Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, known as KDP, is the platform most self-published authors use to put their books on sale, and it is free to use. You upload a manuscript and a cover, set a price, and Amazon lists the book on its stores around the world, handling payments, delivery and customer service. There is no upfront fee, and Amazon takes a share of each sale instead. That sounds simple, and the basics are, but the details decide whether your book looks professional or amateur, and whether you earn a fair royalty or leave money on the table. This guide walks through the process step by step.

Before you touch KDP, your book needs to be ready. The manuscript should be edited, proofread and formatted for ebook and print separately, because the two formats have different requirements. An ebook is a reflowable file, usually EPUB or a Word document converted by KDP, while a paperback needs a print-ready PDF with the right trim size, margins and bleed. Your cover needs two versions too: a front cover for the ebook, and a full wraparound cover for the paperback, including spine and back. Many first-time authors underestimate the cover. Readers do judge books by them, and a cover made in a free tool with default fonts will look like one. Budget for a professional cover, or learn the basics of typography and composition before you design your own.

Creating a KDP account is straightforward: sign in with an Amazon account, add your tax information and payment details, and you are ready to publish. For each book you enter the title, subtitle, author name, description, keywords and categories. The description is your blurb, and it matters more than most authors think, because it is the sales page. Keywords should be phrases real readers search for, not single generic words. Categories are important too: choosing a precise subcategory with less competition can put your book on a bestseller list that a broad category never would. Take the time to research categories in your genre before you publish, because changing them later is possible but slower.

Royalties are where authors most often lose money through inattention. For ebooks priced between roughly three and ten dollars, you can earn a seventy percent royalty in most markets, minus a small delivery fee based on file size. Below that price band, the royalty drops to thirty-five percent. For paperbacks, you earn sixty percent of the list price minus printing costs, which depend on page count, trim size and whether the interior is black and white or colour. Price your ebook too low and you earn pennies; price it too high and sales dry up. A common starting point for a novel is around four to five dollars for the ebook, with the paperback priced to leave a reasonable margin after printing costs. Check the royalty calculator in KDP before you set your price, not after.

KDP Select is an optional program that gives your ebook extra visibility through Kindle Unlimited, where readers borrow books and you are paid per page read, and through promotional tools like free days and countdown deals. The catch is exclusivity: while enrolled, your ebook cannot be sold on any other platform. For a first-time author, the extra discoverability is often worth it, because Kindle Unlimited readers are a large audience that a new author cannot reach any other way. For an author with an existing audience or a wide distribution strategy, the exclusivity cost is too high. You can enrol for ninety days and leave afterwards, so try it for one cycle and judge by your own numbers.

Publishing is not the end of the work. On launch day, check the live listing on Amazon: the cover, the description, the price and the Look Inside preview. Errors here are common and easy to fix, but only if you look. Then tell people: your mailing list, your social media, your writing group. Reviews matter enormously on Amazon, so ask early readers for honest reviews, and never pay for them, which violates Amazon's rules and can get your account suspended. Keep writing, because the best marketing for a first book is a second book. A catalogue of several titles sells far better than a single book alone, and each new release lifts the sales of the ones before it.