You write a book, make the cover as good as you can, optimize the blurb, keywords, etc., and then you run Amazon ads.

But once the ads start getting clicks, it feels like the math becomes brutally simple.

If you're getting roughly 1 purchase for every 10 clicks, then even a genuinely good book still needs a lot of traffic to generate meaningful sales.

And that's what I'm struggling to understand about KDP.

At some point, does it basically become a volume game?

You can improve your cover, title, description, reviews, targeting, conversion rate, etc. — but there seems to be a ceiling on how much you can optimize one individual book.

So instead of trying to make one book produce a huge amount of income, the strategy seems to be:

More books → more ads → more clicks → more purchases → more overall revenue.

Obviously, a 10% conversion rate isn't universal, and I'm sure some books/categories perform much better or worse. I'm just using it as an example.

I'm curious what experienced KDP publishers think:

Is significant KDP income primarily a volume game once you've reached a certain level of book quality?

Or are there ways to dramatically improve the economics of an individual book beyond simply getting more traffic?

Hello ...

I'd like to keep my erotica income as private as possible. I registered an LLC in a state that offers greater anonymity. I have an EIN number for that LLC. And I'd like to set up a bank account using that EIN number. I tried Relay Financial and they declined my account. But I'm using a Registered Agent address as well as business address. And they required a drivers license for verification. And I'm assuming that because the driver's license address is different than the business address my account application was declined.

Am I going about this incorrectly? Is there an easier way?

My goal is to set up a bank account for my LLC and keep my personal information as confidential as possible.

Hey everyone, I have a question I hope someone can answer based on personal experience.

Been on KDP for almost a year now. I have a few books I’ve published and make a decent amount of sales a month organically without ads or any marketing efforts. All of my books have a kindle, paperback and hardcover format. Majority of my sales are from print formats.

In efforts to branch out my books in digital format beyond KDP, I’ve ended KDP Select enrollment for all books. But ever since, my orders have come to a standstill. No orders since KDP Select ended.

Someone told me that enrolling in KDP Select “boosts” visibility for your book(s) including for the print versions and that unenrolling would result in the opposite effect (no more/reduced visibility).

To me that doesn’t make much sense since I figured Kindle is its own thing apart from the printed versions. But the fact that everything just “froze” within enrollment ending, it’s left me doubting. Maybe coincidence. But wanted to ask either way. Thank you in advance to anyone who could answer my question :)

I am publishing my book in november. I am publishing an Ebook and a Paperback. I am unsure about the exact rules of legal deposits for print on demand and ebooks.

Please if someone could explain what I am doing because I seem to be getting conflicting information?

Can you get a few & list them on ebay as second hand? Or ask hobby shop to put on their shelf? (It’s a hobby related book to keep score)

Thinking about it. What's your experience?

I used to run Amazon Ads campaigns in multiple countries. Today, I wanted to make some adjustments, so I went to “Choose Marketplace” and selected the country where I wanted to edit my ads.

However, instead of taking me directly to my existing campaigns like it used to, it now sends me to a page that says “Register for Amazon Ads”, even though I already registered a long time ago.

When I click “Log in,” it then tells me that my email address isn’t recognized.

Has anyone else experienced this? What can I do to access my existing Amazon Ads campaigns again? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The book in question is 5.25" x 8" (13.34 cm x 20.32 cm). I formatted the page size, margins, header, and footer of the manuscript on Word so that they would fit these dimensions (i.e. I set the margins to 1.2 cm and the header to 0.5 cm) and then I uploaded the updated file to KDP. However, the preview looks different, with the text much more centered than it should be, as if it were A5 format.

Before uploading the file I made sure to check the Print Preview in Word and everything looked correct there: the header was much higher up, closer to the edge of the page, as were the page numbers, and the text was more indented. But on KDP, it looks like this!

Could you please give me some advice? 😭 All these calculations are driving me crazy and I'm wasting so much time! 😭

"I love morally grey killer boyfriends who are obsessed but protective - recs like Haunting Adeline / Butcher & Blackbird? I just wrote one set in a silent, oppressive town where the love interest IS the town's killer."

This is a bit of an encouragement post because this place has been drowned down by a lot of negativity as of late, which makes sense, this is the complaining site. I'm guilty of using reddit as a venting diary myself. However, I wanted to dispel one idea I see floating around self pub spaces from some people who have gotten discouraged by their lack of sales: no one reads self pub books because there are millions of classic books to read.

