The Essential Guide to Amazon KDP

我们都知道Kindle是什么：亚马逊的电子阅读器，它在2007年介绍了出版世界。读者不再将多个平装书塞入海滩假期的途中。现在，通勤者每天都会在火车上带一个虚拟图书馆。现在可以在您听到作者在广播中说话后开始书籍。就像Kindle永远改变了人们消费书籍的方式一样，Kindle Direct Publishing也为出版行为做了同样的事情。

在这篇文章中，我们正在研究Kindle Direct Publishing（或KDP，众所周知）的基础知识，以及为什么它成为英语世界中独立作家的首选出版平台。

What is KDP?

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s publishing platform that allows independent authors to access readers around the world, without going through a traditional press. In a matter of hours, anybody can create an author account, upload their book files, and sell their book through Amazon — all without any setup cost. It’s the most accessible platform for self-publishing authors.

Launched concurrently with Amazon’s电子书reader in 2007, KDP opened up the publishing world. Readers could now not only buy indie ebooks through Amazon.com but also through the Kindle store preloaded on all Kindle devices. This accessibility has led to multiple waves of bestselling authors who have found success through self-publishing, including E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey），休·豪（Hugh Howey）（Wool), and Andy Weir (火星人).

此外，何时，传统出版模式将他们忽略了他们的读者，并努力在自我出版的早期努力寻找他们的读者。

For a closer look at how to set up an account on KDP, take a look atour guide on Amazon self-publishing.

What are the benefits of KDP Publishing?

To fully answer this question, we should clarify that we’re not talking about the benefits of independent publishing. Those upsides are numerous and covered in great detail in our articlecomparing self-publishing and traditional publishing. Instead, we’ll look at the edge Amazon and KDP has over its competitors, such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books.

1. Amazon is the largest bookstore in the English-speaking world

To be more accurate, it’s the largest bookstore in the world, period — though Amazon doesn’t quite have the same iron grip in non-English language book markets. One retail news site suggests that in the US, Amazon held an2019年的电子书市场份额为83％- 其余17％在其竞争对手之间传播。

Some indie authors will spend a good part of their week managing their titles across a half-dozen retailers, only to find that the majority of their sales still come from one source: the Kindle store.

2. Kindle商店是算法驱动的，这对独立作家来说是个好消息

Amazon’s book stores do not have a merchandising team. Where Apple Books, Kobo, and other online retailers have groups of humans who choose new titles to promote (or authors whose backlist they’ll feature), Amazon doesn’t care about merchandising. They let their algorithm decide which books to feature and promote.

Why is this good news? Won’t the algorithm just promote famous authors and big new releases?

好吧，实际上，情况并非总是如此！

好像终结者在Barnes＆Noble工作：算法是一台无情的书籍机器，不会受到大名称作家的震惊。它纯粹看了数据，以寒冷，计算的方式确定哪些书本在更多读者面前。独立作者有同等的机会看到他们的书在其类别中的上升 - 只要您能获得预售，销售和user reviews（您可以让降落在页面上的人按“购买”按钮）。这听起来像是一个大问题，但这比打电话给全国各地的每个书商并恳求他们库存您的书本要容易得多。

如果您想要有关亚马逊算法的所有信息的更多信息，请务必查看我们的神秘指南.

3. You can sell ebooks and print books from a single account

Despite the ebook revolution, print books aren’t going anywhere. For self-publishing authors who want a handsome paperbound edition to put in their bookcase (or you know, to sell to paying customers), there are several print-on-demand services available. With按需打印（POD），供应商只有在某人订购时才会淘汰副本 - 使该系统成为大规模打印的负担得起的替代品。

Kindle Direct Publishing offers a service called KDP Print (formerly known as Createspace), which manages print-on-demand. Authors need to upload immaculately格式打印文件(different from the ebook format), but once they do that, they can start selling physical copies from their existing KDP account. In short, authors can stay within the Kindle ecosystem to minimize their time spent on admin.

