2026-07-08 · all guides

How to Publish an AI-Written Book on Amazon KDP: A Step-by-Step Guide

First, the question everyone asks: is this allowed?

Yes. Amazon KDP explicitly permits AI-generated content. The policy has two categories: AI-generated content, which you must disclose during the publishing flow, and AI-assisted content, which you do not need to disclose at all. The disclosure is a set of questions inside the KDP upload form, not a public badge on your listing, and answering yes does not block publication or bury your book. What Amazon actually enforces is quality and its content guidelines: books that are unreadable, misleading, or duplicative get rejected regardless of how they were written.

The distinction between the two categories matters, so learn it before you upload. If the AI produced the text and you edited it afterward, that is AI-generated and must be disclosed. If you wrote the text yourself and used AI to brainstorm, refine, or error-check, that is AI-assisted and requires nothing. Most people using a generation tool fall clearly into the first bucket. Answer honestly; the checkbox costs you nothing.

Step 1: pick a topic a real buyer searches for

AI can write about anything, which is exactly why topic selection is where most AI books fail. Start from a specific problem with a specific audience: meal prep for people who hate cooking, estimating for freelance electricians, sleep training for twins. Search your topic on Amazon and look at the results. You want to see books selling in the category, meaning the demand exists, but you also want a gap you can fill: outdated books, thin books, or books with reviews complaining about a missing angle.

Narrow beats broad every time. A general fitness book competes with thousands of titles and established authors. A 120-page book on strength training for people over 50 with knee problems competes with a handful. Pick the narrow version, and let the title say exactly who the book is for.

Step 2: outline before you generate a single chapter

A book generated chapter by chapter without an outline drifts: it repeats itself, contradicts earlier sections, and pads. Build a complete outline first. Aim for 10 to 15 chapters, each with 3 to 5 subpoints stating what the chapter must cover and what the reader should be able to do afterward. Then generate against that structure, so every chapter knows what came before and what comes next.

This is the workflow purpose-built tools follow. ebookdone, for example, generates the outline first and lets you edit it, and the free preview gives you the outline plus the full first chapter before you pay anything, so you can judge quality on your actual topic. You can start one at /new. Whatever tool you use, insist on seeing and editing the outline before chapters are written.

Step 3: edit like a publisher, not a proofreader

Raw AI output needs a human pass, but the valuable edits are structural, not typographical. Read the whole draft and ask: does chapter 6 repeat chapter 2? Are the examples specific or generic? Does any advice conflict with itself? Cut padding aggressively; a tight 25,000-word book earns better reviews than a bloated 45,000-word one. Add anything only you can add: a personal anecdote, a local example, a strong opinion. That is also what moves a book from feeling generated to feeling authored.

Fact-check every number, date, and named claim. AI models state wrong figures with total confidence, and one confidently wrong statistic in chapter 1 will surface in a one-star review. For a nonfiction how-to book, budget two to four hours of real editing. It is the highest-leverage time in the whole project.

Step 4: format for Kindle and paperback

The ebook side is simple: KDP accepts EPUB, and reflowable text means you do not control page layout. The paperback side has hard requirements. Interior margins depend on page count because of the gutter, the extra inner margin where pages bind: 0.375 inches up to 150 pages, 0.5 inches for 151 to 300 pages, 0.625 inches for 301 to 500, and 0.75 inches for 501 to 700. Get this wrong and KDP rejects the file at upload.

The paperback cover is a single wrap file: back cover, spine, and front cover as one PDF, sized to your exact page count and trim size. Spine width is pages multiplied by 0.002252 inches on white paper or 0.0025 inches on cream. A 200-page book on white paper has a 0.45-inch spine, and the whole wrap must be built around that number. Tools that output print-ready files compute the gutter and spine for you; if you format manually, KDP provides a cover size calculator and templates.

Step 5: upload, disclose, price, publish

In the KDP dashboard, create the title, fill in metadata, and answer the AI content questions honestly. Upload your manuscript and cover, then use the online previewer to check the print layout page by page. For ebook pricing, the 70 percent royalty rate requires a list price between 2.99 and 9.99 dollars and deducts a delivery fee of 0.15 dollars per megabyte; the 35 percent rate has no delivery fee and no price window. For most text-based nonfiction, 4.99 to 7.99 dollars at 70 percent is the sweet spot.

Paperback royalty is 60 percent of list price minus printing cost. Black-and-white printing costs a flat 2.30 dollars under 110 pages, and 0.85 dollars plus 0.012 dollars per page at 110 pages or more, so a 200-page book costs 3.25 dollars to print. Price it at 9.99 dollars and you earn about 2.74 dollars per copy. Review takes up to 72 hours, usually less. Then your book is live, and the real work of getting reviews and refining your listing begins.

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