How long does it take to publish a book on Amazon?

The upload is an afternoon; the review is the wait. Amazon checks each new title and each file change before it goes live — typically up to 72 hours, and often faster. The work that determines the book's fate happens before the upload: the files, the metadata, the pricing and the categories.

Do I need an ISBN to publish on Amazon?

Not for the ebook, and not strictly for print — KDP can assign a free identifier for the paperback and hardcover. The free number is locked to Amazon, so a book you want in bookshops and libraries through other channels needs your own ISBNs. The full decision is in the ISBN guide.

What royalty will I earn on Amazon?

Ebooks earn 70 per cent on prices between $2.99 and $9.99 in most marketplaces, and 35 per cent outside that band, minus a small delivery fee. Print earns a fixed percentage of the list price minus the printing cost, which depends on the trim, the ink and the page count.

Should I enrol in KDP Select?

Only if you are happy to sell the ebook exclusively through Amazon for the enrolment period. Select buys you Kindle Unlimited page reads and promotional tools, and costs you every other storefront. It is a real trade, not a default — books with wide-audience plans skip it.

How to publish a book on Amazon KDP

Publishing on Amazon is two very different jobs. The second — the upload forms — is mechanical, and this guide walks it. The first is a set of decisions, made before the upload, that are cheap to make in advance and expensive to reverse: the ISBN, the exclusivity, the pricing band, the files themselves. The decisions are covered here in the order they should be made, not the order the website asks for them.

Before the upload: the four decisions

One: which editions. The ebook, the paperback and the hardcover are separate products on Amazon — separate uploads, separate metadata forms, separate listings that Amazon links by series and title. Most authors start with the ebook, add the paperback, and add the hardcover when the print side is wanted.

Two: the ISBN question. Amazon can assign a free ISBN for print editions; it is valid only inside Amazon. Owning your ISBNs costs money and buys distribution anywhere else. The whole arithmetic is in do you need an ISBN? — decide now, because it is on the upload form.

Three: exclusivity. Enrolling the ebook in KDP Select makes it exclusive to Amazon for a 90-day term, in exchange for Kindle Unlimited page reads and Amazon’s promotional tools. Not enrolling keeps the right to publish on Apple Books, Kobo and the rest — the routes in beyond Amazon. There is no universal answer; there is only making it consciously.

Four: the files, tested. The ebook is an EPUB, tested per the testing pass. The paperback is a print-ready PDF per the checklist, built for the trim chosen in choosing a trim size with margins per formatting for KDP. And the cover: an image for the ebook, a full wrap built last from the final page count for print, per setting up a cover file.

The account

KDP uses your existing Amazon account — kdp.amazon.com, sign in, done. Two things complete the account before the first book: tax information (a short interview; Amazon withholds at treaty rates for non-US publishers who complete it, and at punitive default rates for those who do not) and bank details for royalty payment. Both take minutes and both block payment later if skipped.

The title setup

Each product — ebook, paperback, hardcover — starts with the same metadata block:

Title and subtitle as they appear on the cover, exactly.
Series name and number, if any — series metadata is how Amazon links the books, and it is worth doing even for a two-book series.
Contributors — the author’s name as it should appear.
Description — up to 4,000 characters of the book’s sales pitch; how to write it is in the book description.
Keywords — ten phrases of up to 50 characters; how to choose them is in categories and keywords.
Categories — up to three shelves the book sits on.
Age range and adult content flags where relevant. Answer honestly; misflagging is a takedown.

The files, per edition

The ebook. Upload the EPUB. Amazon converts it; run it through Kindle Previewer first, because that is the conversion you are about to ship. Choose DRM (most independents decline it) and territories (all, unless you have reasons — you almost certainly do not, since Amazon sells where you cannot).

The paperback. Upload the interior PDF and the cover wrap. Choose the trim, the ink — black on white or cream — and the paper finish: matte covers dominate fiction, gloss is the minority tradition. Amazon runs the file against its requirements at upload; the ones that trip books are in formatting for KDP.

The hardcover. The same shape, with its own constraints — the page-count window and the choice between case laminate and dust jacket are in publishing a hardcover.

For print editions, order the author proof before publishing. It costs a few pounds or dollars at print cost, arrives in days, and is the only version of the check that involves your hands.

Pricing

The ebook royalty is banded: 70 per cent between $2.99 and $9.99 (with territory variations), 35 per cent outside it, minus a small per-megabyte delivery fee. The band edge is a cliff — a $9.99 ebook earns roughly twice the royalty of a $10.49 one — which is why so much fiction clusters at $4.99 to $6.99 and the top of the band.

Print royalties are a percentage of list minus the unit printing cost, which scales with page count and ink — the reason the page count estimate is worth knowing before the price is set.

Both prices can change later, freely. Price is the least permanent decision on the form.

Publish, and after

Hitting publish starts the review — typically up to 72 hours, per file change as well as per new title. Then the book is live, and three habits separate the professionals:

The links. The listing’s URL is editable by you — a short, memorable link for each edition is set once in the book’s details.

The updates. Files can be replaced without losing the listing, the reviews or the sales rank — publishing is not a position to defend but a product to maintain. The review cycle applies to changed files too, so time updates with care, and reserve new editions — new ISBNs — for substantially changed text.

The reports. KDP’s reports settle monthly, with a ~60-day lag on ebook royalties. The numbers are real but slow; the trap is reading day-one sales as a verdict.

The whole order, compressed

Decide editions, ISBNs, exclusivity.
Build and test the files — EPUB, print PDF, covers.
Account: tax interview, bank details.
Metadata block: title, series, description, keywords, categories.
Upload files per edition; proof the print before publishing.
Price inside the 70 per cent band.
Publish; order the author proof; wait out the review.

None of the steps is hard, and the whole process rewards being done in the right order — the files before the forms, the decisions before the files. The expensive failures are always sequencing failures: the cover built before the page count, the ISBN chosen after the distribution plan, the exclusivity accepted by accident.

Nueel produces the files the forms want — a print-ready PDF checked against KDP’s published requirements, and a tested EPUB — so the upload is the short part of the story it should be.

Common questions

How long does it take to publish a book on Amazon?: The upload is an afternoon; the review is the wait. Amazon checks each new title and each file change before it goes live — typically up to 72 hours, and often faster. The work that determines the book's fate happens before the upload: the files, the metadata, the pricing and the categories.
Do I need an ISBN to publish on Amazon?: Not for the ebook, and not strictly for print — KDP can assign a free identifier for the paperback and hardcover. The free number is locked to Amazon, so a book you want in bookshops and libraries through other channels needs your own ISBNs. The full decision is in the ISBN guide.
What royalty will I earn on Amazon?: Ebooks earn 70 per cent on prices between $2.99 and $9.99 in most marketplaces, and 35 per cent outside that band, minus a small delivery fee. Print earns a fixed percentage of the list price minus the printing cost, which depends on the trim, the ink and the page count.
Should I enrol in KDP Select?: Only if you are happy to sell the ebook exclusively through Amazon for the enrolment period. Select buys you Kindle Unlimited page reads and promotional tools, and costs you every other storefront. It is a real trade, not a default — books with wide-audience plans skip it.