Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) can be the easiest, cheapest and quickest source of passive income from selling digital products.
Amazon KDP provides selling opportunities for both authors as well as online sellers who already sell physical products on Amazon. Diversifying product portfolio mitigates risk and provides options in the case of unexpected events, especially those affecting global supply chains.
In this article you’ll learn about:
Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by Zeljko Drazovic
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What is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KPD)?
Best sellers on Amazon KDP
Selling low content books on Amazon
How to pick a profitable niche to increase your sales on Amazon KDP
How can KDP Select Program increase your Amazon sales?
How can you promote your digital products on Amazon KDP?
Optimizing your Amazon KDP listings with titles & descriptions
Creating a print version of your book on Amazon
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KPD) is a self-publishing platform where you can publish ebooks, low content books, paperbacks and hardcover books for free. Publishing with Amazon KDP gives you full rights to your book and you can expand its availability on a global scale.*
If you’re not an author yourself or you don’t have time to create content, you can hire professional freelancers to do it for you. You can also explore writing with the help of AI tools such as ChatGPT:
However, your main task will be to identify what will sell on Amazon and generate sales by optimizing your listings and digital products.
What’s one of the biggest advantages of selling products on Amazon KDP? You can effectively grow your ecommerce sales without worrying about your stock or delivering physical goods. This is extra important during times of pandemics and lockdowns.
The kind of content you can publish using Amazon’s KDP:
KDP doesn’t allow the creation of magazines, periodicals or spiral-bound books.
Finally, you can sell ebooks and print books from a single account. With KDP Print, a supplier will print books only when someone orders them. To use this print-on-demand (POD) service, you need to upload immaculately formatted print files (different from the ebook format).
* The information, data and guidance provided in this article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.
Publishing on Amazon KDP is free. No charge to upload the file and no shipping costs or hidden fees.
Authors get royalties of 35% to 70% of the sale price (for prices $2.99 – $9.99, Amazon gives you 70% and takes 30%, for other prices you get 35%).
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What can you sell on Amazon KDP? The following niches can have a lot of sales potential on Amazon KDP.
Frontline workers niche
A new niche that has gained a lot of attention during the pandemic. Potential front line workers include nurses, doctors, teachers, postal service workers, public transport workers and grocery store workers.
Entrepreneurship / small business niche
Small business owners are interested in keeping themselves organized, disciplined and motivated. You can niche down by focusing on the type of business, e.g. a hair salon, event planner, tech start-up, etc.
Holidays niche
It offers lots of sales potential when it comes to seasonal events, e.g. Christmas, Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day.
Personal development niche
This niche can help make a difference in people’s lives. However, as it’s saturated, it’s important to niche down.
Gaming niche
Gaming is a huge niche and selling video games is popular. But be careful about copyright protected designs.
Sports niche
There are different sports out there: winter sports, tennis, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, cricket, table tennis, gymnastics or figure skating. However, keep in mind that some sports niches are saturated.
A word of caution. You can’t make designs for specific teams or athletes as they will be covered under copyright.
Food / cooking / baking niche
Baking grew in popularity during the pandemic, especially bread making.
Crafting niche
Crafting grew in popularity during the pandemic as well. A few types of crafting niches: knitting, crochet, quilting, beadwork, woodwork, painting, origami.
Nature lovers niche
This includes environmentalists, plant lovers, avid hikers or wilderness lovers. Some sub-niches include: plants, trees, cacti, camping, hiking, mountains, eco friendly, wild animals, gardening.
Floral niche
Consider a floral niche in general or niching down, for example: lilies, sunflowers, daisies, chrysanthemums, carnations, roses, tulips.
Graduation niche
You can focus on general graduation or specific graduates, e.g. from elementary school, high school, post-secondary school, etc.
Typography niche
You can design books with inspirational sayings, monograms, quotes, single words and so on. If you use quotes/sayings, they need to be either in the public domain or you need to acquire the proper license. As usual, be careful about copyrights.
Travel lovers niche
There are limitless ideas in this niche. You could make designs for every city, country, state, continent, etc. It can be about traveling by plane, boat, train, road tripping, traveling solo, with friends, etc.
Back-to school-niche
You can target a specific grade, age, etc.
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Music niche
You can narrow it down, for example by musicians, by lovers/listeners of music, by instrument if you are targeting musicians or by targeting a specific music genre, e.g. rock, metal, punk, EDM, country, pop.
A word of caution. Be careful about copyrighted bands or lyrics in this niche. Make sure everything that you produce is copyright-free and above board.
Religion niche
You can use inspiring and/or meaningful quotes (assuming copyright laws allow for it).
