Have you considered Kindle Direct Publishing for getting your book onto the Amazon Marketplace?
Are you wondering is Kindle Direct Publishing worth it? Well we're gonna discuss that in today's video so make sure that you stick around
This is self publishing with Dale where you learn to publish
books that sell and build an unstoppable brand
Have you published on Kindle direct publishing? if so
would you recommend it to others to do so as well?
Definitely leave your thoughts inside the comments I'd love to hear from you
stick around to the end because
I'm gonna share with you why or why you wouldn't want to publish through Kindle Direct Publishing
Also, I'm gonna equip you with just the right resources and tools to start
absolutely free, but first what is Kindle Direct Publishing?
Kindle Direct Publishing
Also known as KDP is a platform that self-publishers are able to put their books up onto the Amazon marketplace
and this actually started back in late
2007 but really started to flourish right around
2013 to 2014 in the big Kindle Gold Rush and boom
today KDP fulfills ebook sales and print book sales but how exactly does
KDP work anyway?
Well authors prepare their work in advance where they'll upload it through ebooks or print books on the Kindle Direct Publishing
Dashboard. It's just as simple as getting all the things dialed in so you're gonna need to come with your own cover,
you're gonna need to come in with your own manuscript that is fully formatted and
All of your metadata this includes knowing your title your subtitle your series name of course your author name any
Relevant keywords as well as a dialed in book description and what readers can expect. And of course keep in mind
What is going to be the price point over your particular book?
Stay with me for just a moment when it comes to royalty and the pricing structure because it gets a little hairy so
just stay with me we're going to start it out at the 35%
model, when it comes to e-book sales. This is at the lower end of royalties and in fact it's probably the lowest you're gonna get
Anywhere when it comes to say print book or
audiobook.
35% isn't terrible by any stretch and especially if you're having a traditionally published deal you may be seeing way less than that.
But to get on the 35% royalty structure you're staying outside of what's called the sweet spot and the sweet spot would be
anything below
$2.99 and anything priced above
$9.99 why is that? Well Amazon believes that the sweet spot where they see the most sales happens between
$2.99 and
$9.99. They want to provide their customers with the best
experience possible and obviously set themselves and everybody else up for victory so they reward those that stay within the sweet spot with a
70% royalty structure there is
Exceptions to the rule and actually it has a lot to do with the KDP select
Program, which we'll get to in just a moment now what if you're thinking
Well I've seen a lot of books priced at $0.99
Now so what gives are people really willing just to take 35 cents out of every dollar for each one of their books
well yes sometimes that pricing is a way that they're able to
get more sales so they can increase their rank in the bestseller ranking of the Amazon Kindle Store or what-not
but if you plan on pricing your ebook say above
$9.99 that's all well and good but keep in mind that at the 70% model of say
$9.99 you're getting about a $6.98 return
with that being said you're going to want to make sure to get the same return if you're gonna do
35% you're gonna want to do
$19.99 or greater in order to actually match that same level that you would have at the 70% model of
$9.99 and then there's the KDP select program it's very interesting in that you have a 90-day
exclusivity agreement. Now you don't have to enroll your ebook in the KDP Select
Program but there are certain benefits and advantages that come with going into the program. So, remember I mentioned how
there are exceptions to the 70% rule this means that outside
of some of the primary regions like US and UK
There are a couple of regions that you only get 35% if you're not enrolled in the KDP Select
program. By enrolling in that KDP select program then you get global reach and the full
70% of all of your sales of that particular book as long as your book is priced between $2.99 and
$9.99 and then there is the unfair advantage of using the KDP Select program now I say that with a smile because it's true
You would assume that the words best seller rank means that it's based on sales
This is not necessarily true because the KDP select program actually
influences the bestseller rank so if you have your book enrolled in the KDP Select program this means you're allowing
Amazon to lend your book to members of the Kindle unlimited
Program as well as the Kindle owner lending library. In that program they borrow the book,
they flip through it, they read it,
it's kind of like a library is but for every page that they read it it influences the ranking of
your book in its given categories and in the overall Kindle book store. Here's the deal:
you
could literally become a number one bestseller without selling a single book. That's why I say there's an unfair advantage.
So to a certain extent you can call yourself a best seller
But it's a rather hollow victory if you're just doing it through page flips of the Kindle Direct Publishing
Select program. If this still seems a bit ambiguous, I assure you, stick around to the end I'll
share just a little bit more about the KDP Select program and how you can find out more details.
Print books: ambiguous and unclear royalty structure. According to Katie P Prince you're getting 60% of the retail cost
minus the print cost.
Bear in mind that print costs, obviously, they're not going to be printing the books for free and
each one of the books' cost is going to be based on the number of pages that are being printed so a
small book say anything underneath 108 pages is
going to be pretty much a static price for printing.
Anything above that they start to charge one to two cents per page and it starts to take away from your
bottom line. So you may look at say 60% of a payout of the retail price in the store
But you're not getting that ultimately and I typically see right about a 35%
royalty of each one of the books
sans the actual print cost. For KDP print you actually get distribution to a wide array of
marketplaces including US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada and Australia
Keeping in mind there's smaller regions that feed off of each one of those territories so you're getting a wide,
wide reach when it comes to publishing through KDP print.
