A KDP account can create 2 new titles per format each week and submit 2 for publication, and Kindle+, the subscription formerly called Kindle Unlimited, pays authors for audiobook listening as well as reading.
How Many Books Can You Publish on KDP a Week?
Two a week in each format, under two separate caps, one on creating titles and one on submitting them. Under KDP's rules for creating a book:
- Creating 2 titles and submitting 2 others in the same week is allowed.
- Ebook, paperback and hardcover each have their own allowance, so a paperback and its hardcover edition never compete for the same slot.
- Saving a draft uses a creation slot. Its first submission uses a submission slot, even if you created it in an earlier week.
- Edits to a title you've already submitted (a new cover, interior, price or description) don't count against either limit.
- Both limits reset every Sunday at 12:00 AM UTC. In the US that's Saturday evening: 7:00 PM Eastern and 4:00 PM Pacific, an hour later while daylight saving time is on.
Books you've already published aren't affected. If you hit the limit, the only option KDP gives is to wait for the reset.
Who the limit affects, and how to spend the slots
The limit bites when you publish many short books, as low-content publishers do, or translations, since each translation is a new title. At 2 paperbacks a week, a year has 104 slots, and these habits keep them for books that sell:
- Check demand before you build a book. With 2 paperback slots a week, a niche nobody buys from costs you half a week's output. Run the bestseller rank of the top books in a niche through the Niche Report before you make the interior.
- Set a book up in KDP only once its files are ready to submit. Then each creation slot turns into a submitted book the same week.
- Stagger a series. Five books in one format take three weeks to create. Space the release dates out rather than holding everything for one launch day.
- Improve a live book instead of re-creating it. A new title for the same book costs a slot and starts with no reviews.
Audiobooks in Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited)
Kindle+ includes audiobooks for customers on Amazon.com, so a subscriber can read a book, listen to it, or switch between the two at no extra cost. KDP Select works as before: you enroll an ebook for 90 days, and that puts it in the subscription.
Two kinds of audiobook qualify:
- Audiobooks with virtual voice. If the ebook is enrolled in KDP Select, its virtual voice audiobook joins Kindle+ and the Audible Plus catalog without any action from you. Making one with Kindle Virtual Voice is free while the tool is in its invite-only beta.
- ACX audiobooks. You can enroll them from your KDP Bookshelf if they meet the terms on the KDP Select enrollment page: exclusive distribution through Audible, the Pay for Production model, Whispersync for Voice (Read & Listen) turned on, and the matching ebook enrolled.
An author in any country can enroll an eligible audiobook, which is then offered to US subscribers.
How listening is paid
Kindle+ pays by KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages), Amazon's standard page count, and listening is counted in the same pages out of the same KDP Select Global Fund.
KDP's rules on royalties in Kindle+ stop one page from being paid twice:
- A page pays once per subscriber, the first time they read it or hear it. Reading a chapter after listening to it pays nothing more.
- If someone reads and listens at the same time (Immersive Reading) and the two formats have different rates, you get the higher rate.
- The KENP report shows pages read and pages listened on separate lines. The Prior Month's Royalties report adds them up in one Kindle+ total.
Amazon hasn't said whether a listened page earns the same as a read one, only that the fund will change as it learns how people use each format. Each month's earnings appear the following month, once that month's fund is announced. Until Amazon publishes a separate listening rate, estimate with the reading rate in the KENP calculator and treat the result as a rough guide.
Add a virtual voice audiobook if your ebook is in KDP Select
If you've got a beta invitation, make the virtual voice edition as soon as the ebook is enrolled. An ebook on sale in other stores has to come down from them before it can enroll, because KDP Select needs the ebook to be exclusive to Amazon. Print editions can still be sold anywhere.
