How To Upload To KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

About this video

The creator walks through his first upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) after his CreateSpace books were transferred over when the two services merged. He says he has about 60 or 70 journals and shows a live example: a 6x9-inch, 120-page unicorn journal/notebook. From the KDP Bookshelf he clicks Create New Title and Paperback, then fills in the title and subtitle, which he treats partly as keyword space to describe the book. For the author name he recalls that on CreateSpace putting a keyword in the last-name field seemed to help ranking, and notes sellers can later put a business/brand name there to group journals together. He says the description does not matter much in his testing and reuses one template per niche. For the seven keyword boxes he stresses filling them all, using Amazon autocomplete (e.g. searching ‘unicorn journal for girls’ and ‘unicorn gifts’) and checking the sales ranks of competing journals to find demand. He then chooses categories, selects the free KDP-assigned ISBN, picks white paper and 6x9 trim, uploads the interior and cover, and previews. He warns to keep cover text/graphics well inside the margins so titles are not cut off in trimming, which can get a book rejected. Finally he sets pricing for all territories/marketplaces and publishes, noting the book goes under review.

Key takeaways

• Start in the KDP Bookshelf with Create New Title > Paperback, after transferring any old CreateSpace titles to KDP.
• Use title, subtitle and author fields thoughtfully for discoverability; he tested keywords in the author last name on CreateSpace and plans to group books under one brand name.
• Fill all keyword boxes using Amazon autocomplete and competitor sales-rank research, e.g. for the unicorn journal niche, rather than guessing terms.
• Reuse one description template per niche instead of writing a unique description for every journal.
• Keep cover text and graphics inside the safe margins, use the free KDP ISBN, preview carefully, then publish to all marketplaces.

Episode details: published September 25, 2018 · 18:25 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are RJ Martinez’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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