Thinking about Publishing on Amazon KDP?

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It has been a crazy rough year and you are tired of your 9 to 5. In fact, you have been dreaming about not only being your own boss but being able to work from home too! 

Someone mentions your creativity and suggests you try creating books on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. After all, what do you have to lose, right? 

Before you quit your day job let's be clear about how KDP really works. 

Let me back up a minute though. First of all, what is Amazon KDP? Well, to be short, it is Amazon's publishing platform. Authors who once found it difficult to share their work now have a world-reaching platform to share their work and better yet, Amazon offers high content books, ebooks, hardcover books, and also low and no content books as well. Hence, there is much to work with if you are someone searching for a new way to earn money. You may be someone who has struggled to find readers or an audience. What Amazon has done is given authors a huge playing field to work with. However, there is work to be done.


What has Amazon KDP Done for Me?


First and foremost, it has given me courage and determination to know that I can do hard things. It hasn't been easy and I haven't earned nearly what I want to earn. However, I knew it wouldn't be easy going in. I knew it would not be a quick fix. Hence, I continue my work.

With Amazon KDP, I have been earning an income since June 2021 and I have sold a total of 280 units with royalties in the past six months being $556.18 in total. I have put in a lot of hours and even invested in Amazon advertising so I would say that in total I have earned closer to $150. 
Below you will see my earnings for the first six months:


As shown above, you can see that I earned $5.95 from ebooks and $4.38 from hardcover books and the rest of my earnings came from paperback. 

While I have created many books, some of my top-selling books have been the following:



While there are moments that can be disheartening, it is important to keep going and not quit, even when you are not making any sales. Remember, you can do hard things.

So, what is it that people need to do to succeed?

  • First thing is first, don't compare yourself to anyone else. Get ideas from others, but always try to compete with yourself and improve yourself from one day to the next. Competing with others is fruitless.
  • Use Youtube and other internet resources to learn. Put in the work by following people who are seeing success.
  • Find a niche and niche down so you do not have so much competition. It isn't always about creating books that interest you. You need to find a niche that isn't saturated and yet has a good audience. While creating material that is of interest to you is important, remember...You have a customer you are trying to appeal to. 
  • Investigate keywords - It doesn't matter how good your work is if you do not have the correct keywords to get your work noticed on Amazon. Keywords are key!
  • Create quality work over quantity. Create work that is not only appealing to an audience but is made with purpose and time spent on making it the best that you can.
  • Another important aspect of using KDP is getting your work reviewed by customers so that your book gets noticed. Always shoot for five-star reviews!
  • Amazon has great marketing tools to help you launch and keep your books visible but you will also want to do your research as you can run the risk of spending way more money than intended.
  • You will want to invest in sites like Bookbolt for keyword research and Creative Fabrica for a wide variety of templates. These are a couple of many sites available to help lift your business to where you want it to be.
  • Patience is key! You can not give up after one month. You can't give up even after six months. It is going to take a lot of time and a lot of work. But, you are capable of creating the success you desire. 

Book Bolt Software Before you decide to jump-in to KDP, do your research, watch some youtube videos and pick a niche that you are comfortable with. Once you build your capacity, you can start truly delving in to more research and finding ways to improve your business. Most importantly, remember, you got this!


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