How to Publish an Ebook on Amazon: Step by Step

The fastest path from finished manuscript to live Kindle listing

You publish an ebook on Amazon by opening a free Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account, uploading a properly formatted manuscript and cover, filling in your title, description, keywords, and categories, choosing a price and royalty rate, then clicking Publish. Amazon reviews most titles within 72 hours and your book goes live worldwide. That is the whole arc. The rest of this guide is about doing each step well, because the difference between a book that sells and one that disappears is almost entirely in the details below.

I have walked many first-time authors through this, and the same handful of small mistakes cost them sales every time. I will flag those as we go.

Before you upload: three things to settle first

Do not open KDP until these are genuinely done. Going back to fix them after publishing is slower and messier than getting them right once.

• A finished, edited manuscript. Not a draft you plan to tidy later. Readers leave one-star reviews for typos faster than for almost anything else. If you have not had a second set of eyes on it, professional editing pays for itself in reviews you never have to apologize for.
• A real cover. Your thumbnail competes against thousands of others at the size of a postage stamp. A cover that looks fine on your screen often turns to mush at thumbnail scale. This is the single highest-leverage thing you can spend money on, so consider professional cover design before you settle for a template.
• Your back-matter and front-matter. Title page, copyright page, and an author bio with a link to your website or newsletter. The last page of your book is prime real estate for turning a reader into a fan.

Step 1 — Create and set up your KDP account

Go to kdp.amazon.com and sign in with your existing Amazon account, or create one. Publishing is free, so be wary of any service that charges you simply to put a book on Amazon.

The part people rush and regret is the account setup tab. Before you can earn a cent, Amazon needs two things: your tax information (a short interview that generates the right form for your country, including treaty benefits that can reduce US withholding for international authors) and your bank details for royalty payments. Finish both now. I have seen authors publish, make sales, and then discover their payments were on hold for weeks because the tax interview was half-done.

Step 2 — Format your manuscript the way Kindle wants it

Amazon reads a reflowable ebook, which means the text reshapes itself to fit any screen and any font size the reader chooses. That is different from a fixed PDF, and treating your book like a printed page is the most common formatting error I see.

You have three practical routes:

1. Upload a clean EPUB. This is the format Amazon now prefers, and tools like Vellum, Atticus, or the free Kindle Create app will export one for you with proper chapter breaks and a working table of contents.
2. Use a formatting tool end to end. Atticus (web-based, works on any system) and Vellum (Mac only) let you write or import, style, and export a store-ready file in an afternoon.
3. Hand it to someone. If layout is not your strength, professional help with ebook publishing removes the guesswork entirely.

Whatever route you pick, check three things in the file: chapters start on their own page, the table of contents links actually jump to the right chapters, and there are no stray manual page breaks left over from a Word document. Then run it through KDP's online previewer before you trust it.

The number one cause of a delayed launch is a cover or manuscript file that fails Amazon's automated check the night before. Upload and preview your files a full week early so a rejection is an inconvenience, not a crisis.

Step 3 — Prepare your cover file

For the Kindle edition you need a single image, not a wraparound print cover. Amazon recommends a height-to-width ratio of 1.6 to 1, with an ideal size around 2560 by 1600 pixels, saved as a high-quality JPEG or TIFF. Anything smaller looks soft; anything the wrong shape gets letterboxed with ugly bars.

Test your cover at thumbnail size on your phone. If you cannot read the title in under two seconds, it is too busy. Indie covers fail far more often from clutter than from lack of polish.

Step 4 — Enter your book details (this is where sales are won)

In KDP, click Create, then choose Kindle eBook. You will land on a details page that quietly controls most of your discoverability. Take it seriously.

The keyword slots are the most misunderstood feature in KDP. Each slot can hold a multi-word phrase, so think in searches, not single words — cozy mystery small town beats simply mystery. Pick categories that are specific enough to become a bestseller in, because the orange best-seller badge sells more copies than almost anything else you can control.

Step 5 — Upload your manuscript and cover

On the content tab, decide on DRM (digital rights management) — a one-time, irreversible choice, and many indie authors leave it off so readers can move the file between their own devices freely. Then upload your EPUB and your cover image. Wait for the conversion to finish, open the online previewer, and actually read a few chapters on the simulated devices. The previewer catches broken formatting that looks fine in your writing app.

Step 6 — Set rights, pricing, and your royalty rate

Choose worldwide rights unless you have a specific reason not to. Then pick your royalty rate, and understand the tradeoff, because this is where real money is decided.

For most authors the 70 percent rate between 2.99 and 9.99 is the obvious choice. The delivery fee is tiny for a text novel and only bites for heavily illustrated books. You will also decide here whether to enroll in KDP Select, which makes your ebook exclusive to Amazon for 90 days in exchange for inclusion in Kindle Unlimited and access to price-promotion tools. It can be powerful for launch momentum, but it locks you out of every other store, so weigh it against a wide strategy if you want to sell your book across multiple retailers.

Step 7 — Publish and what happens next

Confirm you hold the rights, then click Publish. Amazon runs an automated and sometimes manual review, and your ebook typically appears for sale within 72 hours. You will get an email when it goes live, and your ASIN — Amazon's free identifier for the title — is assigned automatically, which is why you do not need to buy an ISBN for the Kindle edition specifically.

Publishing is the start, not the finish line. The authors who do well treat the first 30 days as a launch: they line up early readers and reviews, share the link with their email list, and often run a short promotional price. If you also want a print edition, KDP can produce a paperback through print on demand with no inventory, and a strong launch is far easier with a deliberate book marketing plan rather than hoping the algorithm finds you.

What most guides leave out

Two things. First, your also-boughts and category placement matter more than your keywords once you have a few sales, so spend your energy getting the right early readers rather than endlessly tweaking metadata. Second, publishing on KDP is not the same as owning your publishing business — Amazon controls the storefront, the pricing floors, and the terms, and they can change. Keeping your own files, your own list, and your own rights is what lets you move, expand, or relist on your terms later. This is exactly why LaunchPad Books helps authors publish, print, and promote while keeping every right and every royalty, so you build an asset you actually own rather than renting space on one platform.

Ready to publish without the guesswork?

You can absolutely do all of this yourself, and many authors do. But if you would rather have your manuscript professionally edited, your cover built to convert, your files formatted to pass on the first upload, and a launch plan behind your release, LaunchPad Books can handle as much or as little as you want — while you keep 100 percent of your rights and royalties. Start your publishing project today, or see transparent pricing and get a quote, and turn that finished manuscript into a book the world can actually find.