Additionally something that was over originally inside the CreateSpace platform came over to the KDP print platform and that is expanded
distribution.
Well if you try to reach out to them and get some direct answers it seems to me that not too
many people are very familiar
what where exactly expanded distribution goes... I
can assure you that what I found out so far is that expanded distribution includes
Ingram Content group's reach. Now you may recognize the name from Ingram Spark or Lightning Source because Ingram
distributes ebooks and print books so they feed out to
thousands and thousands and thousands of retail distributors online but it does come at a cost. Expanded distribution you're
sacrificing 20% of that original 60 percent of retail costs, so you're seeing considerably less in fact it's going to be literally about a
third of
your payout an expanded distribution compared to what you get through Amazon's distribution.
Marketing and promotion. Let's start out with the KDP Select program they actually have built-in features that include the
7-day Kindle countdown deal that you're allowed to utilize every 90 days.
This is only available in the US and UK markets, so essentially what you end up doing is you're going to put your book on
sale for a seven-day period or you can even make it shorter you can do 1 to as much as 7 days
And it has a countdown clock that will go on to your product page,
communicating a sense of urgency so let's say for instance you have your book normally at
$9.99 it can drop down to say 99 cents for a
24-hour period or as much to seven days and it can even go in increments and
here's the beautiful thing when it comes to Kindle countdown deals they will actually showcase your book in a
separate page in a separate category and especially if your book
carries a lot of sales already they're gonna showcase that. I've seen many
many
great Kindle countdown deals with some of my own books and
they've proved to be very advantageous to exposure for my book, and you can get
hundreds and hundreds of downloads if your book carries enough relevancy within your given category. And the big benefit
When it comes to utilizing the Kindle Countdown deal is you get to maintain that 70% payout
I love that. It's really nice that you can drop it
down to say 99 cents on a Kindle Countdown deal and you aren't put into that 35 percent
tier. So be selective when it comes to bargain basement pricing your book
because you can literally take advantage of the KDP Select
Programs Kindle Countdown deal through this avenue as long as you keep that and said the sweet spot and you have to keep your price
at a certain time period it's it's eluding
my brain right now. Then there's the five day free promotion this was utilized a lot for
many
of people back in the Kindle Gold Rush back in the day of
2015 to 2014 in any event they would use that 5 day free
Promotion to get their books into more hands and get more reviews on their books
However there are many people out there right now that believe that the effectiveness of the 5 day free promotion
isn't quite what it used to be.
What I would recommend is use it as a promotional tool, take advantage of that time that you have, reach out to
your e-mail newsletter,
your following,
You're gonna want to make sure that you advertise get behind the fact that you have a 5 day free promotion and make it worthwhile
And have an end goal. Have a reason why you're putting this on a 5 day free
promotion
Much like the Kindle countdown deal, you can get this option available to you every 90 days of your exclusive
contract the next marketing and promotion feature that they have available through Kindle Direct Publishing is the Amazon
advertising platform,
also known as or formerly known as Amazon Marketing Services aka AMS. It's official; it's a pay-to-play
world and if you really want to get an edge on your competition
or those that are on the Kindle marketplace as well as KDP Print then Amazon
Advertising is going to be your vehicle I have expressed this numerous times on this channel how much I really
enjoy and like the feature of Amazon advertising and it is just dead simple. But remember this
comes with a little bit of an asterisk because if you're going to pay to play, remember,
advertising anytime that you're using your own money or your business money it's a bit of a gamble. Do not put up
what you aren't willing to lose this means that you shouldn't be
Mortgaging your house to advertise your book through the Amazon
Advertising platform. If you want a little bit of a better ideal when it comes to using Amazon
Advertising for getting your book out there, might I recommend you take a look at the video series that have on Amazon Marketing Services for
books this is going to at least get you started off on the right foot when it comes to advertising through that platform.
After all is said and done is
KDP still worth it though?
Well let's take a look at some of the features that they have: They're free to use,
They've got a wide reach, they've got a competitive royalty structure versus the big four Amazon
alternatives and say Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble Press,
Google Play, Rakuten's Kobo and this largely depends on your
expectations of this business and I can't really influence you into one decision or another so I definitely, you know, just tell you
walk into this with a sense of cautious optimism because the KDP
Platform is stellar, but is it for everyone?
Possibly not. But to allay any kind of fears that you might have about whether
you might forget something you might get it wrong or maybe you don't format your book
properly, are using the right keywords, the nice thing is Amazon wants to see you win as a
self-published author so if you haven't broken ground already on the KDP platform, might
I recommend you take a look at their free online course called the KDP
jumpstart. This is a simple online course I've gone through it myself and
it's really kind of nice and each one of the videos are anywhere from 30 seconds long to as much as a couple minutes long
and some of them are about a half-hour long but the nice thing is they give you precisely what you need and the
foundation you need to get started over in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform and speaking of
KDP, I talked about it ever so briefly but I think we're gonna go into a more granular level
when we take a look at my video about
KDP select program you're gonna want to make sure that you watch that before you move on
so make sure you join me over there. I will see you then!
One is Kindle Countdown deals: a time-bound promotional discount for your book
while it still earns full royalties. The other is the free book promotion where ...