As a part of Amazon Kindle Services, Kindle Direct publishing (KDP) is a place where authors and publishers publish their books independently. We recommend using direct publishing only if: You're an expert in some field; You are public person and have followers either via blog, media, seminars etc…; You are hardcore sci-fi, mystery, romance, horror or any other genre geek and have great idea.
If you are for fame and fortune, forget about it! We don’t want to lower your enthusiasm but this happens really rare and stats are merciless. On average self-published books sell only 150-200 copies. Be aware that writing is not easy, before writing anything you must learn crafting characterization, plotting, grammar and syntax. It is also imperative to pick your market prior writing single word, do a thorough research who would potentially buy your book.
There are no advance fees to self-publish on KDP. Amazon offers either 35% royalties or 70% author royalties, the main difference is that you will be charged additional fees if you opt for 70%, like delivery fee and taxes and you will get this percentage in limited list of territories (you will get 35% from non listed territories). When the book is finished you have to work out how to export the book in e-book format following KDP guidelines. Once published the book gets simple placeholder so it’s strongly recommended that you have powerful cover image. Once the book is published it’s included in Amazon's merchandising algorithms, how the book is placed it varies based on topic, sales movement, keywords, etc… You can also opt for DRM (Digital Rights Management)
Amazon Kindle is a line of extremely successful e-readers and with enormous user database, it’s great exposure for indie authors.
While KDP seems to be the most popular service, there surely are other similar services. Here are some alternatives to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing: Apple iBook, Blurb, BookBaby, CreateSpace, Kobo, Lulu.com, NOOK Press, Smashwords.
