If you’ve been following blogs or websites about writing or publishing, then you might have come across the term ‘passive income’. Passive income means that your earnings from any source are not directly linked to how much time you spend working on it. Instead, passive income is generated by market prices and is typically earned without a lot of new time or energy spent each year.
Sometimes people equate this with being a very rich person. However, this is not true for most people who want to build a passive income stream.
KDP Select is Amazon’s self-publishing program for Kindle e-books. It allows authors to sell digital copies of their books at discounted price, and earn royalties on each sale. I’ll show you how easy it is to start earning passive income using KDP Select and how much money you can make in the process!
What is Amazon’s KDP Select?
KDP Select is Amazon’s self-publishing program for Kindle e-books. It allows authors to sell digital copies of their books at discounted price, and earn royalties on each sale. The program has two main benefits: the first is that it allows you to sell your book in a discounted arrangement, which means it’s more likely to reach new readers than if you were selling at full price.
The other benefit is that authors can opt into this program by agreeing to give Amazon exclusivity on your book. If you are planning on publishing an ebook through KDP Select, you will need a KDP account. This is a free Amazon website that helps publish and sell books. For example, when I published my first novel in the series “The Unity Chronicles,”
I used the KDP account on my blog instead of setting up my own website for direct sales of the book. This was much easier for me, as I do not own a credit card or PayPal account and would have had trouble receiving payments from customers who wanted to purchase the book without using a credit card online (to avoid fees).
How to Earn Passive Income Using KDP Select?
If you already have a book or are currently writing or publishing one, then the first step to earning passive income is to publish your book on Amazon’s KDP program.
The next step is to select ‘KDP Select’ and start selling your e-book. When you create this kind of account, you can choose how long the discounted price will last for.
If it’s for a limited time, like 24 hours, then that means that people who buy your e-book during that time will get the discounted price but won’t be able to resell it at that price. This allows authors to make money from their books without having to keep track of when each sale happened and without worrying about reselling rights.
If you want to sell discounted copies of your book forever, then select ‘Kindle Unlimited’ as a distribution method on Amazon. That way people who download your book will always get access to it at no additional cost.
Another great way to earn passive income using KDP Select is by writing multiple series in different genres! If you publish one novel per month and write in multiple genres like crime, romance, sci-fi, and historical fiction, then your sales and earnings will vary depending on what genre sells best with which audience.
It’s easy to create a list of potential titles for these different series and work them into your monthly publishing schedule!
Things You’ll Need to Set Up Before You Start
You will need to prepare a few things before you start earning passive income. You’ll have to have a book cover, find a catchy title for your book, and decide on the price point for your book in order to get started with KDP Select. Once you have these three things set up, it’s time to upload your work and start publishing!
The Book you’ll publish in KDP Select
The book you’ll publish in KDP Select is your eBook. If you want to start selling eBooks on Amazon, then publishing them using KDP is the best place to do it.
You get paid for each sale, which means that if you sell a thousand copies at $4.99, then your royalty earnings would be $4,990. You don’t need a huge budget or any special skills to publish an eBook using KDP select. Make sure that the book you’re publishing is easy to read and write so people will buy it!
Here are some resources that might help: Writing well-structured texts Formatting your eBooks Creating unique images for your book cover Creating an effective ebook description If you’re already experienced with writing and know how to create an engaging story, then these resources might be helpful too!
How Much Money You Can Make With KDP Select?
In the course of a month, I was able to earn $466. This is only with KDP Select books, so if you are writing traditionally published books, you will get more money! In less than a year, I earned $7,353. That’s not including all the work I did in my day job during that period.
Naturally, this income is not steady; it’s random and quite inconsistent. I have had months where my sales were much higher or lower than usual but overall these earnings seemed like a pretty decent amount of money for someone who was just starting out on my writing journey.
Does It Matter Which Kindle Format You Publish In?
For this guide, I’ll be using the Amazon Kindle format. It’s important to realize that even though the physical book can be in any format, it’ll still correlate with your Amazon KDP Select account. The basic overview of how KDP Select works is that the author sets their own price for their book and their royalties are collected when you purchase a copy.
The more copies you make, the more royalties you earn per sale. The author has some control over how long a book stays on sale as well as its pricing strategy. For example, if you have a short story and want to sell it for $0.99 for three days only, then you can do just that!
This gives authors complete control over what kind of revenue they can earn from their books. The royalty rates aren’t bad either! You can earn anywhere from 6-8% of each sale depending on what your base price is for your book.
FAQs
Q: How does Amazon KDP Select work?
A: With KDP Select, if you are a Kindle Unlimited Member, you can choose to make your book available to Amazon Prime members for free. Your book is also offered at a discount to regular Kindle Unlimited members. When the book is read, the reader will be charged $0.00 and the author will earn 70% of that amount as royalties.
Q: Do I need a publishing contract with Amazon?
A: No, as long as your book is exclusive on Amazon, you don’t need a publishing contract with them. Just register an account and start uploading your book.
Q: How much money can I make on KDP Select?
A: You can earn anywhere from 7-35% royalties on each sale depending on how many pages in your book are read. For example, if the average reader finishes reading 250 pages in your book, then you would receive 5% royalties from sales; which would equal out to $2.25 per page read!
Q: What do I need to start making money through KDP Select?
A: In order to start earning money through KDP Select, you must have a website or blog where readers can find your books and subscribe to receive notifications when new content is uploaded or promoted on it. You can also use social media channels like Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic back to your site where people will subscribe and get notified when new content is