I’ve published more than 300 books over the years, and a good number of them went through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing in its early days. I remember when it was simple. You uploaded a decent book, picked sensible categories, and readers found it. For a small publisher it could be very profitable.
That isn’t the market any more. If you’re publishing now and wondering why your book isn’t selling the way everyone promised, it may not be the book. It may be that the rules changed and nobody told you.
Amazon opened its self-publishing platform alongside the first Kindle, in the US, in late 2007. It was small, and few people outside the trade paid it much attention.
Around 2010 it grew up. It became Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon introduced the 70% royalty option, and the UK Kindle store opened. For the next few years, a book with a clear promise, a decent cover and a price readers were comfortable with had a real chance of being found simply by being there. There weren’t many books competing for attention, and readers were hungry for them.
Three things, broadly.
More books. Once word got out, everybody came. Millions of titles now sit in the Kindle store, and hundreds of thousands more arrive every year. Being there stopped being an advantage.
Subscription reading. Kindle Unlimited, launched in 2014, changed how many readers buy. In some genres, readers now borrow rather than buy, and authors are paid by the page read. That rewards long series and quick releases, and punishes the one-off book that nobody finishes.
Paying to be seen. As the store filled up, Amazon’s own advertising became the main way to push a book in front of readers. It works, but it costs money, and it’s easy to spend a lot without learning much.
The result is a gap between publishing a book and selling it. It used to be a few days. Now, for most books, it never closes on its own.
None of this means KDP isn’t worth using. It’s still the biggest bookshop in the world and it’s free to publish there. It means that uploading is where the work starts, not where it ends.
Before you press publish, you need clear answers to four questions.
Who exactly is this book for? “Everyone who likes a good story” isn’t an answer. You need to be able to picture the reader and name two or three books they already love.
Does the Amazon page make that promise? The title, cover, description and first few pages of the sample have to tell that reader, in seconds, that this book is for them.
How will the first readers find it? In the early days, Amazon did that for you. Now it’s your job: your email list, your contacts, a pre-order campaign, a local event or a small, carefully watched advert.
What happens after launch week? Most books find their readers slowly. You need a plan for months two, three and six, not just the first few days.
I can’t promise that any of this will make a book sell. Nobody honestly can. What I can say, from watching the market change over more than a decade, is that the authors who do well now treat publishing as the start of a project, not the finish line.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your launch before you spend money on it, that’s what our Book Launch & Marketing Programme is for. If your book is already out and not moving, start with the Amazon Book Market Development diagnostic.
And if you’d like to talk it through first, the free Casover author community is the place to ask.
Steve