My review of KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

Merged over from CreateSpace, KDP has some similarities to the beloved CreateSpace and a handful of differences as well. For a detailed list of similarities and differences for KDP users that previously used CreateSpace, check out my blog on that here. 

The good

• The paper quality is decent. I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen worse as well. At least it’s a crisp white. The cream paper is a perfect shade. You can’t tell the books are self-published.
• The vibrancy of coloring on the covers is amazing. Sometimes I sit and stare at my books mesmerized by the beautiful covers. It truly is a high quality color.
• A lot of things are free with KDP. This is a great option for authors on a budget.
  • It’s free to sign up. There are no membership fees or annual fees of any kind. 
  • It’s totally free to publish a book with them.
  • If you can’t afford your own ISBN as recommended, they provide one. However, that does list them as the publisher.
  • They are connected to distributors at no additional cost to the author.
  • It’s also free to make changes to your book. If you find a typo or want to make a small revision, it’s extremely easy to do so. You can upload a new cover as well.
• If you do desire to make a few changes, your current version will stay live and available to buy until the revisions are approved. There’s no need to pull it off the market.
• You can choose to unpublish your book right from your dashboard. You don’t have to contact support to have that done.
• As soon as it is published, it is available on Amazon. There is no wait period. Eager readers can buy it within minutes of publication.
• You can also run ads on Amazon easily with KDP.
• If you have your book in paperback and Kindle, all of that is managed from one dashboard.
• There is no threshold to reach before you can be paid. Payments are deposited at the end of the month 60 days after the sale has taken place. Example, your sales from January will be deposited at the end of March.
• You can order copies from as little as only one copy of your book to as many as 999 copies.
• The cost of ordering copies for the author is decently priced. Other print-on-demand companies are very expensive.
• They are made in America! That is very important to me.
• One nice feature on their dashboard is the ability to filter your books. You can filter it to only show books that are currently live. If you have books that you’ve retired or are in the draft stage, this is a nice feature. 

The bad

 

• Proof copies come with a gray “Not for resale” banner across them. It kind of puts a damper on pre-launch promotional pictures and videos. It looks less professional.
• Your announced launch date may or may not work out. When you submit your book for approval to publish, it can take hours or several days. They automatically publish it then. You have no control over the date and time it is published. Some users report being stuck in a limbo with over a one week wait time before being published.
• Their computers may flag your book as unapproved for things that aren’t actually an issue. For example, one of my books was flagged as unacceptable due to small font. It’s written in Georgia font, size 14. I called them and they said their formatting specialists would review it. I resubmitted the book as it was. It was approved. Days later when their formatting team emailed me they couldn’t figure out what was an issue in the first place.
• All books published through KDP are required to be available for distribution on Amazon. While CreateSpace and other print-on-demand companies allow the author to be in control of distribution and able to have privately printed books, KDP does not. Some authors wish to sell exclusively through their website or at events. Others have published private books for their own family that they do not want available to the public. This privacy is not an option with KDP.
• Your cart redirects you to Amazon when you want to order copies. You have to request copies instead of being able to order them immediately. You will then be redirected to Amazon’s regular website. It feels less professional this way.
• Shipping to the author takes a lot longer than shipping available to customers. 2 days versus 2 or 3 weeks is an unreasonable gap.
• Another thing is the loss of BISAC categories. Your genre can now only be chosen by a drop down menu that matches Amazon’s categories. You can’t enter your own BISAC code. 

The ugly

• Their quality control standards for their covers are subpar. The feel of the cover and the coloring is truly excellent, but don’t expect it to line up the same way with each book. The spine moves several millimeters. I’ve had covers with them that the image is straight up crooked. It’s incredibly frustrating to receive a perfectly aligned cover with one order and then the next order looks like some DIY job put together with a touch of alcohol on the breath. I feel like no matter how meticulously I design my covers I never know if it will be lined up where it should be. That reflects on me as the author, not the printing company that readers don’t know.
• Their cover creator is a pathetic joke. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. You’ll need to upload a professionally made cover. You also have to have your interior’s final page count before being able to do the cover.
• Customer service is awful enough to throw a monk into a rage. They pass off every issue to another department or some so-called expert. Nothing gets dealt with. When they “look into” an issue they rarely stay in communication with the author. They also close cases as solved that were never even addressed. The company is so big that is seems to be apathetic to providing quality customer service. ​              

I’ve had a few bumps
– big bumps –
with KDP. 

1. When I was merged over from CreateSpace, I was never paid my royalties. That was in August. I’ve contacted them repeatedly and been given the run-around repeatedly. They refused to give me a date. In January, they finally told me they would pay me by the end of March (after I accused Amazon of stealing from me). I won’t hold my breath. It’s March now. No sign of payment in sight. Update: We were finally paid in May.   
2. I tried to retire several books to publish new editions. I write nonfiction. I update with new editions every few years. It should have taken a matter of days to unpublish and have that go through. It took over 2 months along with many, many emails. For some unbeknownst reason, they continue to retire some of my books repeatedly including two that were retired with CreateSpace long before KDP was even a company. None of this has been communicated with me. Update as of July: This issue seems to have been solved. I'll update again when I do new editions and see how that goes. 
3. They sold two copies of a book that was supposed to be out of print because it had been replaced with a newer book. When I contacted them about it they insisted that those were old sales that for some unknown reason had not been reported until now. No, they sold books I did not give them permission to sell.
4. I published 3 books on October 29th. It took until February for 2 of them to show up on expanded distribution. In comparison, CreateSpace used to take maybe 2 weeks. For added fun sprinkles, one of my books has never shown as available on other websites (ex. B&N) and another one has disappeared.
5. The first two orders I received after publishing were damaged. I had heard concerns over the quality of their published books compared to their proof copies. The proof copies had been fine. {Note: I have found the quality of published books to be exactly the same as proof copies.} So, I started out ordering one copy of each of my 3 new books. 2 of them had glue on the pages causing the pages to rip apart. The pages also seemed quite thin. They were see-through. It looked no better than standard home office printer paper. It took a lot to get them to refund what I paid for the 2 damaged copies. They went on to tell me to order more if I still want those books. Again, I ordered one copy of each. This time they arrived with the same glue issue. They were in even worse condition. I could not let people see these. Keep in mind that these orders were a month apart. All of the damaged books were printed in South Carolina. The books I’ve received that were printed in Kentucky have been perfect. That being said, it’s really not uncommon for books to get damaged or for quality control issues to slip through the cracks. After working at a bookstore, I’ve realized that damaged books happen with commercially published books just as much as indie published. I’ve also had the opportunity to compare books from a wide variety of publishing companies and print-on-demand companies. Undamaged books are just as good from KDP as they are from the bigger companies. Still, I never received damaged books with CreateSpace so it jolted me to have this issue with KDP.  

 
There are not a lot of options out there for print-on-demand companies. I looked into switching to other popular POD companies, but decided not to after finding that some of them are using the same printing facilities as KDP. All things considered, I’ve chosen to stay with KDP. I liked CreateSpace far better, but the (undamaged) books that KDP puts out are pretty beautiful, though I wish the paper was thicker. The royalties are great. All in all, they have a lot to offer. They seem to be the best option for indie authors wanting a print-on-demand company that distributes to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Ingram.
 
If you would like to see samples of books printed by KDP, view the "My books" tab from my website's main menu. I'm pretty in love with them.