How to Upload Your Book to KDP, Easily and Correctly [Text Instruction + Screenshots]

by
This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From The Book Designer:

I recently published my 21st book to the KDP platform, having been self-publishing for the last 7 years. And as I was going through the self-publishing steps again, it occurred to me how the platform has evolved over the past decade. This text-based, step-by-step tutorial is your most current and up-to-date process to upload your book to KDP.

. . . .

Uploading Your Book to Amazon KDP: a Step-by-Step Process

Uploading your book to KDP is relatively easy. You don’t have to have a lot of tech know-how, and if you run into any issues, KDP support is excellent at walking you through the process, either by email or over the phone.

In order to upload and prepare your book for publishing on KDP, there are several key elements you need at the ready. 

  • Your completed formatted book (eBook and Paperback). The best formats are ePub file for Kindle eBook and a PDF for the paperback/Hardcover
  • Keywords for KDP as researched with Publisher Rocket
  • Categories list as research with Publisher Rocket (eBook and paperback categories)
  • ISBNs—purchased through Bowker.com

You can hire a professional formatter if you want, or you can format the book yourself. Here’s a guide that walks you through the formatting process for KDP.

If you plan to publish more than one eBook—or simply want to do the formatting yourself—you may want to invest in a user-friendly book formatting software such as Atticus.io. It’s a relatively low investment for $147.00, and it’s simple to use.

. . . .

Step #5: Write a Compelling Book Description

A compelling book description sells lots of books and builds your fanbase. This is why you need a powerful book description in order for potential buyers to read what the book is about.

Here’s why your book description matters:

  1. It is a sales page crafted to capture the interest of your reader.
  2. Amazon’s algorithm bots scans the book description for relevant keywords indexed by Amazon.
  3. It is the critical decision-maker for browsers to make a final decision on buying your book. 

Here is a great resource for learning how to create a compelling description: the Free Amazon Book Description generator by Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.

Link to the rest at The Book Designer

For PG, this was a nice summary of the steps to indie publishing. He usually doesn’t include live links in the excerpts he posts on TPV, but he found the ones included in the OP were high-quality and helpful locations.

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

6 thoughts on “How to Upload Your Book to KDP, Easily and Correctly [Text Instruction + Screenshots]”

    • IIRC when I checked a while back, it handled the fonts that come with it fine, didn’t allow you to use a font you had licensed and wanted to continue using.

      But ask them that question first, before you spend a lot of time on other features.

      • That pretty much seals it, alas.
        Getting ahold of good fonts with strings attached is easy and so is bad fonts without strings…
        Good fonts without strings? Not so much.
        Cutting the strings on good fonts is $$$$ but (not so bad) fonts without strings can be tweaked to mission suitability with some work. Not useful if you can’t embed them in the ebook.

        Thanks for the head’s up.

          • Not fixed format.
            Themain driver is a desire to use a custom glyph, content driven, to serve as a dinkus.
            Using even a tiny GIF balloons the file size.

            A preferred unique serif font family would be nice, too.
            A matter of branding, mostly.

            Kindle and epub allows both so one would expect book formatter software to provide full support for the specs.
            (Calibre only converts but it does support embedding.)

            Just stubborn. 😀

Comments are closed.