r/KDP

You write a book, make the cover as good as you can, optimize the blurb, keywords, etc., and then you run Amazon ads.

But once the ads start getting clicks, it feels like the math becomes brutally simple.

If you're getting roughly 1 purchase for every 10 clicks, then even a genuinely good book still needs a lot of traffic to generate meaningful sales.

And that's what I'm struggling to understand about KDP.

At some point, does it basically become a volume game?

You can improve your cover, title, description, reviews, targeting, conversion rate, etc. — but there seems to be a ceiling on how much you can optimize one individual book.

So instead of trying to make one book produce a huge amount of income, the strategy seems to be:

More books → more ads → more clicks → more purchases → more overall revenue.

Obviously, a 10% conversion rate isn't universal, and I'm sure some books/categories perform much better or worse. I'm just using it as an example.

I'm curious what experienced KDP publishers think:

Is significant KDP income primarily a volume game once you've reached a certain level of book quality?

Or are there ways to dramatically improve the economics of an individual book beyond simply getting more traffic?

Hello ...

I'd like to keep my erotica income as private as possible. I registered an LLC in a state that offers greater anonymity. I have an EIN number for that LLC. And I'd like to set up a bank account using that EIN number. I tried Relay Financial and they declined my account. But I'm using a Registered Agent address as well as business address. And they required a drivers license for verification. And I'm assuming that because the driver's license address is different than the business address my account application was declined.

Am I going about this incorrectly? Is there an easier way?

My goal is to set up a bank account for my LLC and keep my personal information as confidential as possible.

Can you get a few & list them on ebay as second hand? Or ask hobby shop to put on their shelf? (It’s a hobby related book to keep score)

Hey everyone, I have a question I hope someone can answer based on personal experience.

Been on KDP for almost a year now. I have a few books I’ve published and make a decent amount of sales a month organically without ads or any marketing efforts. All of my books have a kindle, paperback and hardcover format. Majority of my sales are from print formats.

In efforts to branch out my books in digital format beyond KDP, I’ve ended KDP Select enrollment for all books. But ever since, my orders have come to a standstill. No orders since KDP Select ended.

Someone told me that enrolling in KDP Select “boosts” visibility for your book(s) including for the print versions and that unenrolling would result in the opposite effect (no more/reduced visibility).

To me that doesn’t make much sense since I figured Kindle is its own thing apart from the printed versions. But the fact that everything just “froze” within enrollment ending, it’s left me doubting. Maybe coincidence. But wanted to ask either way. Thank you in advance to anyone who could answer my question :)

I've read the horror stories of KDP arbitrarily shutting down entire accounts even with multiple legitimate books. I've been relatively successful with a selection of commercial type books.

My question: I have an idea for something that's not illegal, but since it relies on parody, the KDP algorithms might have a problem with it down the road.

Am I able to set up a separate KD account under a different name, etc., so if they ever decide they don't like it, they don't link it to my other account and cancel that one as well. Would it have to be under someone (real) other than me, with their own payment accounts?

Thoughts?

Thinking about it. What's your experience?

The book in question is 5.25" x 8" (13.34 cm x 20.32 cm). I formatted the page size, margins, header, and footer of the manuscript on Word so that they would fit these dimensions (i.e. I set the margins to 1.2 cm and the header to 0.5 cm) and then I uploaded the updated file to KDP. However, the preview looks different, with the text much more centered than it should be, as if it were A5 format.

Before uploading the file I made sure to check the Print Preview in Word and everything looked correct there: the header was much higher up, closer to the edge of the page, as were the page numbers, and the text was more indented. But on KDP, it looks like this!

Could you please give me some advice? 😭 All these calculations are driving me crazy and I'm wasting so much time! 😭

My KDP account was closed on June 15 after Amazon said it had detected activity involving possible manipulation of its services. The email mentioned examples such as “abnormal reading activity” and possible Content Guidelines issues.

I have never intentionally used artificial reads, manipulated activity, or attempted to circumvent KDP policies. After some time, I submitted a detailed appeal through KDP Contact Us and requested a manual review. About two hours later, I received a response from the Amazon Content Review Team saying: “We've reviewed the information you provided, but we're upholding our previous decision…”

I am now trying to understand what options, if any, exist after reaching this stage. I would especially like to hear from anyone who experienced something similar:

• Amazon closed the KDP account

• You appealed the decision

• The appeal was reviewed but the original decision was maintained

• You then tried another escalation route

• Your account was eventually restored

If this happened to you, what did you do next?

Did you contact a different Amazon team, request an executive review, or use another route?

How long did it take, and did you eventually get a resolution?

I'm specifically looking for first-hand experiences from people who reached this stage, rather than general KDP advice.

Thanks.

This is a bit of an encouragement post because this place has been drowned down by a lot of negativity as of late, which makes sense, this is the complaining site. I'm guilty of using reddit as a venting diary myself. However, I wanted to dispel one idea I see floating around self pub spaces from some people who have gotten discouraged by their lack of sales: no one reads self pub books because there are millions of classic books to read.

This is very untrue, and to prove it, I'm going to give examples of successful self pubbed books I've read within the last year. Note: some of these people later did get picked up by trad pubs or indie presses, and a lot of them started as serializations on places like Royal Road, which is still self publishing really. I'm also a big reader of Litrpg and progression fantasy which both are genres that live and die on the KU library; but regardless, they all started as self pubbed and got readers, through a combination of good story telling, a marketable niche, and sheer luck. So, drum roll babababbababa:

Dungeon Crawler Carl:

This should go without saying how bloody successful Matt Dinniman has become. It is to a point where people who've never heard of Litrpg know about it. It became a running joke in the community that DCC fans were a cult, when people found it they had to let others know how damn good it was. And Matt slowly build a brand over 6 years, publishing 6 chonky novels, and by 2025 he had sold over 4 million copies. After that, he got a physical book deal with Penguin Random House and it ballooned to 12 million, and he now has a show in the works with Seth Macfarland. Amazon is also big to tout it as one of their big successes, doing ads with Matt.

