How to Market a Self-Published Book on Amazon

Deciding how to market your book starts with what each channel costs: money, time or royalty you give up. Here are the main channels side by side, roughly in the order you would use them.

Shoppers find a book through search and category pages, then decide on its detail page, and all three run on the metadata you enter in KDP. Spend the most care on the title and subtitle: on a Kindle ebook they are locked once it is published, while the description, keywords and categories can change at any time.

• Title and subtitle.The title field takes only the title as it appears on the cover, and title and subtitle together must be under 200 characters. KDP’s Metadata Guidelinesrule out words such as “bestselling” and “free”, unauthorized references to other books, authors or trademarks, repeated generic keywords and HTML, in the subtitle too. The title analyzer checks length, capitalization and keyword use.
• Description. Up to 4,000 characters, HTML tags included. KDP’s description guide suggests a scannable paragraph of about 150 words, with a first sentence that draws readers in and a clear sign of the genre. No reviews or quotes, review requests, prices, URLs, time-sensitive details, spoilers or emojis. Our guide to what a blurb is shows how to write the copy, and the book description generator gives you a structure with KDP-ready HTML.
• Keywords. Up to seven keywords or short phrases. KDP’s keyword guidesuggests setting (“Colonial America”), character types (“single dad”), themes (“coming of age”) and tone (“feel-good”). Skip words already in your title or categories, quality claims, “new”, other authors’ names and Amazon program names, and search Amazon for each candidate first.
• Categories.Up to three, from lists that differ by format and marketplace. KDP asks for categories that match the book and may remove or change ones that don’t. Its categories page suggests ones popular enough to have reader interest, but not so broad or narrow that the book gets lost. Changes can take up to 72 hours to show. The category finder lets you browse paths first.

Our guide to book metadata with AI goes deeper on each field.

Three more jobs come before launch day. Judge the cover at thumbnail size, beside the best-selling books in your category, since that is how search results show it. KDP’s ebook cover criteria give an ideal size of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels (height by width), as a JPEG or TIFF. A paperback cover is a single PDF of back, spine and front with 0.125 inch of bleed, and spine text needs at least 79 pages. The KDP cover size calculator works out the dimensions.

A+ Contentadds images, text and comparison tables to your detail page, under “From the Publisher”. You build it in the A+ Content Manager from the KDP Marketing page, for live titles or pre-orders. One project can cover several formats. It must be published in each Amazon store where you want it, though KDP copies a draft into your other stores that support its language. Content that follows the rules appears within eight business days, KDP says. Use up to five modules and keep to the A+ Content Guidelines: no customer reviews, prices, time-sensitive words such as “new”, links, or comparisons with competing books. The A+ Content template builder gives exact module layouts and image sizes.

A pre-order lets readers order the ebook early, and KDP says pre-orders count toward sales rank before release. Pre-orders are for ebooks only, up to 10 active at a time, with a release date up to 18 months ahead for pre-orders created on or after September 2, 2026. Upload the final manuscript at least 72 hours before release. Miss that and every order is canceled; a second miss or cancellation removes your pre-order privileges for six months across your catalog.

A new book has no reviews, and reviews are part of how shoppers decide. KDP’s customer reviews pagesays you may give free or discounted copies, as long as you don’t require a review or try to influence it. Offering anything else, gift cards included, invalidates the review. Amazon’s Community Guidelinesalso bar reviews written for compensation and reviews from the author’s friends, relatives and business associates.

So never buy reviews, and treat swaps with other authors the same way. Honest early reviews come from people who asked to read early: your list, readers of your earlier books, bloggers who take self-published books in your genre. Send the copy, say an honest review would help if they write one, and leave it there.

One catch: an ebook in KDP Select must be exclusive to the Kindle Store, so read the enrollment terms before you send digital files; print copies are outside the rule. KDP’s gifting option sends an ebook through Amazon instead, though not for pre-order or free titles.

KDP Select is a free 90-day program for Kindle ebooks and audiobooks; its promotions are for ebooks only. While enrolled, the ebook must be exclusive to the Kindle Store; print and other formats can still be sold elsewhere. Enrollment renews automatically unless you turn it off. It puts the ebook in Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited), where you earn a share of the KDP Select Global Fund for pages read, and it offers two promotions. Each 90-day term allows one kind or the other.

