Amazon KDP can make you rich, depending on how many books you sell and the royalties that you earn from those sales.
Amazon KDP is a revolutionary platform which allows authors to self-publish their literary work for free.
There are certainly authors who have used the Amazon KDP platform to get rich. But in the end, your earnings will depend entirely on the royalties that you earned through the sales of your book.
Contents
What is Amazon KDP and how does it work?
Years ago, self-publishing the next great novel, comic, children’s book or textbook was a distant dream for aspiring writers.
However, with Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), self-publishing your own eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers has never been easier, or cheaper.
The Amazon KDP platform not only allows you to get your book out there for free, but it also gives you access to Amazon’s huge customer base. Moreover, it offers a variety of secondary services like print-on-demand and customer support.
Can Amazon KDP make you rich?
Self-publishing a book on Amazon KDP also means that you will earn royalties from the book whenever someone on the platform purchases it. As a result, Amazon KDP has been branded one of the best platforms for generating a passive income.
Publishing a book without any real upfront investment, but still being able to get rich from the sales, seems almost too good to be true and many people still wonder whether this is a worthwhile avenue to go down.
As with all things sales, the amount of money that you make with Amazon KDP will depend entirely on the size of your audience and the popularity of your books.
Amazon’s financial reports for 2019 indicated that more than 1,000 authors on the Kindle Unlimited platform generated over $100,000 in revenue from their book sales for the year.
Therefore, it is definitely possible to get rich from the Amazon KDP platform, but this kind of success does come with a few noteworthy caveats.
It is important to remember that authors who make this kind of money have worked their way up on the platform. That being said, it is much more likely for beginner authors to make around $150 to $300 per month when they are starting out.
This is because although Amazon KDP gives thousands of customers direct access to your books, it also gives these customers access to millions of other authors’ books.
This kind of steep competition can cut into your earnings if you are not strategic about how you approach the platform.
Breaking down the numbers for Amazon KDP royalties
When you publish your book, you will be able to choose between either a 35 percent option, or a 70 percent option for royalties. These two options can be broken down as follows:
| 35% option | 70% option |
| Royalty Rate [0.35] x (List Price – applicable VAT) = Royalty amount per sale | Royalty Rate [0.7] x (List Price – applicable VAT – Delivery Costs) = Royalty amount per sale |
If you sell your book for a list price of $6 in an area where the applicable VAT rate is 20% and the delivery costs are $0.10, your royalties per sale would be as follows:
| 35% option | 70% option |
| 0.35 x ($6 – $1) = $1.75 | 0.7 x ($6 – $1 – $0.10) = $3.43 |
The Best Seller Rank on Amazon KDP
If you choose to publish on Amazon KDP, you will be assigned a Best Seller Rank (BSR). As you sell more books on Amazon KDP, this ranking will move towards first place, and your earnings will increase.
As a rough estimate, authors who really make a lot of money from Amazon KDP tend to have a BSR of below 20,000. At this level, you should sell well over 1000 books monthly, which should bring in a substantial amount in terms of royalties.
How to be strategic about increasing your earnings on Amazon KDP
You need to be strategic with the kind of books that you choose to publish and the quantity if you want to make a significant amount of money by selling your self-published works on Amazon KDP.
For this reason, it is best to approach the subject matter of your book like you would a business.
Books that do really well on Amazon KDP either appeal to a large audience or solve a specific problem, or both.
If you are knowledgeable in a specific area like DIY-projects, math, science, crafts or more, you might be able to solve some very specific problems within a niche that is not oversaturated.
On the other hand, you can also learn from seeing what works for bestsellers in niches with larger audiences.