KDP: The Final Steps

We now come to The Final Steps of KDP Select. This includes setting up the rights to your book and the pricing and royalties.

Verify Your Publishing Territories

The options here are: Worldwide rights - all territories
                                       Individual territories - select territories

I can think of no reason to choose anything other than Worldwide Rights unless there is some question of ownership of your story.

Set Your Pricing and Royalty

    Here is a step you need to think through thoroughly. Pricing is strictly a personal choice. But for an Indie author, especially a new one, I don't recommend pricing above 2.99 for you full sized novel. For Novella's and Short Stories 99 cents is a good price point. Once you have established yourself pricing can go higher, but Amazon has lowered customers expectations on pricing so much where everyone is looking for a bargain, where 99 cents and free books rule the market. Also there is no option to set the price permanently for free. You must do this via Kindle Countdown deals once the book is published. I plan on discussing this in a later blog post.

KDP Pricing and Royalty

You have two options here, 35% or 70% Royalty.

Seems easy as of course you want to get the largest of the two. But there are two factors here to understand and consider:

If you price your book at 99 cents you can only do the 35% Royalty option. To use 70% the book must be $1.99 or higher.

If you are able to use the 70% option you will also have to pay Amazon a download fee for each book purchased. For a text only book this will be very small and you definitely should choose 70%. But if your book has lot's of graphics and the file itself is many megabytes in size you may want to weigh what those fees will be, as the 35% option does not require you to pay a download fee.

After choosing your pricing and royalty, you can make your book available on Amazon sites all over the world. Choose Set Price Automatically Based on US Price for each of these countries. Uncheck any countries you don't want to make the book available to purchase.

Kindle MatchBook

If you have a printed version of your book available on Amazon, this allows users who purchase the printed copy to get a discounted or free eBook version. Check the box and set the price. I would suggest giving those that paid for your printed version the eBook for free since they likely paid a higher price for it.

Kindle Book Lending

This allows users who have purchased your book to lend it to their Kindle friends and family to read for 14 days. For a new Indie Author I would suggest allowing this as you want as much exposure to your book as possible.

Now check the box next to: By clicking Save and Publish below, I confirm that I have all rights necessary to make the content I am uploading available for marketing, distribution and sale in each territory I have indicated above, and that I am in compliance with the KDP Terms and Conditions

When satisfied with your choices I would click Save As Draft and then carefully review Steps 1 and 2 again. When all looks good click Save And Publish. Your book is now up for review by Amazon. This process can take 24 hours or so before your book is live on their site. If there are any problems or errors they will email you on what needs to be fixed. When correcting those errors you'll need to click Save And Publish once more and it again will take up to 24 hours before the book is live.

Congratulations you are a published author on Amazon

Enjoy the feeling and let all your friends and family know, so you can get some sales and reviews. Now the hard part begins, Marketing your book. Good Luck!!