Many people wonder is KDP dead in 2022?

Well, for starters Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) launched in 2007 and has been an incredible platform to self publish and sell your own books on the world largest retailer. It gives you direct access to a large international audience of hungry readers that have a tendency of practically buying on impulse…

In fact, I personally published my very first book on the KDP platform in late 2012. Here’s one of my first Amazon royalty checks dating back almost 10 years now (that makes me sound sooo old haha)

For anyone looking to self-publish their own books or (do what I do) start their own publishing business and hire ghostwriters to write books for them…

KDP has been a very lucrative way to make passive income online!

However, if you are reading this article in the year 2022, I’m guessing you want to know the answer to…

“Is KDP worth it in 2022?”
“Is Amazon Book Publishing Dead?”
“Is Kindle Direct Publishing even worth it anymore?”

The short answer is YES!

The truth is, it’s DEFINITELY still worth it and NO it’s absolutely not dead… (it’s actually bigger than it’s ever been before thanks to the pandemic it’s impact on changes in global buying behaviour)

BUT

Ahh yesss the famous BUT…

Like all great things, over the years, more people discovered this platform and started to publish and as a result this has created an influx of competition which has saturated the market…

As a matter of fact, there aren’t as many people making significant income as you may think…

You see, Amazon claims:

“Over 1,000 indie authors earned more than $100,000 through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing during the year to the end of May 2020 and ‘thousands more independent authors earned more than $50,000“

2019 AMAZON SMB IMPACT REPORT

So, while it is great opportunity and definitely still worth it, don’t expect this business venture to be a “walk in the park”, especially if you plan on breaking into the extremely small “100KERS club”…

However, don’t let the threat of increased competition because having the right strategies and blueprint to follow will make it so much easier for you to “leapfrog”ahead of all your competitors and make you money on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing platform!

Now you might be asking yourself… what qualifies me to say that and how do I know that for sure?

Well, as you may or may not know, I’ve been through the trenches for almost a decade now and I have first-hand experience breaking into this tiny “100KERS” club and so have a few of my students (many more of which are well on their way to getting into this exclusive club)…

Here’s my KDP results in the year 2019 (including ACX)…

What’s the “secret” behind becoming a top producing publisher?

As I mentioned earlier, Amazon is the world’s largest retailer on the planet. Millions of people worldwide are ALREADY searching for different book topics and it’s just a question of positioning your book to be easily found.

With that being said, when thinking about a book topic to publish you need to be strategic. You need to pick the right niches to publish your book in and ensure you find the right keywords to title your book for readers that are searching on Amazon to find you. So, it’s a strategic process of finding decent audience sizes while still not being overly saturated!

Now I have an entire coaching program dedicated on educating you on how to become a top producing Publishing CEO, so I obviously can’t dive deep here and lay out my entire blueprint in a single article.

Instead what I want to accomplish is sharing some points to help you decide if Amazon KDP is the right online business model for you to get started in and share some other not so positive points you should be aware of if you’re seriously thinking of getting started with Kindle Direct Publishing…

Is KDP Worth It: Reasons Why You should Get Started!

Low barriers to entry:

Like many “print-on-demand” businesses, you don’t need much money to get started, in fact you don’t need any money at all if you wanted to start producing low-content books such as notebooks, journals, etc. The same goes if you planned on writing your own fiction or non-fiction book.

Now, if you wanted to hire a ghostwriter to write a book for you, it can cost a few hundred dollars upfront (money well worth investing, if you’ve done proper job doing niche & keyword research) and just like that, you’re in business ready to sell your book to a global audience online using Amazon!

Passive Income Source:

With Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, you don’t need to worry about inventory, fulfillment, customer service, royalty payments, analytics or none of that stuff. You don’t even have to buy print book inventory to sell them. Basically, KDP handles all that for you, they “print-on-demand” and ship out your book as soon as you get an order!

So, in reality, the only thing you ever have to worry about is marketing and publishing a valuable book that will either entertain or solve a pain or problem of your customer. That’s it!

Unlimited amount of book niches to publish using KDP:

A lot of people think there’s too much competition on KDP but they often forget that there is virtually an unlimited amount of niches and keyword variations out there.

For example, there’s self-publishers publishing in super specific niches like “Crochet Knitting” making a FEW THOUSAND dollars each and every single month passively on Amazon…

The Downsides To Consider With KDP:

You need a game plan if you’re serious about this in 2022:

There once was a time where you could just publish a book and the Amazon algorithm would rank your book and you had the potential of getting a lot of book sales.

Those days are unfortunately over, in 2022 you better have a game plan on how to aggressively promote and rank your book because I can assure you, your top competitors have one!

Strict Amazon KDP Guidelines:

You have to respect and play by Amazon’s rules. If you’ve been doing your research long enough, you’ll have heard plenty of horror stories of Amazon shutting down super profitable accounts for having violated some of their rules.

So, be sure to thoroughly go through their guidelines. If you have a question, be sure to email KDP and ask them if this is a green light or if it’s violates any of their Terms of Service (keep their email responses preciously, you never know if you’ll need it one day) or learn from someone who’s been through many of the trenches for themselves.

High Competition

This may sound hypocritical because earlier I said that there was virtually an unlimited amounts of niches out there to publish your books and make money in. However, the reality is you will still need to aggressively market your book in order to have it appear in front of your ideal customers searching for your book.

Many people assume that “if you publish, they will come and buy” and because Amazon is so huge and has so many customers that it will be easy getting sales. Not the case, in fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Like any business, competitors exist and competition gets stiffer every year!

In order to make consistent and predictable sales, you need to understand the KDP platform inside and out, that especially means understanding keywords and SEO within Amazon.

Final Words

For all the reasons I mentioned above, Amazon KDP STILL IS an amazing platform in 2022 for you to make additional or even significant income and offers a great opportunity for authors and publishers to have their books noticed and to make sales.

The bottom line is in order to succeed you need to treat it like a business, not a hobby!