In June 2024, I had the pleasure of conducting a publishing workshop during the Lismore Festival of Travel Writing. The short workshop aimed to introduce writers to Amazon KDP and show them how they could publish their work using free tools. The software formatting software used in the workshop was Kindle Create, a free download from Amazon that creates the required files for upload to Amazon KDP publishing platform.
I fielded some questions that I promised to get back to and decided to add them here in case others had the same questions. If you have a question about publishing, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to answer.
Q. How to generate an index page for your KDP book?
A. For kindle eBooks, index pages are redundant as readers can use the search function on their reading device. For Amazon KDP paperback books, this can be added using Word index creation software. Here’s an article showing you how to create an index using Microsoft Word.
Q. How to copy footnotes from Word documents into your KDP book?
You can import your word document with footnotes into Kindle Create and it will copy them. See this interesting discussion on footnotes with Kindle Create.
Q. Can you share a video about how to setup your Amazon KDP account?
This is a good video by a UK based author Paul Marles on how to setup your Amazon KDP account.
Q. Is there a UK tax treaty with Amazon? Do I pay tax on books sold in the UK? What about the USA and other countries?
There is a tax treaty between Ireland and the USA where earnings there are exempt from tax. Once you complete the tax interview during the KDP account setup, you will be issued with a BEN8 form which states that you are exempt from the 30% withholding tax. I’m not aware of any similar treaty with the UK.
Q. I have printed books already and want to sell them on Amazon. How can I do this?
If you already have print books (or any other product for that matter) and want to sell them on Amazon, you cannot do this through KDP. Instead, you need to create an Amazon seller account and go from there. There are two main ways of fulfilling your goods: Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) where you send Amazon your books/goods and they will fulfill sales; or Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) where you are responsible for sending goods to buyers. This article has a good overview of Amazon FBA versus FBM. There is also a useful PDF from Board Bia, the Irish food board, on how to sell products on Amazon.
Q. What are my options on Amazon KDP if I want to define my own paperback trim size?
You can use a custom trim size for paperbacks as long as the width is within 4″-8.5″ (10.16-21.59 cm) and the height is within it’s within 6″-11.69″ (15.24-29.69 cm). See the Amazon article describing available paperback trim sizes.
Q. What is the Draft2Digital?
Draft2Digital is an aggregator which can sell your ebook and paperback book to multiple vendors. They take approximately 10% commission on top of the vendor fees as describing in Draft2Digital FAQ page.