid for e-book titles that cost less than $2.99.

The Pricing Screen requires less preparation than the preceding screens, but it does need certain judgments. These choices, though, aren’t fixed in stone. At any moment, you may opt in or out of KDP Select, adjust your price, and even choose a different royalty rate depending on your pricing. Here are some things to consider when you make your final decisions:

KDP Select Enrollment & Benefits

KDP Select provides you access to a variety of promotional tactics to help you increase sales. Enrollment is done per title on a 90-day period. You can’t publish the same material in an e-book or on a blog while your book is in KDP Select. If you wish to publish your book elsewhere after enrolling it in KDP Select, you must wait for the 90-day period to expire. If you wish to keep the title in KDP Select for a long time, it will automatically renew.

You may do the following using KDP Select:

These promos aren’t available for titles that aren’t part of KDP Select.

Selection of Territories

Most self-published writers with complete copyright may publish everywhere, and Amazon makes it simple with automated currency changes. However, whether you’re publishing for an international company or as part of a cooperation, you must ensure that you have the necessary rights and tax structure in place to publish in all or a chosen number of countries.

Royalties & Pricing

Kindle Direct Publishing e-books may be priced anywhere from $0.99 to $200 on Amazon. Amazon does not allow titles to be offered for $0.99 indefinitely. Only titles registered in KDP Select are eligible for free pricing. The royalty percentage you set—and hence your earning potential—is also influenced by your price. The 70 percent royalty applies to titles that cost $2.99 or more. You may sell a book for less than $2.99, but your royalty is just 35 percent.

You may also earn money per read and every borrow if your title is in KDP Select, which offers your e-book in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). Here’s a deeper look at how Amazon manages these programs’ rewards.

This completes the screen’s three primary parts. There are a few more areas to fill out, but they’re all very self-explanatory. When you’ve finished, you’re ready to click. How to Make a Kindle E-Book:

That’s all there is to it. Congratulations! You’re now a self-published author. Within 72 hours, your e-book listing will be online on Amazon’s Kindle marketplace, and KDP will send you an email notice. It took us around 45 minutes to have ours up and running and ready for purchase:

Once you’ve created your listing and submitted your Kindle format e-book file to Amazon KDP, you’ll be a published author in minutes.

4. Promote Your E-Book on Amazon and Other Platforms

It’s not as simple as pressing the Publish button. In many respects, this is just the beginning of your effort; you must now sell your book, both on Amazon and via other channels. Whether or whether you want to participate in Amazon KDP Select will have a big impact on how you approach this phase.

We’ll go through your marketing choices depending on your KDP Select decision, as well as additional strategies to advertise your e-book and attract readers, in the sections below.

If you’re submitting a book to Amazon’s KDP Select program,

“Authors that enroll their works in KDP Select tend to achieve a wider audience quicker owing to the exposure to the vast Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) customer base,” says Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur.

Your e-book will show in both of these loan listings as a KDP Select title, and you’ll be paid per-borrow and per-read, depending on the payment plan for each program. You may have a KDP Select book without participating in these loan programs, but most new writers find that they are the quickest way to get reviews and a readership.

But it isn’t the sole advantage of a promotion. “Writers who are really successful in the KDP Select program delve deeply into all aspects of the program, not just the KU and KOLL rewards,” explains Chesson. New releases may benefit from limited-time free book promotions and Kindle Countdown Deals. These strategies can assist titles that have been out for a while gain traction.”

If you sign up for KDP Select with your title, these special perks will be the first to appear.

If Your Title Isn’t Listed in KDP Select,

If you’re not a member of KDP Select, you may still sell your book on B&N Press (Barnes & Noble for NOOK users), Kobo, and Apple iBooks. You may manage these listings by establishing your own account and profile, as well as submitting titles to each, just as you would with Amazon KDP. You may also utilize an e-book distribution service, such as Draft2Digital or Smashwords, to release your e-book to these and other websites. These distribution systems charge a fee in addition to the royalties paid by other vendor marketplaces, but the time saved is usually worth it.

You can’t sell titles from Amazon’s KDP Select program on other marketplaces because of the exclusivity agreement. This is a wonderful strategy to promote to additional readers if you don’t participate in KDP Select.

Other Amazon Promotional Techniques

Whether or whether your book is in KDP Select, you can utilize Amazon’s book promotion tools to start attracting readers right now. Although there are fees associated with this, since these marketing campaigns are keyword-driven, new and experienced writers both find Amazon advertisements to be beneficial in bringing their titles in front of people who are interested in the subject of their e-book.

The pay-per-click (PPC) approach is used for Amazon advertisements. This means you’ll only be paid if a prospective reader clicks on your ad and visits your e-listing book’s page—which is just half the fight in getting readers. You may also choose your budget and how much you’re ready to spend each time someone clicks on your ad.

Once your book is featured in Kindle Direct Publishing, you may attempt one of two kinds of Amazon ads:

Advertisements for Sponsored Products

These adverts allow you to choose a particular phrase and display as sponsored items at the top of Amazon’s search results. These are the top two e-books that came up when we searched for “how to publish an e-book,” as seen below. The word “sponsored” appears at the top of these results, indicating that these are paid Sponsored Product Ads that employ keywords that match our search phrase.

Sponsored Product Ads on Amazon leverage keywords to show up in tailored search results.

