I’ve self-published A LOT of books in the past few years. It’s one of my sources of income. I’ll explain how I managed to publish so many books in another article. Today, I’ll teach you how you can make money by self-publishing on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program today.
Table of Contents
Self-publishing vs. Traditional publishing
In the past, it was much harder to become a published author. Your only chance was really with traditional publishing where you’d send your manuscript to many publishers.
J.K Rowling sent her Harry Potter manuscript to 12 publishers all of which rejected her book. They thought that kids don’t like school so how on Earth would they want to read a book about Harry going to a Wizard school?
Little did they know J.K Rowling went on to become the first author who made a billion dollars from her books and movie deals.
It’s quite hard to get into traditional publishing and there is a lot of upfront cost to consider. Many traditionally published authors don’t make a penny from their books as they have to pay for publishing fees and maybe even part of the printing cost.
Self-publishing, on the other hand, is much easier to get into and make money from. You can write a book today and be a published author tomorrow. It’s free to self-publish your books. You can sell your book in an e-book format.
Read the 17 Surprising frugal tips here.
What is KDP?
KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing and it’s a program by Amazon itself. Yes, Amazon. You can simply upload your books and start making money from your book right away! It typically takes 3–7+ days to get your book approved but sometimes you can get your book approved within a day. Once it has been given the green light, people can freely purchase your book on the Kindle Store.
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What is Kindle Unlimited?
Readers who want to read an unlimited number of books would pay $10 per month to be a Kindle Unlimited member.
You can opt-in or opt-out when you publish your book. I would highly recommend you opt-in. It’s free to opt your books in. A huge part of my KDP royalty come from Kindle Unlimted.
Every month, Amazon will announce a budget, the money that they made from selling Kindle Unlimited memberships, authors will get paid based on how many pages were read in their books.
The price for each page read varies from month to month. It depends on the specific budget for that month.
Learn to make money on Fiverr with these 20 easy gigs. Click here.
KDP Royalties
If you price your book above $2.99 your royalty would be 70%. If you price your book below $2.99 your royalty would be 35%.
Amazon does this to ensure its writers don’t list their books for too cheap (they want to make more money from your books). Many authors want to sell their books for much cheaper than they should to try and drive some readers to their next book in their series. Use bait to catch the fish and then use the fish to catch the next fish in an essence.
I would suggest you price your book between $2.99 to $9.99.
Learn how to use Google Keyword Planner to select the best articles to write about here. (For bloggers)
KDP Payout
KDP allows people to return any book they bought from the Kindle Store within 30 days so that means if you do make a sale, you’ll have to wait until after the 30 days to ensure you actually did make the sale.
You’ll get your money 60 days after the end of the month that you made the sale.
If you choose direct deposit, it’ll take 1–5 business days for the fund to arrive. If you choose wire payment, it’ll take 5–10 days. If you choose to get paid via a cheque, it’ll take 30 days to arrive.
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Self-publishing Success stories
- L.J Ross
L.J Ross used to be a lawyer but is now a full-time self-published author. She said self-publishing was the best decision she made. She had success with her first book (something that is uncommon). One of her books sold more than 4.5 million copies!
- Amanda Hawking
Amanda Hawking wrote many books but since no publishers thought it was good enough, she didn’t do anything with her books until she found out about self-publishing. She needed $300 to go to a Muppet’s conversion so she uploaded her books as a test. Since then, she has made over $2 million dollars from her books.
Learn how to make a font to sell for money here.
How much can you make self-publishing?
Most authors don’t make more than $500 per year self-publishing their books and the reason is that most authors only publish 1 or 2 books. These authors aren’t really full-time authors.
For full-time self-published authors, they bring in an average of $100,000 per year from their books. And they average at around 33 full-length books per author.
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What genres should you publish in?
There are many genres to choose from. You can choose to publish fiction books or non-fiction books.
Most self-publish authors hoping to make a living on the internet self-publishing are doing so with fiction books.
