How to self-publish a book on Amazon KDP: a step-by-step guide

Self-publishing on Amazon KDP is free and fast, and most of the difficulty is preparation. Here is the sequence that gets a book from finished draft to live listing with the fewest surprises.

1. Finish and edit the manuscript. At minimum, a structural revision and a professional or rigorous copyedit. Formatting cannot rescue an unedited book.

2. Choose your formats and trim size. Most authors start with a Kindle ebook and a paperback. For fiction, 5.5 x 8.5 or 6 x 9 inches is standard; the trim drives page count, spine width and print cost.

3. Format the interior. Use consistent heading styles, a generated table of contents, correct KDP margins and gutters, and embedded fonts in print PDFs. Build the ebook as a reflowable file.

4. Get a cover made to KDP's exact dimensions. The ebook cover is a single front image; the paperback cover is a full wrap whose width depends on your final page count.

5. Decide on an ISBN. KDP provides a free one for print; buy your own if you want your imprint listed as publisher.

6. Write your metadata: title and subtitle that match the cover, a book description, seven keyword slots and up to three categories. This is where discoverability is won or lost.

7. Create the KDP listing, upload the files and use the online previewer. Order a printed proof for the paperback — screen previews miss color, margin and spine problems.

8. Answer the AI-content disclosure question honestly, choose territories and rights, and set pricing and royalty option. The 70% ebook royalty applies only within a specific price band.

9. Publish. Review typically takes up to 72 hours. If KDP flags an issue, fix exactly what they cite and resubmit.

10. Launch deliberately: ask early readers for honest reviews, check your listing for errors, and only then consider ads. Manucheck runs the formatting, content-policy, cover and metadata checks from steps 3 through 8 in one pass before you upload.