E-books Product Display Ads

These adverts display as similar items on other e-book or product sites, such as these e-books, which appear beneath our book details on our e-book listing page:

Amazon’s Product Display Ads display as “similar goods” on the Amazon listing page for other products.

Request a Review

For Amazon writers, reviews are a powerful marketing tool, yet Amazon has rigorous review standards. You can’t provide a free book in exchange for a review or any other kind of remuneration to encourage people to write reviews—and you can’t even ask for a “positive” review. You may, however, request a review, and the easiest method to do so is to put the request at the end of your e-book, as follows:

At the conclusion of each book, Matthew Mather, author of “Nomad” and many other works, requests a review.

You may thank the reader for reading your book and invite them to leave a review through a link in your “back matter,” such as the page above. Readers who finish a section of a book on Kindles are likewise instantly asked for this, so your readers will know what to do.

Outside of Amazon, how do you market your e-book?

There are numerous methods you can—and should—market to prospective readers and build a fan following for this and future works outside of Amazon and other e-book platforms if you choose that path. Here’s a list of the things to think about.

Create Your Own Webpage

“Your website is one of the most critical things to have straight if you’re serious about your author career,” says best-selling novelist and nonfiction author Joanna Penn.

Joanna Penn maintains a number of author websites in order to reach out to her fiction and nonfiction readers.

The majority of successful writers see their e-books as viable items. A website is a significant marketing and branding tool for them.

Penn explains, “It’s how prospective readers, as well as agents, publishers, journalists, bloggers, and podcasters, determine how professional you are.” Penn attributes a large part of her success to the readership her websites have attracted, as well as the email lists she’s developed via them. “My author websites and email lists have helped me build a multi-six-figure company,” says Joanna Penn, author, coach, and CEO of The Creative Penn.

Penn, like most other famous writers, uses WordPress to establish a low-cost, easy-to-manage website. For just $2.95 per month, you can get started right now with Bluehost. We even have a step-by-step WordPress guide that will lead you through the procedure. To get started, enter your name in the box below:

Publish a Press Release

For two categories of authors: those publishing a new book in a series and business experts, press releases are an excellent marketing strategy. A press release aimed at magazines, reporters, and bloggers who cover your genre might help you spread the word about your newest episode if you’re a series author. A press release sent to industry-related reporters and media may result in coverage, reviews, and discussion, as well as interview opportunities for company experts.

eReleases.com is an online press release distribution service that allows you to target particular demographics for your releases. Furthermore, eReleases provides you with the tools you need to design and set up distribution on your own, or you can hire seasoned professionals to take care of everything for you.

Visit e-releases.com for more information.

Create a mailing list

Once your website is up and running, you can begin creating an email list to connect with your visitors. You may use an email marketing provider to collect addresses and use email marketing to promote your existing and forthcoming titles to readers. To persuade readers to join your list, provide new titles, sneak peek chapter readings, and first-to-know incentives.

Make the Most of Your Social Media Channels

To engage with your readers and grow a following, create social media author accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter and publish updates about your new publications, teases about works-in-progress, free promo announcements, and other creative attention-getters.

Participate in Reader Collectives and Book Clubs.

Another strategy to attract new readers and obtain feedback is to participate in local and online book clubs and reading collectives. You may utilize genre-specific reader groups like GoodReads (part of Amazon), Reedsy Discovery, and LibraryThing to promote your e-books and grow a following. You may provide free reads or prizes, or just publicize any free KDP Select promos to attract new readers, depending on how you utilize KDP Select.

Avoid These Mistakes When Selling Books on Amazon KDP

When it comes to selling books on Kindle Direct Publishing, the greatest error to avoid is expecting fast results. Selling and promoting an e-book is no different from selling and marketing any other product. Work, time, and effort across many marketing venues, as well as dedication, are required. After releasing multiple works and promoting each one, which is what it takes to build up a reader base, most writers receive some return.

The second significant blunder novice authors must avoid is submitting a sloppy work to Kindle Direct Publishing. Readers will be turned off by poorly written books that have been poorly proofread and are full of typos, and cluttered covers will never help you sell your work. Furthermore, these errors are in violation of Amazon’s quality standards. So don’t rush towards publishing. Take the time to edit your work and produce a fantastic cover—or, better yet, get the help of a professional.

On Fiverr, you may discover low-cost freelance editors and cover designers that specialize in e-books. These seasoned professionals are aware with Amazon’s quality criteria and will polish your work to perfection.

Visit Fiverr.com for more information.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to sell books on Amazon is a valuable skill to have. At the same time, Kindle Direct Publishing is easy and complex. Signing up for Amazon KDP and offering your book for sale on Amazon is straightforward after your book is finished and stored as a Kindle format—you just have a few pieces of information to input and selections to make.

The real effort starts after your book listing is up on Amazon: promoting your title and author brand. You may do this using a variety of tools from Amazon, including a free Author Page, KDP Select’s many promotional options, and paid advertisements. Other e-book markets, press releases, online book clubs and collaboratives, as well as your own website, email, and social media sources, all help you advertise your work outside of Amazon’s walls.

Do you plan to publish an e-book on Amazon, or do you already have several titles listed? In the comments section below, tell us about the e-book authoring platforms and marketing tools you use to get the job done.

The “how to sell books online” is a guide that teaches you how to sell your book on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. The article will tell you what steps to take in order to get started.

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