The most popular genre to publish your books in are the following in order:
- Romance
- Fantasy
- Science fiction
- Literary
- Mystery/crime/detective
- Thrillers
- Action & Adventure
- Suspense
- Contemporary women
- Science fiction
If you really want to make money self-publishing, there is a lot more money to be made in the romance genre than in any other genre but of course, you need to choose a niche that you enjoy writing in and stick to it.
Publish all your books in that genre under one pen name if you do use a pen name.
Learn how to make money writing on Medium here.
A little industry secret…
A few years ago may be between 2013–2018, it was quite easy to make money writing erotica short stories. These short stories are between 3000–15,000 words long per book and before you ask, no, my books aren’t in the erotica genre (Although I have to admit, I have read a few of those books out of curiosity…).
Writers would push out book after book and when they have around 300 books in their catalog, they were easily making $3000–$5000 per month doing that. Many authors were able to push out 300 short stories within a year.
I found out about it in 2018 and at the time I had a blog, 6 courses, and was tinkering with other businesses while networking for my co-op program (a program where university students network with potential employers in the industry). I simply didn’t have time for it.
Now, there’s a lot more competition for it to be lucrative. There are still people making money from writing erotica shorts but longer books are more likely to be bought today than shorter books.
It was one of those secret things that if you found out about it, you won’t tell anybody because there’s money to be made there. The more competition you have, the less chance you have of grabbing a piece of the pie.
Read the 7 most profitable blogging niches here.
How many words do you need to write per book?
The number of words you need to write per book depends on the genre. Below is the average number of words in each genre:
- Romance: 78630 words
- Sci-fi: 92025 words
- Fantasy: 94701 words
- Crime and mystery: 79444 words
- Thriller: 83481 words
- Young adult: 80138 words
It’s better to hit the industry standard for the number of words on your novel so your readers won’t be too surprised. It’s not a nice thing to find out that the book you bought was way too long or way shorter than what you’re used to for a book in the genre.
You need to write to market. This means knowing what the market expects and fulfilling that expectation.
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How many books do you need to make money full-time as a self-published author?
There’s a formula known as the 20 to 50K formula that authors use. It’s by no means accurate and it differs from person to person. This formula states that if you want to make $50k per year from self-publishing, you need to have 20 books out.
Once you have 20 full-length books in the same genre under the same pen name, you can expect to make 50k per year. Some people get there with 2 books, some people get there with 50+ books.
The average self-published full-time author is making $100k per year with 33 books out.
Let’s say you’re an author in the romance genre and you write 2000 words per day (I know that sounds like a lot but you can totally do it!). You’ll need 40 days to finish a romance book. Let’s say you take 10 days to edit your book and get it ready to publish. It’ll take you 50 days to produce 1 book. You can produce 7 books per year with that schedule. That means, it’ll take you 3 years to get to 21 books at which point, you may be able to make enough to transition into a full-time author. If you want to publish 33 books, it’ll take you roughly 4.5 years to get there.
Compared to content creators building a brand online, they typically take more than 2 years to become full-time after consistent hard work. Pick a way to make money online that suits you. Be it an author or a content creator.
If you want to learn how to make money as a content creator, click here.
The process
Below is the overall process you must take to publish your book.
- Step 1: Pick a genre
Pick a genre that enough people are reading in. Romance genre is a good option. You’ll be surprised how many women like to read romance books.
- Step 2: Pick a pen name
Make sure there are no other authors with the same/similar names on Amazon or off Amazon. This can be a bit tricky but you can definitely find some available names. Use Reedsy name generator for it.
- Step 3: Check out your competition
Select Kindle Store from the drop-down and hit enter.
You’ll see the following page: Click on “Kindle eBooks” on the left-hand side of the screen.
It’ll bring you to this page. You can see all the genre sections that your books could be in. Click on your selected genre.
You can see more subcategories under “Romance”. Go into each of those to find books doing well.
Go find out how many pages the book has, what are people saying in the reviews, what do readers like, what don’t readers like, put these in the back of your mind, get a general sense of why this book did well. Implement that in your book.