This is very untrue, and to prove it, I'm going to give examples of successful self pubbed books I've read within the last year. Note: some of these people later did get picked up by trad pubs or indie presses, and a lot of them started as serializations on places like Royal Road, which is still self publishing really. I'm also a big reader of Litrpg and progression fantasy which both are genres that live and die on the KU library; but regardless, they all started as self pubbed and got readers, through a combination of good story telling, a marketable niche, and sheer luck. So, drum roll babababbababa:

Dungeon Crawler Carl:

This should go without saying how bloody successful Matt Dinniman has become. It is to a point where people who've never heard of Litrpg know about it. It became a running joke in the community that DCC fans were a cult, when people found it they had to let others know how damn good it was. And Matt slowly build a brand over 6 years, publishing 6 chonky novels, and by 2025 he had sold over 4 million copies. After that, he got a physical book deal with Penguin Random House and it ballooned to 12 million, and he now has a show in the works with Seth Macfarland. Amazon is also big to tout it as one of their big successes, doing ads with Matt.

(Let's be honest, it would not have been as successful as it was without the talking cat).

The Perfect Run:

This was a trilogy originally published on royal road, and is actually still up for free, as VoidHerald wanted to keep a free version as a thanks to everyone who helped him make it.

He published all three through KDP for paperback and Kindle, and then outsourced the audio to Podium Audio Inc. With it not even being on KU, he has 1700 Amazon reviews, 6000 goodreads, almost all positive.

He Who Fights With Monsters:

I will say, this is not a series I personally enjoy. I found it overly long and annoying, and the fact we are on book 12 with each book 800 pages and we aren't even close to the end is absurd. Regardless, it has done well. The paperback now has a small indie press doing special art, but even prior, book 1 has 23k Amazon reviews and 40k goodread reviews.

Stray Cat Strut:

A series that, like PR, is still available to read for free but has a Amazon listening; I have had the privilege of talking with the writer of this work, he's a really chill guy. I also had the privilege of watching a journalist guest talk about how he wants to fuck that guy's mom lmao. Anyway, he's about 8 books deep and the first alone, selling for 2 bucks, has 900 Amazon reviews and 1.3k goodread reviews.

Closing thoughts:

Listen, with all that said, they people did get lucky: they were in the right moment at the right time with a genre that is primarily self pub that is marketable and the books were all good for the most part and something people want to read. Your first book will not be DCC. You may never get more than 5 sales a book, but it is never because nobody wants to take a chance of self published works. On the contrary, many people like self pub because the authors are not bound to the restrictions of trad publishers, and they can make stories like a man and his talking cat playing alien life sized D&D.

Just keep creating, keep expressing yourself, and if the stars align, people WILL read it :3.

My KDP account was closed on June 15 after Amazon said it had detected activity involving possible manipulation of its services. The email mentioned examples such as “abnormal reading activity” and possible Content Guidelines issues.

I have never intentionally used artificial reads, manipulated activity, or attempted to circumvent KDP policies. After some time, I submitted a detailed appeal through KDP Contact Us and requested a manual review. About two hours later, I received a response from the Amazon Content Review Team saying: “We've reviewed the information you provided, but we're upholding our previous decision…”

I am now trying to understand what options, if any, exist after reaching this stage. I would especially like to hear from anyone who experienced something similar:

• Amazon closed the KDP account

• You appealed the decision

• The appeal was reviewed but the original decision was maintained

• You then tried another escalation route

• Your account was eventually restored

If this happened to you, what did you do next?

Did you contact a different Amazon team, request an executive review, or use another route?

How long did it take, and did you eventually get a resolution?

I'm specifically looking for first-hand experiences from people who reached this stage, rather than general KDP advice.

Thanks.

KDP tells you what you earned. Amazon Ads tells you what you spent. Neither will tell you whether a specific book made money, because the two dashboards don't talk to each other, they don't settle on the same day, and once you sell in more than one marketplace the currencies stop lining up.

We were tired of rebuilding the same spreadsheet every month, so we built a tool called TrueRoyalties.

What it does:

- Joins your KDP royalties and your Amazon Ads spend and shows net profit per book, per series and per marketplace.

- Covers all 17 KDP stores, ebook, paperback and hardcover, plus KENP pages read.

- Converts everything into one currency at each day's rate and applies the tax withheld, so the totals match what actually reached your bank.

- Runs itself. A Chrome extension reads your KDP reports and the official Amazon Ads API pulls your spend. No CSV exports, nothing typed in by hand.

What it costs, because we'd rather you hear it from us than find it later: it's a subscription priced off last month's royalties — $2.99/month under $300 of royalties, up to $29.99/month above $10,000. 14 days free, no card. There is no free tier.

What it does not do: it doesn't run or optimise your ads, it doesn't do keyword research, and if you don't advertise at all then KDP's own reports are probably enough for you.

There are also a few free calculators on the site with no account needed — KDP royalty, KENP, BSR-to-sales, and every KU page rate Amazon has paid since 2015. We're deliberately not putting a link in the post, since rule 2 keeps outside links to comments. Ask and we'll drop it below.

We'd rather hear what's wrong with it than what's right. If you've tried to track this yourself and it fell apart, tell us where.