4.您可以使用一些非常酷的营销工具

When you’re self-publishing a book, you can’t just set it live and hope for the best. Thankfully, Amazon offers a whole suite of marketing tools that help authors reach their target audience on the Kindle store. This includes Amazon advertising, which lets authors feature their books as ‘sponsored products’ on the pages of可比较的标题.

除了付费广告外，Kindle Direct Publishing还提供免费的促销选项，可以通过其KDP选择程序访问。你可以退房我们深入研究KDP选择for all the juicy details, but in short, they include access to:

• Kindle Unlimited– Amazon’s subscription-based service (Netflix for books)
• Kindle免费促销— Turbocharge your downloads by making your book available for free (for five out of every 90 days)
• Kindle Countdown Deals— Run a week-long price drop that will see your book promoted in the Kindle store’s倒计时交易部分.

KDP Select（和Amazon Platform，总体上）有一些小缺点，您将在我们的下一节中发现。

What are the drawbacks of KDP Publishing?

If everything was sunshine and rainbows with KDP, Amazon would have totally eradicated their competition by now. As it would happen, there aresomedrawbacks to Kindle Direct Publishing, which have led many authors to avoid putting all their eggs in the Amazon basket.

1. There are limits to KDP’s 70% royalty rate

自我出版最大的好处是the royalty rate. Compared to their traditionally published counterparts, indie authors keepsignificantlymore of their book’s cover price on each sale. Self-publishing authors expect royalties of around 70% for ebooks — though, on Amazon, there are limitations to that.

If you price your book above $9.99 on Kindle, your royalty rate will suddenly drop to 35%. This is fine for most authors (if your ebook costs more than $10, you might be doing something wrong), but if you’re selling a box set — where you bundle multiple books into a single product — you’ll be penalized. In contrast, Apple Books and Kobo have no such price ceiling.

2. To access KDP Select, you can’t sell your ebook anywhere else

我们在上一节中提到的所有这些美味的营销工具（倒计时交易，Kindle Unlimited）都附带了附加的字符串：要注册KDP Select，您必须sell your ebookexclusively通过亚马逊。

This might sound like no big deal (after all, most books are sold on Amazon). However, in countries outside the US and the UK, Kindle’s market share isn’t as all-consuming. If your aim is to reach the broadest possible audience of readers, then being tied to Amazon — if only for the length of a promotion — might be less than ideal.

Once again, check out our other article for a more in-depth look atKDP选择的陷阱.

3. You might be hastening the Bezospocalyse

垄断对消费者而言并不是一件好事。随着杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）的帝国继续吸收账面销售，零售，网络托管服务，物流，流媒体娱乐和杂货的更大市场份额，我们应该担心喂养亚马逊野兽。但是，正如那些试图在冠状病毒大流行期间仅从小型企业购买的人（并且已经等待two whole monthsto get a lousy hair clipper) can attest: using Amazon just makes things a lot easier.

如果你担心销售通过Kindle store you’re contributing to the inevitable Amazon monopoly, you might be right. But you could还argue that there’s no way to make a living as an author without them and that selling through Amazon is a compromise you need to make, or else struggle to make a profit. If it helps, focus on the fact that Amazon has created a platform that’s disrupted publishing and tilted the balance of power away from ‘gatekeepers’ and towards the creatives.

For some, Amazon’s道德记录might not be a dealbreaker — but it is something every author needs to consider at the very least.

Resources for publishing with KDP

如果您是决定KDP的作家，将是您进入令人兴奋的出版世界的入口，那么下一步是什么？为了帮助您，这里有一些您需要的资源：

• Amazon Author Central：分步说明，用于在KDP上设置作者页面。
• Reedsy Book Editor: A free tool to format your book and export them as files that are 100% compatible with Kindle’s ebook and print-on-demand standards

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If you're ready to take the plunge, head on to the next post in this guide, where we'll show you the nuts and bolts of publishing your book on Amazon KDP.