- Step 4: Write down whatever thoughts come
Don’t think about it too much, just write it down. Is it a particular scene? Do you have vivid details of what the characters are saying and how they look when they say things? Write it down. Do you think certain characters should start out as friends but turn into lovers? Do you think certain characters would die? Do you think certain characters will be the real culprit? Write it all down. You can change things as you go but don’t restrict anything write it down. It doesn’t have to be very detailed or organized at this point.
- Step 5: Have a chapter by chapter outline of what must happen
Now write down what should happen in each chapter. Something that can be explained in one or two sentences.
Ex: Chapter 1: The main character moves into his great grandparents’ house on 6th Avenue. He found a key inside a loose floorboard.
- Step 6: Do research relevant to your plotline if you need to
At this stage, go do your research if you need to. If your setting is set in real life, maybe during WWII, and a real historical figure is in there, you need to find out whether he was alive at the same time as another historical figure. Do whatever research you need to.
- Step 7: Start writing (reframe from editing too much)
Don’t edit until you’re done. You can make notes of what to edit but don’t edit too much until you’re done writing the whole book otherwise, you may never get it done.
- Step 8: Edit your book yourself
Before you have anyone edit the book for you, you must go through it at least once and edit as much as you can. Editors won’t spend too much time editing your book. They have other books to edit too. If your book is full of misspellings, that’s where all their time will go when editing your book. You want them to focus on the plotline, the pace of the story, the character development, etc.
- Step 9: Have your family and friends proofread your books
You don’t have to if you feel self-conscious but this is something you can do.
- Step 10: Have a proofreader edit your manuscript
Depending on your budget, you may not have the money to hire a proofreader ($1k-3k/book). If you do, great! Have them edit the manuscript. This will give your readers a better experience.
- Step 11: Get your book cover designed
Get a good book cover designer on Fiverr for this. Don’t design the book yourself because if it looks awful, no one will buy your book doesn’t matter how good it is.
- Step 12: Research keywords for book description
Go research some keywords for your book so readers can easily find your book.
- Step 13: Decide on a price
Look at what your competitors are pricing their books. Lower price isn’t always better as it conveys a lower quality. Price your book accordingly.
- Step 14: Publish your book
Go over to the Kindle Direct Publishing website, sign-up for an account (it’s easy to set up),
Once you sign in, you’ll see this page below. Click on “Kindle eBook” to create an e-book.
Fill out the details of the book including language, book title, subtitle (if any), author, description, keywords, categories, age range, etc.
You can fit as many keywords you can hit into the keywords boxes. Like this:
You can choose up to two categories for your book. It’s good to click into each of those categories before you write your book to get a sense of where your book may fit within the categories.
You can also allow people to pre-order your book.
Now upload your eBook content. They have specific formats that you need to follow. You can upload it in docx, EPUB, and KPF formats. To upload in KPF format, you can download Amazon’s Kindle Create formatting tool.
You can upload your eBook cover in JPG or TIFF format.
You’ll then be asked to preview your eBook to make sure all the formatting is correct. Kindle gives you a free ISBN number so you don’t have to buy an ISBN number for your book. But you can add one if you want to.
Now you’ll proceed to the next page. I would suggest you opt into Kindle Select. If you opt your book into Kindle Select, you agree that Kindle is the only place you can sell your book.
(A lot of authors change up their book content slightly, slap on a completely different cover with a different title, and sell it on other platforms anyway)
You open up a whole range of tools to promote and market your books when your book is in KDP Select. You have to opt-in each of your books individually. The most beneficial feature is the Kindle Unlimited benefit. It allows readers to read your book instead of buying your book. You get paid for each page read.
You can give your book a price. Once you type in the USD price, it automatically converts into other currencies for you. You can go in and manually change the price for each country but I mostly leave it there untouched.
If your book is priced above $2.99, it’s automatically in Book Lending mode since you’re taking a revenue of more than 70%. Book Lending just allows your readers to lend your book to friends and family for the first 14 days after purchase.
Now hit the publish button! It’ll take a few days (3–7+) for your book to get approved. Sit tight!
- Step 15: Market your book
Now, you’ll market your book. This can be done before the book launch as well. You can market your book on Quora, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook groups, Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, your own blog, etc.
