Amazon KDP Publishing Features You Didn't Know About

About this video

In a video sponsored by Kotobee, Roberts counts down five underutilised Amazon KDP dashboard features. Number five is Contact Us, found at the bottom of the dashboard: it can answer small questions and handle ambiguous or sketchy situations, offers phone support Monday through Friday via a callback to your own number (usually right away or within five minutes), and he advises never throwing away KDP email communications and asking phone answers to be reiterated by email. Number four is browse paths — the category chains shown in the Amazon store, also called categories or niches. Authors select up to two BISAC categories in metadata and Amazon, using those selections, keywords and content, machine-assigns paths and often a third; Roberts says a book can have up to 10 browse paths per ebook and per print book, so after a first sale he checks the assigned paths and uses Contact Us with the ASIN or ISBN to remove inappropriate ones and add relevant ebook-only or print-only paths, and to ask KDP to list a book’s current paths if he loses track. Number three is KENPC, Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count: KDP determines the Kindle page count from the processed manuscript, typically within a week or two, it is relevant to invite-only Kindle Short Reads categorisation, and it can be found by opening Promote and Advertise in the dashboard and scrolling down. After a demonstration of formatting an ebook in Kotobee and exporting EPUB, number one is X-Ray: enable it free from the ebook in the KDP dashboard (English ebooks only in the quoted KDP description), and KDP identifies important names, places and terms so authors can add their own descriptions or commentary that readers see by pressing and holding a word — useful for fiction characters or nonfiction figures. He adds that enabling X-Ray, especially for nonfiction, can help qualify a book for the Great on Kindle programme.

Key takeaways

• Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the KDP dashboard, prefer phone support Monday-Friday when possible, keep all KDP emails, and ask for phone answers to be confirmed by email.
• A book can have up to 10 browse paths per format; after the first sale, review assigned paths and use Contact Us with your ASIN/ISBN to remove wrong ones and add relevant ones.
• Find your KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) under Promote and Advertise; KDP sets it within about a week or two and it factors into Kindle Short Reads categorisation.
• Enable X-Ray free for English ebooks in the dashboard and add your own descriptions for characters, topics, events and places that readers can tap for more detail.
• Enabling X-Ray, especially for nonfiction, can help qualify a book for the Great on Kindle programme.

Episode details: published February 19, 2020 · 13:39 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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