page_title: Self-publishing
section_title: Kindle Direct Publishing
hierarchical_section_title: Self-publishing / Main routes to self-publishing / Publishing platforms / Kindle Direct Publishing
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Amazon Kindle třetí generace, ukazující původní text románu Bílá velryba. English: Third generation Amazon Kindle, showing text from the novel Moby-Dick. Esperanto: Amazon Kindle de la tria generacio, montranta originan tekston el la romano Moby-Dick.
context_page_description: Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using POD technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, video content, and zines.
  In the traditional publishing model, the publisher bears all the costs and risks of publication, but retains most of the profit if the book is successful. In self-publishing, the author bears all the costs and risks, but earns a higher share of the profit per sale.
  The $1 billion market of self-publishing has transformed in the past two decades with new technologies providing increasing alternatives to traditional publishing. Self-publishing is increasingly becoming the first choice for writers. Most self-published books sell very few copies. Those which sell large numbers are newsworthy because they are so rare. The quality of self-published works varies considerably, because there are no barriers to publication and no quality control.
context_section_description: Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP is Amazon's e-book publishing unit which was launched when the company began selling its Amazon Kindle book reading device in 2007. Books can be published in numerous languages. Amazon's KDP has hundreds of thousands of self-published titles. Amazon's KDP program uses ASIN identifiers instead of ISBNs to identify e-books. Amazon does not release sales figures of its authors. Many authors prefer Amazon for its global clout and reach. One analysis suggested that Amazon earned $2.3 billion from e-book revenues in 2016, and 25% of these were from self-published e-books; and Amazon released 4 million e-book titles in 2016, and 40% of them were self-published. Another estimate was that Amazon controls 70% of the e-book market.
  Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service lets readers read any books in its catalog, provided that the users pay a monthly fee. Amazon tracks which books are selected and read by subscribers. An author who wants to have their book included in this program enters into Amazon's KDP Select program, and as part of the agreement, the author promises to make their book exclusive to Amazon. The author can opt out of the KDP program every ninety days. An estimate in 2017 was that of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited market, about 60% of the books read and borrowed were self-published. Amazon initially began the program by paying authors whenever their book was chosen, but then it switched to an arrangement in which it pays authors based on pages read. Each month, Amazon establishes a fund from which to pay authors, based on Amazon's accounting of which pages are read. Amazon has been criticized for short-changing authors by paying them out of this monthly fund. As a result of the program, many Amazon authors found that their income decreased substantially when the company switched to the pages-read basis. The collective fund for KDP authors in August 2017 was $19.4 million which was the "largest ever" of the monthly funds, but overall authors received the lowest amount, which was $0.00419 per page for that month. Some authors tried to compensate for less income by slightly altering and republishing their work, to try to increase the total of pages read. The change to the pages-read model was criticized as being a "huge pay cut" for authors. None of the big 5 publishers contributed books to Kindle Unlimited as of 2017.
caption: An Amazon Kindle.
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