- Step 16: Write another book
You won’t make it with 1 or 2 books. Aim to push out at least 20 before you think about doing this full-time. The faster you get to 20 high-quality books, the faster you make being a full-time author a reality.
What’s the difference between an author and a writer?
A lot of people will tell you that they made a living as a writer on the internet but they may be doing work that you don’t expect such as resume writing, content writing, writing for major news websites, etc. I know those kinds of work may not excite everyone. It doesn’t excite me at all.
If you want to make a living with your “creative” writing, big on the “creative” part as in, making a living with writing novels, you can! You just have to put out more books.
Where to get your book cover designed?
People do judge a book by its cover. The most important thing about your book is probably the book cover. Don’t cut costs on this one. Hire a good book cover designer for you. If the book cover is bad or isn’t interesting it’ll turn away potential readers.
Get your book cover designed professionally for cheap on Fiverr.
Should you hire an editor and a proofreader?
If you have the budget, you should absolutely hire an editor and a proofreader for your books. You can hire an editor and a proofreader from Fiverr.
Those who have a proofreader check their books typically earn more than those who don’t use a proofreader.
It’s not uncommon for authors to spend $1000–2000 per book to have it professionally edited.
If you can’t pay for a proofreader, you can have your friends and family read over your manuscript.
People who produce books very quickly don’t tend to hire a proofreader as they produce books so fast that their readers are satisfied and won’t be as picky with a few mistakes in the book. Many of these authors produce shorter books in series to keep the readers hooked.
Can you edit your book on KDP after you published it?
Yes, you can update the content and even the cover of the books after you uploaded them but you’ll have to get it approved again which wouldn’t take too long (3–7 days)).
Should you hire a ghostwriter?
You can hire a ghostwriter to write books for you on Fiverr.
It’ll be quite costly to hire a ghostwriter who lives in the US, Canada, or Europe so you can consider hiring a ghostwriter from China, India, etc where the cost of living is lower thus, they are able to charge less for their services.
However, the quality most likely won’t be as good. You may have to rewrite some parts of the book yourself.
Hiring a decent ghostwriter from China or India to write a full-length novel for you would probably cost anywhere between $500–2000 per book.
A ghostwriter can quickly speed up the building of your catalog. The more books you have under a pen name, the more each of the books would sell. The income is exponential. Those who bought your books before would consider buying more since they already know and trust your books.
Should you use a pen name?
You can choose to use a pen name if you want. I love Reedsy’s pen name generator.
Many authors don’t want other people from their real-life to know that they are writing books so they use a pen name. I have numerous pen names for this reason as well.
If you have books that are written specifically for children, you must ensure that you only publish children’s books under that pen name because children can search up your name and find your other books that aren’t written for them.
Use a pen name for each genre of book. This is one cool way to build up a loyal audience base. If you publish all sorts of books under your pen name, your readers won’t know what to expect from you. If all your books are in the same genre you’re more likely to attract readers. Your pen name would be known as a brand in a specific genre.
Are there other places to self-publish books other than KDP?
Amazon KDP is the best place to self-publish books as they have a ton of active readers always eager to find more books to read from. I don’t have as much success on other self-publish platforms but it does bring in extra income from there.
Something to note, when you publish any books on KDP unless it’s free, you must make sure you don’t give out more than 10% of the content anywhere else. You can’t have a free book on your website and then ask people to pay for it on KDP.
Notable places to self-publish books:
- KDP
- Barnes & Noble Press
- Rakuten Kobo
- Blurb
- Lulu
- Smashwords
How to format KDP books
I use Kindle Create to format my KDP books. It’s totally free to download and use. Or, if you want, you can pay someone $5 to format the book for you on Fiverr.
Final thought
Being an author isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some people think it’s a dream job while others think it’s a total nightmare to have to write so many words.
If you love writing, consider making this your next money adventure. Maybe you can turn this into a full-time job in a couple of years.
Good luck!
By the way, want to know how people are making living self-publishing on KDP without writing any words? No, it’s not with ghostwriters, In fact, you don’t have to pay any money to produce these books. Subscribe to the mailing list so you’ll be the first to know when that article is out!
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