2026-06-14 · all guides

KDP Upload Walkthrough: Every Screen From Draft to Publish

Before you click Create

The KDP upload flow is three pages: book details, content, and pricing. You can save a draft at any point, but the process goes much faster if you prepare everything first. Have ready: your title and subtitle, a book description of up to 4,000 characters, seven keyword phrases, your chosen categories, the manuscript file, and the cover file. For ebooks KDP accepts EPUB; for paperbacks the interior should be a PDF with correct trim size and margins, plus a single wrap PDF for the cover.

From your Bookshelf, click Create and choose the format. Kindle ebook and paperback are separate titles that get linked afterward, and most publishers start with the ebook because there are fewer ways for the file to fail. Everything you enter on the details page for one format carries over as a starting point when you add the other.

Page one: book details

The details page is metadata. Language, title, and subtitle come first; enter them exactly as they appear on your cover, because a mismatch can trigger a rejection during review. The author field is where a pen name goes if you use one. The description field accepts basic formatting and is your sales pitch, so write it for a browsing shopper, not a search engine. Keywords are seven phrases of up to 50 characters each; think in terms of what a buyer would type, like "meal prep for beginners," not single words.

This page also contains the AI content disclosure. If AI generated your text and you edited it, answer yes to AI-generated; if you wrote it yourself with AI assistance for brainstorming or polish, disclosure is not required. Answering yes does not add a public label or hurt your ranking. Choose up to three categories, and pick specific subcategories rather than broad ones, because ranking in a narrow category is how new books become visible.

Page two: content upload and preview

The content page is where files go. Upload your manuscript first and let KDP process it, then upload the cover. For paperbacks you also confirm trim size, bleed, and paper color here, and these must match how the files were built: a 6 by 9 inch interior uploaded as 5 by 8 will fail. If you do not have a cover, KDP offers a cover creator, but a professionally designed or generated cover almost always outsells it.

Do not skip the previewer. The online previewer renders your actual files the way Amazon will print or display them, and it is where problems surface: text sitting inside the gutter margin, images below 300 dpi that will print blurry, or a cover that does not match the entered metadata. Fixing these before publishing beats a rejection email two days later. Page through the whole book, not just chapter one, and check the table of contents links on the ebook side.

Page three: pricing, and the publish button

The pricing page asks for territories, royalty plan, and list price. For ebooks, the 70 percent royalty requires a price between 2.99 and 9.99 dollars; outside that window you get 35 percent. For paperbacks, royalty is 60 percent of list price minus printing cost, and the page shows your exact per-copy earnings as you type a price. Set your primary marketplace price and let KDP auto-convert the others unless you have a reason to set them manually.

Click publish and the book enters review, which typically completes within 72 hours and often within 24 to 48. You will get an email when it goes live or if something needs fixing. The hardest prerequisite for a smooth upload is having files that meet spec in the first place. ebookdone outputs a formatted EPUB, print-ready interior PDF with correct gutters, and a sized wrap cover for 9 dollars, which turns this walkthrough into pure form-filling; see /how-it-works for the flow.

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