Hopefully you have some idea of what you would like to publish, so read on for steps on how to create an account with KDP, upload your books, and how to price books on Amazon and Kindle.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our page How to Sell Books on Amazon and Make Money
If I can do it and make genuine passive income, so can you!
To Begin, follow these steps:
(You can create a new KDP account with your existing Amazon account or create a new one by clicking any of the images below)
Register with KDP
Register your KDP account or sign in if you already have an account.
Create a Book with KDP
Once you’re signed in, you can immidiately start creating and uploading books!
You will want to become familiar with some creative tools such as Canva, BookBolt and Fiverr. These are listed on our Content Creation page, to keep each component simple and easy to follow.
Once you’ve made the components to your book, you can upload to your creation to KDP and finalize your new book.
The formatting needs to be correct, but with handy templates like the images below, you can easily get it right and Amazon will start selling your books!
If you check out the templates, all available on Paul Marles’ Gumroad, you can see where you need to keep inside the border and with the cover in particular, it shows you where the barcode and spine goes so you know where to avoid.
There are other KDP low content sources of information but this is the only one I’ve used outside of watching KDP related content on YouTube so this is the only KDP content source of inspiration and content on our site right now.
Publish a Paperback Book with KDP
Once you have the cover and interior ready to upload, you will have the options below:
For now, assuming you’re creating a low content paperback or some kind of eBook, all you need to worry about are the first two options.
Here’s what you’ll find assuming you start with Paperback.
The first stage is Paperback Details, in which you will need to input your Book Title, Subtitle if it has one, and Author name.
You do not need to use your real name for this, as Amazon allows multiple pen names. If you are doing a series of books or several that are related, it may make sense to keep the same Author names wherever it makes sense.
For example you could have different pen names for low content notebooks but if you were writing a series of recipe books or fantasy novels, it would make more sense to use the same names for those books and create an Author Page for them. More on that later though.
You also need to fill out the description for your book. This not only acts as the blurb found on the back of most books but allows Amazon to trawl the contents and put your book in front of the relevant audience it thinks your book is most likely to sell to. This could be from the customer’s search history or related to products they’re actively searching for.
It’s handy to put in relevant keywords here, but in a way that makes sense, and that the potential customer can read.
You can find free keywords on Jaaxy, found at the top and bottom of this page.
Next you will be asked if you own the copyright rights to the content you’re publishing.
Make sure you do in fact own the copyright or that your content is made from scratch and not just copied. You can buy content from Fiverr that you own the rights to, and this is stated in the sale (you can also clarify this with the freelancer you discuss it with) so you can confidently say you own it. Some platforms like Adobe or BookBolt give you access to their stock images so you’re covered here, too.
As long as you aren’t actively copying other creators or brands you’re good to go.
Next is Keywords. By using Jaaxy above you can see how many searches a month are carried out, on average, for any given word or phrase. This is covered in more detail here.
If you want to create your own content, I’d suggest Adobe Express or BookBolt.io. I haven’t tried anything else so these are the only two I can vouch for being any good so far. Both are around $10 a month.
you can sign up to BookBolt and try it for free by clicking their logo below:
You can try Adobe Express by clicking their logo below (please note Adobe tend to offer different subscriptions per app or platform so signing up to Express will not give you access to Photoshop, and vice versa):
I’ve created books with both BookBolt and Adobe Express and it’s simply a matter of preference as to which you choose. I’d recommend trying both out for free before going premium on your prefered platform to unlock their full features and stock.
Paperback Content Page
Once you’ve entered your Book Details, you will be sent to the Paperback Content Page. Here you need to upload two files, your book cover and your manuscript.
Both need to be the right size or trim for the book size you’re creating. When you upload the files, the KDP platform will show you your file against their template to make it easier for you to make adjustments.
This can be a headache at first but using the resources shown on this site should make it a fairly painless process. There is an internal Cover Creator available on KDP, which is completely free to use and very easy to create a perfectly good cover but I find it looks outdated or generic when I tried it myself.
KDP Pricing
Next you need to decide on the price of your book.
For paperbacks, my books have come somewhere between $2.15 and $2.58 to cover paper and ink. It will ask you to put in a price in greater than $3-4.00 depending on printing costs and their own fees. After this it’s pure profit on your part!
If you used any resources to create your book, bear in mind how much you put into it to work out overall profit.
KDP Bookshelf
Once you’ve created your first book, you will be able to find them on the KDP Bookshelf and although you will not be able to edit the actual book, you can create an eBook based on the paperback you just created. As far as I know this goes both ways.
Here you can see an example of my bookshelf so far, both books being quite basic. If you check out our first article on KDP you will see that even with this limited skill, two sales were made with zero ads or marketing effort. They just sit there on the Bookshelf for Amazon to put in front of customers.
That being said, make sure you do make an effort as there are many who saturate Amazon with poor quality books and you will want to give yourself the best possible chance at getting past these and making sales.
It’s my aim to create better looking books as I get more used to playing around with the graphic design software above.
How Much Can You Actually Make Per Book?
As two examples below show, where you determine your price point determines the royalties for each sale. There are many views from experts and amateurs alike on where to put the price for a particular book being published, and I wouldn’t know enough at this stage where that sweet spot is and it also depends on what your actual book is. You may want to sell a 100 page notebook for $7.99 if you see that similar books in similar niches are around that price.
It could be tempting to undercut the competition by going lower, but the potential buyer may think that book is too cheap and be put off. You need to try a price not too low, so somewhere at the average of your competition for that niche.
Equally, you may have put a lot of effort and investment into the book and want to make up for those costs. Just remember that once that book is on Amazon, you could make it back in weeks, months or years depending on your niche, quality of your book and what marketing and ads you put into it.
Here are two images showing me tinkering with the prices of one of my existing books. You can raise or lower the price even after publishing and you may see different results from this.
More will be added to the process once we make create another book, but by this point you should have progressed far enough to create your own books and your very own revenue stream!
As our site expands we will focus on the content creation side of things to show the pros and cons of each platform. Paid ads and marketing avenues will also be added but only ones we can verify as genuine and good value for money.
We would love to hear your feedback and if you have any other preferred design platforms let us know!