Mysticism / spirituality niche
This could be tarot, crystals, archangels, reiki, meditation and so on.
Vegetarian / vegan niche
When choosing this niche, you can consider people’s reasons for eating a plant-based diet. For example, health reasons, animal rights or environmental reasons.
Pride / LGBT / queer positive niche
This is a saturated niche, but there are many ways you can be unique to stand out in this niche.
Fantasy / sci-fi niche
You can get carried away here: magic, unicorns, castles, dragons, fairies, elves, aliens and much more!
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Low content books contain little to no text or images, but can have an enormous sales potential on Amazon. Often they’re not complicated to make, but can quickly become best sellers.
When selling low content (or any content on Amazon KDP), it’s essential to do proper niche and keyword research. Go for a thorough number-based keyword analysis with a selected keyword tool.
Additionally, look for keyword ideas in:
You can input up to 7 keywords or keyword phrases that your book will show up for. You can change your keywords at any time.
Here are examples of keywords for describing notebooks: diary, journal, pad, binder, daybook, workbook, log book or memo book.
To pick a profitable niche on Amazon KDP, start by checking your category by clicking on either “Kindle eBooks” or “Kindle Short Reads”.
There’s no software that can estimate how many copies your potential book title can sell. But you can still use the real world data on Amazon to bring you closer to an accurate estimate.
Additionally, a tool that can help you cherry pick the best niches for Kindle books is Publisher Rocket.
Pick a niche that appeals to you and has a fairly large established audience.
Brainstorm different topics in your selected niche. You can have a few titles in the same niche and build up your library of book titles.
Example: potential topics if you write about pets:
Checking the Amazon Best Seller Rankings (BSR) will give you a better idea of whether your chosen niche/category has any chance of selling many copies.
Check the Amazon BSR of some of the top books in your niche to see how well books are selling in your chosen category.
Some general estimates:
A lower rank means that the book is selling more copies. The best sellers in your chosen category should have an Amazon BSR of at least 10,000 (or even under 5,000).
Go to Amazon.com, select the Kindle Store and search for a selected keyword.
On the first page of the search results you should see 5-6 books that meet ALL the following criteria:
Look for niches where the top 5-6 books (priced between $0.99 and $3.99 and on the market for 2+ months) are at 100,000 BSR or less.
The KDP Select program can help publishers earn more money and reach a greater audience at zero additional cost. All publishers are eligible for this program, regardless of their location.
There’s one catch. On signing up to Kindle Select, the digital copy of your book must be exclusive to Amazon for the duration of the term that you’re signed up to the program.
The KDP Select program gives sellers access to:
The KDP Select is useful when you don’t have an audience. Listing your book for free the first 5 days via this program can get you reviews from verified purchasers. Someone that downloads your book during the free period is considered a verified purchaser.
To promote your digital products and build your author brand on Amazon KDP:
Additionally, consider submitting your ebooks to relevant groups and blogs, e.g. Facebook Groups that promote free books:
Finally, your Kindle ebook can act as a lead generation tool that collects emails. You can put a free offer in the front of your book so readers can click the link, go to your opt-in page and give you their email address.
Your ebook titles and descriptions can be your sales makers or breakers. They will also help you optimize your Amazon product listings.
Your ebook titles should be unique, catchy, memorable and contain the most relevant keywords. Make it clear what the reader is going to get from the book. Subtitles can help you state this more clearly. Subtitles can also make the title more attractive, e.g. by making your promise sound attainable.
Examples of best-selling titles & subtitles:
Check what’s working for your competitors to solidify your ideas.
When it comes to your book description (up to 4000 characters), it’s for a more in-depth description of your book. Highlight the benefits potential readers can expect after reading your book. Include a call-to-action to increase conversions.
The print version of your ebook can obviously bring you more sales. But there’s more.
The difference between the digital and print version can make your Kindle version look like a better deal.
When people see the $8.99 price for the print version, this increases the value of the book in their mind. If they can get the Kindle version for $4 only, they see it as a good deal.
Make your Kindle price look like a great deal and sell more copies!
As you go forward, test and optimize pricing on both the print and kindle version. Consider increasing your price gradually.
Amazon is an ecommerce platform that offers numerous opportunities to generate online sales.
Amazon KDP can be an extra revenue generator and a source of passive income, not only for authors. It can also be profitable for marketplace sellers already selling physical products and considering diversifying their online business with digital products.
Amazon KDP can be another stream of income that provides options. This is important in the case of unexpected global events that can potentially hit supply chains and the sales of physical products.
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