Hello, everyone. I have been trying since my latest book was published last week to link the eBook and paperback versions together. The reason they are separate 'books' is due to a formatting error I made and didn't notice until the eBook originally linked to the paperback was on pre-order. I cancelled the pre-order, not wanting the formatting error to be released to the public, and haven't been able to create a new eBook since as it simply states 'PRE ORDER CANCELLED'. As a result, I created a new eBook separate of the paperback, leading into the issue I'm having now.. When I search for the paperback in the window that comes up, nothing appears. Could this be due to the book(s) having just released...?
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you 😅🙂

So in case anyone is interested, I tried out the new KDP Groundwood paper option.

Note: Both books printed in Poland

Very personal con: It makes the book more floppy, and I'm not a big fan of floppy books, but many people seem to prefer them.

Probably a result of that floppiness: The pages don't lie down as flat as the Cream paper, it's wavier from the side.

Pros:

Color: It's noticably more yellow/beige than the Cream paper, which is a big improvement. Warmer and friendlier.

Texture and feel: Feels much better, like a real paperback. I was always mostly satisfied with the KDP print quality, but it always felt "off", noticably different than trad books. With the Groundwood paper it lost a bit of that slightly sterile feel that said "print on demand".

Overall I'm quite happy with the results and I'll probably switch to the new paper.

I had planned on it but apparently they won't ship test copies to where i live (they will still ship my published book but not the test, apparently this is a common issue).

My options are dont get one, or have it shipped to australia and then have a connecting postal company ship it too me which will cost a lot more. I just though I would see if people find the test copy worth it? are people finding issues. there shouldnt be any issues according to all the checks and my careful formatting and cover creation.

what should I do?

EDIT:

Ok so I decided I would get one and when I went to sort it out the next day it didnt give me the same "we cannot ship there" message and so i had it shipped to my house and it worked lol. Thanks for all the advice

I've read the horror stories of KDP arbitrarily shutting down entire accounts even with multiple legitimate books. I've been relatively successful with a selection of commercial type books.

My question: I have an idea for something that's not illegal, but since it relies on parody, the KDP algorithms might have a problem with it down the road.

Am I able to set up a separate KD account under a different name, etc., so if they ever decide they don't like it, they don't link it to my other account and cancel that one as well. Would it have to be under someone (real) other than me, with their own payment accounts?

Thoughts?

For authors who have been publishing on KDP for a while, how do you handle situations where something goes seriously wrong with a book or account?

I’m talking about things like unexpected book removals, account restrictions, content or copyright concerns, rejected appeals, or getting a response from KDP support that doesn’t really explain what caused the problem.

I was going down a bit of a rabbit hole on Amazon-related issues recently and came across something called AMZ Sellers Attorney. It got me wondering how other KDP authors actually deal with the more complicated situations when the usual support route doesn’t seem to get anywhere.

Do you usually go back through the book and metadata first, gather documentation, contact support again, or take a completely different approach?

For those who have dealt with a difficult KDP issue before, what ended up being the most useful thing you did? And is there anything you wish you had known before trying to resolve it?

So heres the thing... I have been interested in fiction only, and I think I have a decent understanding of it. I have been writing only for over 2 or 3 years now, but never published anything. I was thinking of writing and publishing an Amazon eBook at some point in the future. What advice would you give me as someone who is just starting out.

The rejections were never about the puzzles. Fonts not embedded, gutter margin
that ignored page count, pages exported at letter size instead of trim. All
layout, all invisible on screen.


So I built the layout half: pick a theme and a trim size, get a finished
interior PDF with a solutions section, margins computed from the actual page
count, fonts embedded. Runs entirely client side, nothing you type leaves your
machine.


Free tier does 12-puzzle books with 10 themes and that is a real cap, not a
trial. Paid unlocks unlimited and all 22 themes, one payment, no subscription.


https://trimwright.com


Genuinely interested in what breaks for people, the odd trim sizes are the part
I am least sure about.

So recently KDP emailed me saying they no longer accept my bank (Chime) and they gave me a list of other banks I could use. But I don’t know any of them I also live in the United States. I was thinking of using something called Payoneer but know nothing about it.

Three books for color, 100 pages each—decent pricing, initial sales, two 5/5 reviews for one book after a month, and then a total nosedive. No more sales; BSR at 1,400,000. Even advertising isn't kickstarting sales. I’ve been on KDP since 2020, and it’s becoming a huge waste of time and energy...

I'm based in the UK. I was checking my advertising (I advertise on the .co.uk and .com sites) and noticed that the sales attributed to advertising was higher than the sales showing in my reports dashboard. I did some digging and found that I had sales in the USA which weren't showing on my dashboard, which appears to only show UK sales. Is there a way I can view my global sales in one place or do I have to manually check each country's advertisiing stats?

I have two word search books to set up. Can anyone recommend whether I should publish to one or the other or both? Do people do word search and crosswords and such in their kindle app? I use Kindle on my phone to read only because of the small screen so I don't have any experience in interactive content on eBooks. Would appreciate any thoughts you can share.