KDP Amazon Publishing: The Ticket to Your Dream Life
We’re going to show you how to leverage the power of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform to live your dream life. But first, a quick history lesson.
Have you always wanted more time? More money? More freedom? More pineapple on your pizza? Well, that last one’s easy. But if you’re feeling that entrepreneurial itch to live your best life, now is a great time to check out the power of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform for self-publishing.
If you’re tired of a dead-end job–or corporations that never seem to really pay you what you know you’re worth–Amazon publishing can be an amazing way to make money online and live your dream life.
We’re going to show you how to leverage the power of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform to live your dream life. But first, a quick history lesson.
Dealing with the Dinosaurs
Traditional publishing has essentially gone the way of the dinosaurs and Dodo birds. Not totally extinct–but definitely fading away. This is because of that wonderful worldwide web. Now authors can bypass that pesky middle-man and take their work straight to the masses. No more shopping around for what feels like 1,000 years for an agent to like your stuff. Or waiting to collect as many rejection letters as possible before you finally hit your breakthrough.
A lot of big-name publishing houses–think Harper Collins, Random House, Simon & Schuster–won’t even touch new writers unless you already have a big online fan base. And even if you do get noticed and pick up a traditional book publishing deal, you’ll still have to do a lot of the marketing by yourself, anyway.
So why not build your audience on your own, do your own marketing, and self-publish? You’ll have way more control over your work. And you’ll potentially be able to make a lot more money than the old-school way. Because you’ll be in the driver’s seat.
What Is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing?
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform for self-publishing is a powerful tool for making money on your work and ultimately living that dream life you’ve always pictured.
Amazon has invested a ton of effort and money into building tools for independent self-published authors. And this makes sense. Amazon needs products to sell in its online marketplace, and they have a long history of selling books. So it’s a win-win: you publish your book on Amazon and they have more products to sell. They take their cut and give you up to 70% of each sale.
Once you have your book written, edited, and formatted, KDP lets you publish your book for free. (In this article we’re focusing on eBooks, but KDP does give you the option to also sell in hardcopy format.)
The money you spend self-publishing on Amazon is more for editing, designs, formatting and marketing.
Within 72 hours, your book will be available to millions of potential readers around the world through the Kindle store.
And the cool part is that if you set the list price of your eBook between $2.99 and $9.99, you unlock KDP’s 70% royalty plan. Meaning you get to keep 70% of all the sales of your book. (Check out our article on how to publish your book on Amazon for a step-by-step guide.)
Whether your jam is science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, coming-of-age novels, or graphic novels, Amazon’s KDP self-publishing tools make it easier than ever to get your work out there and start earning extra money.
The Power of Passive Income
Not since sliced bread has something come along so powerful and financially yummy as passive income. And joking aside, we’re actually pretty serious about this one.
- Passive income is when you create an asset—like a book, T-shirt company, or rental property—that pays you money while you’re not working. It’s passive. You just sit there as it rains down from the glorious sky.
- Active income is when you have to trade your time for money. Think of the traditional 9-5 job. You clock in at 8 a.m., work all day, and then clock out at 5 p.m. They pay you hourly or a salary and you give them your time. It sucks. Like really sucks. It might pay the bills, but it gets old fast.
That’s not for you. You have dreams, hopes, and big plans.
Passive income is the way to go. It’s the secret to how so many successful people seem to have it all. All you need is an idea, something to sell, like a book, and the willingness to put in the effort upfront and never stop experimenting. (To get started, sign up for our free training workshop. It will give you everything you need to know to be successful with Amazon’s publishing platforms.)
How to Make Money on Amazon Publishing
There are a bunch of different ways you can make money online with Amazon publishing. Here’s just a brief overview of some of the top ways.
Kindle eBook sales—Remember what we said about passive income? Well, this is it. While you’re sleeping, and your book is selling, you’re making money. Every time one of your books sells, you’ll make a cut of that–up to 70%. And the more you put into marketing your Amazon book properly, the more sales will come in.
Kindle Select or Unlimited Page Reads—Enrolling in the Kindle Select program gives you the opportunity to get paid through revenue streams based on page reads on Amazon’s Kindle devices. Kind of like Spotify, but for books. There is some fine print that Amazon tells you about to get into the program, but it’s not a big roadblock to making extra money through these page count royalties.
Here’s how it works: If your book has 100,000 page reads, and Amazon’s page count rate is $0.045 per page, you’ll make $450. But again, this is passive income. So you can set it and forget it. It’s money coming into your bank account that you don’t have to trade your time for. The kind of money you need to be focusing on to make your dream life a reality.
Audiobooks—You can also turn your book into an audiobook which then gets listed on Audible. So you can take your manuscript that you already published and simply put it into a different format to create a brand new revenue stream. Free money!
Kindle Vella—Kindle Vella lets you publish your book one episode (chapter) at a time. Readers buy tokens to unlock more chapters as they read and you get 50% of the money that comes in from these tokens. Vella is a fun, gamified way to share your work with readers and make money at the same time. You can read more about the earnings structure and how royalties for Kindle Vella work here.
Just Do It
If you’ve dreamed of becoming a digital nomad–working from wherever being your own boss, having more time and money–don’t wait! Unlock the power of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing to build up a successful stream of passive income. It’s way easier than you might think.
Your dream life is waiting for you with just a little hard work upfront. Your future self will thank you.
