How to publish on Amazon KDP: the complete account-to-live walkthrough

Step 0 — set up your KDP account properly (one-time, ~20 minutes)

Go to kdp.amazon.com and sign in with your regular Amazon account (or create one — free). Before KDP lets you publish, it requires three profile sections: your author/publisher information (name and address), payment (the bank account royalties are deposited into), and the tax interview.

The tax interview is a five-minute questionnaire — a W-9 if you're a US person, a W-8BEN if you're not — and it is the single most-skipped, most-expensive step in self-publishing. Until Amazon validates your tax identity, it withholds up to 30% of your royalties, and you can't publish new books or update existing ones while your tax information is incomplete. Do it on day one.

Step 1 — create the title

On the KDP dashboard, click + Create and choose Kindle eBook. (Paperback is a separate title you create afterward — it reuses the same details, so do the ebook first.) KDP walks you through three pages: Details, Content, and Pricing. Everything below maps to those three pages in order.

Step 2 — book details: the metadata that decides whether readers find you

Title, subtitle, and author must match your cover exactly — mismatches are a common rejection reason. The description field takes up to ~4,000 characters of back-cover copy: hook in the first sentence (it's what shows before 'Read more'), stakes in the middle, no spoilers.

Categories: KDP now has you pick three Amazon store categories directly from a browse tree in the dashboard — BISAC codes are background guidance, not what you enter, and the old email-support trick for extra categories is gone. The strategy is specificity: ranking #1 in 'Sword & Sorcery > Coming of Age' beats being invisible in 'Fantasy'.

Keywords: seven slots, fifty characters each. Think like a reader typing into Amazon's search bar — 'found family fantasy', 'small town second chance romance'. Two-to-three-word phrases beat single words, and don't waste slots repeating words already in your title or categories; those are already indexed.

Step 3 — upload the manuscript and cover

EPUB is the recommended manuscript format — it converts most cleanly to Kindle's format. Your cover should be a JPEG, 2,560 × 1,600 pixels or larger, with the title and author readable at thumbnail size (most buying decisions happen at 100 pixels wide).

After both upload, use KDP's online previewer before you continue. Check three things: the opening pages, one mid-book chapter, and the table of contents. Two minutes here catches the formatting issues readers would otherwise meet on page one.

If you're exporting from Scribegrove's Publishing Studio, the EPUB is already validated against W3C EPUBCheck, the front and back matter (title page, copyright page, about-the-author) are included, and your cover ships with the title baked into the image at export size.

Step 4 — price inside the 70% window

KDP has two royalty plans. The 70% rate requires a list price between $2.99 and $9.99 with availability in all Amazon territories, and deducts a small per-download delivery fee based on file size. Everything outside that window earns 35% — which means a $1.99 book earns less per copy (≈$0.70) than a $2.99 book (≈$2.05). The math is rarely close.

Most debut indie novels launch at $2.99–$4.99: full 70% royalty, low risk for a reader trying an unknown author. You can change your price at any time after launch, so launch low and raise it as reviews accumulate rather than the reverse.

• $0.99 at 35% ≈ $0.35/copy — promo pricing only
• $2.99 at 70% ≈ $2.05/copy after delivery fee
• $4.99 at 70% ≈ $3.45/copy after delivery fee
• $12.99 at 35% ≈ $4.55/copy — usually beaten by $9.99 at 70% (≈$6.90)

Step 5 — publish, and what happens next

Click 'Publish your Kindle eBook'. Amazon reviews new titles for up to 72 hours — usually much less — and emails you when the listing is live. Once it is: search your own title, check the page reads right, and claim the book in Author Central (author.amazon.com) to get an author page and editable bio.

A paperback is the natural next step — + Create → Paperback, same details, upload a print-interior PDF and a wraparound cover. And if you want readers beyond Amazon, the same book can go to Apple Books, Kobo, and libraries through an aggregator — that's a separate guide (linked below).

The traps, in one list

Every one of these is avoidable, and at least one catches most first-time publishers:

• Skipping the tax interview — up to 30% of royalties withheld until it's done.
• Pricing outside $2.99–$9.99 without realizing the royalty halves to 35%.
• Broad categories ('Fiction > Fantasy') instead of specific niches you can actually rank in.
• Keywords that repeat your title — wasted slots that were already indexed.
• Skipping the previewer and shipping a broken table of contents.
• Cover text unreadable at thumbnail size — the size where every buying decision happens.