The rules are from KDP’s pages on Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions. Timing matters: a Countdown Deal needs 30 days in KDP Select first, so a book enrolled at launch waits a month, while free days can start on day 2 of a term. A Countdown Deal earns while it runs; free days earn nothing and trade royalty for new readers, which makes most sense when a next book is waiting.

You can also nominate an ebookfor a Kindle Deal, a feature still in beta: two titles at a time, ebooks on the 70% royalty option in the US marketplace, with no guarantee of a slot. If you pay promotion sites to announce a sale, KDP’s Promote Your Bookpage asks you to monitor their tactics and advises against sites that “guarantee” a return. Purchases or borrows from accounts that try to manipulate Amazon’s services may cost you your account and royalties. Our BookBub review looks at one such service in detail.

Amazon Ads show your book in shopping results and on product detail pages. KDP’s advertising pagesays Sponsored Products are cost-per-click: you pay only when a shopper clicks, at a bid and budget you set. Ads bring shoppers to the page but can’t fix one that doesn’t sell, so start once the cover, description and first reviews are in place.

Whether an ad pays depends on what the clicks cost and how much royalty the book keeps per sale. Start with our guide to Sponsored Products for books, then read profitable Amazon Ads for KDP and what ACOS means for authors.

A list and a website are channels Amazon doesn’t run, and KDP’s Promote Your Book page names both as ways to promote a book yourself.

• Email list.A sign-up form on your website is enough to start. Write when there is news: a cover, a pre-order, a launch, a deal. Don’t give a KDP Select ebook away to subscribers: under the KDP Select termsyou can’t distribute it, “or a book that is substantially similar”, in digital format yourself. Offer something written for the list, or gift the ebook through Amazon, which KDP suggests for newsletter subscribers. And don’t reward anyone for reading the book in Kindle+: KDP’s Kindle+ royalty rules bar marketing that offers payment, bonus content, contest entries or other gifts for reading.
• Inside the book. Keep any invitation plain. KDP’s bonus content rulessay “disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are never allowed”, and its hyperlink guidelinesaccept external links only where they directly enhance the reader experience, as Amazon determines, and prohibit links to web forms that ask for a reader’s email address. So don’t link a sign-up form from inside the ebook; one line on your About the Author page pointing to your website is the cautious version.
• Author website.A page per book with the cover, a short description, links to each Amazon store and the series order, plus the sign-up form. Amazon descriptions can’t carry URLs and A+ Content can’t link out, so your website is where the links live.

Author Central gives you an Author Page on Amazon, set up from the KDP Marketing page. You can add your books and a biography in more than one language, add editorial reviews and see BookScan sales (both US only), and check how many readers follow you. It runs in six stores (Amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .co.jp and .com.br); six others show an Author Page built from your US details.

For a series, link the books on KDP. Any format qualifies, linked formats join automatically, and you can start before every book is written. Once a title is live, the series page appears within 72 hours. Public domain and low-content books aren’t eligible, and series discounts aren’t available. A preview of the next book counts as bonus content: at the end, listed in the table of contents, and around 10% of the book at most. The series read-through calculator shows how many readers move on to the next book.

Every self-published book promotion faces the same test: the book should keep more money with it than without it, counted in royalty, after the channel’s cost. In KDP Reports, the Prior Months’ Royalties report is the monthly record: generated near the 15th, with royalty and Kindle+ pages by title, ASIN, marketplace and format. The Dashboard updates every 15 minutes, enough to see whether an email or a promotion moved sales that day, and the Promotions and Pre-orders reports track Countdown Deals and pre-ordered units.

Costs live elsewhere (ad spend in Amazon Ads, email fees, promotion receipts), and the two sides won’t match exactly. KDP’s advertising page says KDP counts every sale, while Amazon Ads counts only sales attributed to a click within 14 days, dates a paperback by purchase rather than shipping, and leaves Kindle+ pages read out of ad sales.

Say one book earned $410 in royalties on $290 of ads and kept $120, while another earned $150 on $20 of ads and kept $130. The first sells more; the second keeps more. Our guide to KDP reports shows which report gives which number.

By hand, that is a monthly spreadsheet. Instead, SelfPub Go’s royalty analytics reads the KDP report you already download and puts it next to your Amazon Ads, book by book.

Rules here come from KDP Help and Amazon’s guidelines as of the date above. When they change, as pre-orders did in September 2026, the linked pages are the ones to trust.