We all know Amazon, perhaps too intimately at this point, but what about Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)? 

KDP is a self-publishing platform that has transformed the landscape for indie authors. KDP is completely free to use and allows you to upload and publish your book on Amazon without any upfront costs. KDP has cut out the middleman (the literary agents and publishers) and put the power into the author’s hands. This is especially beneficial for authors who are wanting to get their feet wet before investing their life savings in publishing a book in a more traditional way. 

Using KDP allows people to get their name out there as an indie author. The platform takes a small portion of book sales to cover printing costs, but you sign up for this agreement at the time of uploading. Authors also have the power to decide what format they wish to sell their titles and what kind of paper they wish to use to minimize printing costs and maximize profits. KDP also allows you to price your ebook however you’d like, and if you ever need to adjust the price, you can. 

KDP has opened the door for so many people to publish their writing and maintain creative control over their titles. You get to design your book however you wish, including the cover, formatting, and layout. Additionally, just like adjusting the price of your ebook, none of these decisions are stagnant. KDP allows you to constantly experiment. For example, an author can upload a different book cover to see if it sells better.

Another incentive to publish on KDP is their royalty system. KDP offers higher royalties than traditional publishing, which means more money in the author’s pocket—at least, in theory. 

KDP uses a print-on-demand model, which eliminates the stress of worrying about delivery costs or inventory. As one of the largest online retailers in the world, your book will also have a global reach. Amazon offers authors marketing tools that allow them to maintain full control over their budget and promotion efforts.

At Ooligan Press, we use KDP to upload our upcoming titles and our ebooks. It is a fast and easy way to publish a title that seemingly doesn’t have much screening process. After creating a couple of KDP pages for our upcoming titles, I thought to myself, “That’s it? I just have to click a box that says ‘this was not written by a computer’ and I’ll be able to sell it?”

With the rise of AI on the forefront of my mind and as an aspiring publishing professional, this lack of security seemed dangerous. While KDP has revolutionized the way authors can publish their work, it has resulted in an oversaturation of product. Everyone is trying to find ways to make a profit on Amazon’s KDP platform, and some are not going in with the greatest of intentions.

Jane Friedman has twenty-five years of experience in book publishing, with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. She has written several books throughout her career and Amazon’s KDP platform came under fire when she accused them of refusing to remove books from their site that were falsely advertised as books written by her. She believed they were wholly written by AI, and they were also listed and critiqued on the Amazon-owned reviews site Goodreads.

After a friend emailed her suspecting the books were fraudulent, Jane took action. It wasn’t simply a matter of removing the books from the KDP platform—it was also about maintaining her highly respected and influential reputation in an industry she worked so hard to become an integral part of. While concerned about the writing, she also didn’t want the reputation of trying to take advantage of people. If you’re interested in reading more, check out this article from The Guardian. 

While KDP has its pros and cons, for us here at Ooligan Press, the platform has enabled us to provide accessible ebook versions of our titles to the public for the highest profit, which is excellent. However, each time I upload a title, I find it funny that I only have to click a tiny box during upload to ensure “the content is original.” Who is responsible for weeding through the uploaded, saturated content on KDP? If a book is validated, you can sell it, but theoretically, it could be AI-generated in part or all. What are the implications for authors and readers alike? 

Written by Madelynn Sare.

DISCLAIMER: ChatGBT was used to write this blog’s title for SEO purposes