My review of KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

updated 2024 December 28th

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

• 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.
• It is very easy to use. The website is simple to navigate. The process of publishing takes you step by step. It's actually doable.
• 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.
  
• They now offer hardcover in addition to paperback and e-book.
  
• 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.
• 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. Update: They have added the option to schedule your release date.
• 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. While it says it can take a few hours for the request to process, it's always been within a matter of minutes for me.
• Shipping to the author takes a lot longer than shipping available to customers. 2 days versus 2 or 3 weeks is an unreasonable gap. As someone who pays for Prime, I wish we had that option with our own books (at least small orders) since they are coming from our regular Amazon cart.
• 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. They do have plenty of subcategories though.
• Your print books only have the option of cream or standard white paper. I hope in the future they add options for thicker paper.
  
• There is also no option for spiral bound books if you desire to write a cookbook or saddle stitch if you have a thin book. Perhaps, they will explore those options in the future.
  

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 I don't know how to design a cover. 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. I recommend keeping this in mind as you create your covers. It was only once that I had a crooked cover, but it scared me that they could have sent that to a reader of mine.
• Their cover creator is very basic. If you can't create your own covers, you'll have to hire a professional.
• Customer service has been a bad experience most of the time when I need to contact them. They pass off every issue to another department. 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. ​     
  
• My books are supposed to all be available through expanded distribution, but they are not. With CreateSpace, each book would show up on Barnes and Noble's website in 2 or 3 weeks. With KDP, none of them ever had. I did a holiday job at Barnes and Noble, and looked up my own books. They were not available for the company to order. 2 out of my 3 current books now show unavailable for expanded distribution. With CreateSpace, I had no concerns about bookstores being able to order my books. Now, I don't think they will be able to. If my books ever got popular enough on Amazon that brick and mortar stores wanted to start carrying them, I would consider switching publishing companies or publishing duplicates under different ISBNs through Ingram Spark.
  
• When CreateSpace first merged to KDP, I had numerous issues including unpaid royalties, great difficulty retiring old editions of my nonfiction books I was updating, 2 unpublished books being sold, and several damaged books. I received two shipments of books that had glue making the pages stick. I have not had any of these issues since. I'm updating this blog 6 years later.        

Options

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.
 
If you are an aspiring author, I do recommend buying books from different publishing companies and comparing the quality. 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.