(Let's be honest, it would not have been as successful as it was without the talking cat).

The Perfect Run:

This was a trilogy originally published on royal road, and is actually still up for free, as VoidHerald wanted to keep a free version as a thanks to everyone who helped him make it.

He published all three through KDP for paperback and Kindle, and then outsourced the audio to Podium Audio Inc. With it not even being on KU, he has 1700 Amazon reviews, 6000 goodreads, almost all positive.

He Who Fights With Monsters:

I will say, this is not a series I personally enjoy. I found it overly long and annoying, and the fact we are on book 12 with each book 800 pages and we aren't even close to the end is absurd. Regardless, it has done well. The paperback now has a small indie press doing special art, but even prior, book 1 has 23k Amazon reviews and 40k goodread reviews.

Stray Cat Strut:

A series that, like PR, is still available to read for free but has a Amazon listening; I have had the privilege of talking with the writer of this work, he's a really chill guy. I also had the privilege of watching a journalist guest talk about how he wants to fuck that guy's mom lmao. Anyway, he's about 8 books deep and the first alone, selling for 2 bucks, has 900 Amazon reviews and 1.3k goodread reviews.

Closing thoughts:

Listen, with all that said, they people did get lucky: they were in the right moment at the right time with a genre that is primarily self pub that is marketable and the books were all good for the most part and something people want to read. Your first book will not be DCC. You may never get more than 5 sales a book, but it is never because nobody wants to take a chance of self published works. On the contrary, many people like self pub because the authors are not bound to the restrictions of trad publishers, and they can make stories like a man and his talking cat playing alien life sized D&D.

Just keep creating, keep expressing yourself, and if the stars align, people WILL read it :3.

I had planned on it but apparently they won't ship test copies to where i live (they will still ship my published book but not the test, apparently this is a common issue).

My options are dont get one, or have it shipped to australia and then have a connecting postal company ship it too me which will cost a lot more. I just though I would see if people find the test copy worth it? are people finding issues. there shouldnt be any issues according to all the checks and my careful formatting and cover creation.

what should I do?

So in case anyone is interested, I tried out the new KDP Groundwood paper option.

Note: Both books printed in Poland

Very personal con: It makes the book more floppy, and I'm not a big fan of floppy books, but many people seem to prefer them.

Probably a result of that floppiness: The pages don't lie down as flat as the Cream paper, it's wavier from the side.

Pros:

Color: It's noticably more yellow/beige than the Cream paper, which is a big improvement. Warmer and friendlier.

Texture and feel: Feels much better, like a real paperback. I was always mostly satisfied with the KDP print quality, but it always felt "off", noticably different than trad books. With the Groundwood paper it lost a bit of that slightly sterile feel that said "print on demand".

Overall I'm quite happy with the results and I'll probably switch to the new paper.

We all know the book the killer isn't Alice. It is a new concept and is very successful. However, around July 31, a new book called The killer isn't June suddenly pop up. It reached #18 in global best seller. It is be 3K to 8K sold per day. then some people gave the bad review . I saw about #15 at least one star. I think the author doesn't want to take the pressure and he/she pulled the book out of amazon about 2 days ago. Now there are tens of "The killer isn't June" copy cat in amazon and they all sell well.

This book is a marketing miracle from what I can see. there are very limited social media for this book. Anyone know What is happening to this book?

Three books for color, 100 pages each—decent pricing, initial sales, two 5/5 reviews for one book after a month, and then a total nosedive. No more sales; BSR at 1,400,000. Even advertising isn't kickstarting sales. I’ve been on KDP since 2020, and it’s becoming a huge waste of time and energy...

So recently KDP emailed me saying they no longer accept my bank (Chime) and they gave me a list of other banks I could use. But I don’t know any of them I also live in the United States. I was thinking of using something called Payoneer but know nothing about it.

KDP-Ready Formatting & Fix Service

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One round of revisions

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For books rejected on a single, isolated issue (e.g., cover wrap size). 24–48 hour turnaround.

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I run a KDP publishing operation with 50+ live titles across children's books, activity books, and personalized storybooks — I've been through this exact rejection-and-fix cycle dozens of times and built a consistent process (not guesswork) to solve it quickly.

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I was thinking of writing some books, and I'm just wondering what to expect when you publish your first book. What does revenue look like, and what mistake should one avoid when they are just starting out?

Edit: I am interested in fiction only

Does anyone else find this creepy and intrusive? I might have to skip KDP and try to publish elsewhere. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

Amazon earn billions on KDP not because the oithors make money. They have millions of authors work for free and they earn from all sales.
So most self authors do not know that everyone is their same situation.
But it’s fun and good for society.
Here it is:

Amazon doesn’t publish an official “% of KDP self‑publishers who are profitable,” and there’s no single authoritative number. But several independent surveys and data aggregators give a consistent picture: most titles earn very little, a small minority earn serious money, and Amazon’s own disclosures focus on total payouts, not per‑author success rates.

Hi everyone, I have make books and other activity books that I created, but since creating my account, I haven't made any sales. Does anyone have a solution? Thanks.