How to publish a book on Amazon: the honest step-by-step guide

Publishing a book on Amazon is genuinely one of the most open doors in the history of writing: no agent, no gatekeeper, no fee to upload, and your book on sale to the largest bookstore audience on earth within about three days. It is also where a lot of first books quietly go wrong — not because the upload is hard, but because everything around the upload gets skipped. We've published more than 1,200 authors since 2017, most of them onto Amazon, and this is the full process as we'd explain it on the phone: every step, every real cost, and the royalty math Amazon actually pays.

First, know which "Amazon publishing" you mean

Two very different things share the name. Amazon Publishing (APub) is Amazon's own traditional publishing arm — imprints with editors who acquire books, mostly through literary agents. You can't simply sign up for it. What everyone actually means by "publishing a book on Amazon" is Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): Amazon's self-service platform where you are the publisher. KDP is free, open to everyone, and covers three formats — Kindle eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers — printed on demand, so there's no garage full of unsold inventory and no minimum order. Everything below is about KDP.

Before you touch KDP: the three things that decide everything

The upload takes an afternoon. The difference between a book that sells and a book that sits is settled before you ever log in:

• A professionally edited manuscript. Amazon will happily publish your typos. Readers will happily leave one-star reviews about them. At minimum get a copy edit; ideally a developmental edit first.
• A cover that competes as a thumbnail. Your cover will be judged at postage-stamp size against professionally designed bestsellers in your genre. This is the single most common place self-published books lose.
• Properly formatted interior files. An eBook needs a clean reflowable file (KDP accepts EPUB and DOCX); print needs a fixed-layout PDF with correct margins, gutter, and bleed. They are different files with different rules.

The step-by-step process

1. Create your KDP account. Go to kdp.amazon.com and sign in with a regular Amazon account. Before you can publish, complete the one-time setup: your author/payee name, bank details (royalties arrive by direct deposit), and the tax interview (a short online form; U.S. authors need a SSN or EIN).
2. Click Create and pick your format. Kindle eBook, paperback, or hardcover — most authors publish the eBook and paperback together from the same dashboard entry.
3. Enter your book details. Title and subtitle, author name (a pen name is fine), your book description — which is sales copy, not a synopsis — plus up to 7 search keywords and up to 3 categories. These fields decide whether readers browsing your genre ever see the book, so they deserve real thought, not leftovers.
4. Handle the ISBN. Kindle eBooks don't need one (Amazon assigns an ASIN). For print, KDP offers a free ISBN, with the catch that it lists KDP as the source and can only be used on Amazon's platform; buying your own from Bowker ($125 for one, $295 for ten) keeps you listed as the publisher and travels with the book to other printers and stores. Full details in our ISBN cost guide.
5. Upload your manuscript and cover, then preview. KDP's online Previewer shows the eBook on different devices and checks your print PDF against its specs. For print books, order a physical proof copy (you pay printing cost plus shipping) before you approve anything — screens hide problems that paper shows.
6. Set territories, royalty plan, and price. Rights territories (worldwide, for most self-published authors), then your royalty option and list price for each format — the math is the next section.
7. Hit publish. Amazon reviews the book — typically within 72 hours for Amazon.com, and up to about 5 days for its other marketplaces — and then your book is live, with its own product page, on the biggest bookstore there is.

The royalty math, with real numbers

This is the part worth reading twice, because it drives your pricing.

eBooks: Amazon pays a 70% royalty on Kindle books priced in roughly the $2.99–$9.99 band (Amazon sets the exact tiers in its KDP terms), minus a small per-megabyte delivery fee. Price outside that band and the rate drops to 35%. On a $4.99 eBook, the 70% plan pays about $3.45 a copy before the delivery fee — which is why so many self-published eBooks are priced between $2.99 and $9.99.

Print: paperbacks and hardcovers pay 60% of list price minus the printing cost (for print books priced under $9.99, the rate has been 50% since Amazon's June 2025 change). Printing cost depends on page count and ink; by KDP's published U.S. rates, a typical 200-page black-and-white paperback runs about $3.25 to print. So a $14.99 paperback pays roughly: 60% × $14.99 = $8.99, minus $3.25 printing = about $5.74 per copy, paid to you directly. Our book royalties guide runs this math across every path, including what traditional publishers pay by comparison.

One more decision lives here: KDP Select, an optional program that enrolls your eBook in Kindle Unlimited in exchange for making the eBook exclusive to Amazon for renewable 90-day periods. You're paid by pages read from a monthly fund. For some genres — romance and series fiction especially — KU readers are a real audience; for others the exclusivity gives up more than it returns. It's a choice, not a default, and it never touches your print edition.

What it actually costs

That middle row is where honest and dishonest companies part ways. Amazon never charges you to publish — so anyone charging you should be charging for real production work, once, at a price they'll put in writing. Companies that take a cut of your royalties, or whose "publishing fee" grows with every phone call, are running a different business than the one they describe. Our pricing is public for exactly that reason.

Five mistakes that sink first books on Amazon

1. Publishing the first draft. The upload being instant doesn't make the book ready. Editing is the one step no professional path ever skips.
2. The homemade cover. Readers can't judge your writing from the search page — only your cover. It has to survive next to the bestsellers in your category.
3. Treating keywords and categories as an afterthought. Those 7 keywords and 3 categories are how Amazon's search connects readers to your book. Research what your genre's readers actually type.
4. Skipping the proof copy. Margins, gutter shadows, cover color shifts — paper reveals what the Previewer doesn't. A few dollars now beats a one-star review about print quality later.
5. Expecting Amazon to market the book. Amazon lists; it doesn't promote. A launch plan, reviews, and ongoing visibility are your job — or a job you hire out.

Questions authors ask us

Sources & further reading: royalty rates, price bands, ISBN terms, printing costs, and review times are from Amazon's published KDP terms and help pages (70%/35% eBook tiers; 60% print, 50% under $9.99 since June 2025; ~$3.25 printing for a 200-page U.S. black-and-white paperback; review up to 72 hours on Amazon.com). Bowker ISBN prices are from Bowker's own store. Cost ranges reflect USA Publishing House's work with 1,200+ authors since 2017. State-by-state publishing questions? Start with our Illinois and Florida pages.