Some indie authors will spend a good part of their week managing their titles across a half-dozen retailers, only to find that the majority of their sales still come from one source: the Kindle store. One retail news site suggests that in the US, Amazon held an 83% market share of ebooks in 2019 - with the remaining 17% spread between its competitors. To be more accurate, it’s the largest bookstore in the world, period - though Amazon doesn’t quite have the same iron grip in non-English language book markets. Amazon is the largest bookstore in the English-speaking world Instead, we’ll look at the edge Amazon and KDP has over its competitors, such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books. Those upsides are numerous and covered in great detail in our article comparing self-publishing and traditional publishing. To fully answer this question, we should clarify that we’re not talking about the benefits of independent publishing. James ( Fifty Shades of Grey), Hugh Howey ( Wool), and Andy Weir ( The Martian).īesides, authors of niche genres have gained access to readers when, before, they would have been ignored by the traditional publishing model and struggled to find their readership in the early days of self-publishing.įor a closer look at how to set up an account on KDP, take a look at our guide on Amazon self-publishing. This accessibility has led to multiple waves of bestselling authors who have found success through self-publishing, including E.L. Readers could now not only buy indie ebooks through but also through the Kindle store preloaded on all Kindle devices. Launched concurrently with Amazon’s ebook reader in 2007, KDP opened up the publishing world. Publishing is as simple as uploading a book, adding a few details, and hitting “go.” (Screenshot: ) It’s the most accessible platform for self-publishing authors.

In a matter of hours, anybody can create an author account, upload their book files, and sell their book through Amazon - all without any setup cost. Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s publishing platform that allows independent authors to access readers around the world, without going through a traditional press.

Kindle direct publishing login