The Self-Publishing Checklist Before You Hit Publish on KDP
Publishing a book on Amazon KDP takes about five minutes once you know the process. That speed is a feature — and occasionally a trap. It's easy to push something live before it's ready, realize the problem a few days later, and watch your early sales window drain while you fix it.
The publishers who build reliable catalogs treat publishing as a checklist, not a feeling. Before you hit that button, here's what needs to be in order.
Interior File
Your interior PDF is the foundation. Problems here cause rejections or, worse, approvals that result in books that look wrong when printed. Check these before uploading:
Trim size matches what you set in KDP (common sizes: 6x9, 8.5x11, 5x8)
Bleed set correctly if you have full-bleed pages — 0.125" on all sides
Margins inside the safe zone — at least 0.375" on all sides, wider on the gutter
Page count meets Amazon's minimum (24 pages for paperback)
Fonts embedded — PDF should embed all fonts or Amazon will reject it
No color if publishing black and white — check with a grayscale preview
Use Amazon's print previewer in KDP before approving. It shows exactly how your book will look. Most formatting problems are visible here if you actually scroll through it.
Cover
Your cover is the most important element for conversion on Amazon. Buyers make snap judgments. A cover that looks homemade compared to competing titles costs you sales regardless of how good the interior is.
Resolution at least 300 DPI — anything lower will look soft in print
Spine width matches your page count and paper type — use Amazon's spine calculator
Title and author name readable at thumbnail size (this is how most buyers will see it first)
Genre signals clearly visible — your cover should look at home next to bestsellers in your category
No placeholder text left in — check the back cover and spine carefully
Metadata
Metadata is what Amazon uses to figure out where to put your book and who to show it to. Getting it wrong means your book ends up in front of the wrong people — or nobody at all.
Title and subtitle — include your primary keyword in a way that sounds natural, not stuffed
Keywords — you get 7 keyword fields. Use all of them. Research actual search terms, not what you think buyers are searching.
Categories — choose two. Look at which categories your top competing books are listed in. Smaller, niche categories give new books a better shot at ranking.
Description — this is your sales copy. Write it last, after everything else is locked in.
One thing worth knowing about KDP categories: you can request additional categories through KDP support after publishing. Most publishers don't know this. It's a legitimate way to appear in more places without changing anything about your book.
Pricing
KDP calculates your royalty based on list price and printing cost. For paperbacks, you earn 60% of the list price minus printing cost. For ebooks, the split is either 35% or 70% depending on pricing thresholds.
Check your royalty estimate in KDP before publishing — this is visible in the pricing tab
Price at or slightly below competing books in your category unless you have a clear reason to charge more
Don't underprice to get sales — it rarely works and just cuts your margin
Proofing
Order a proof copy before you mark any book as live for the first time, especially activity or puzzle books. What looks fine on screen can print differently. Puzzle grids, answer keys, tight margins — these are all things that print previews don't always catch.
A proof costs a few dollars. Selling 50 copies of a book with a formatting error you then have to pull costs more — in refunds, in reviews, and in the time it takes to fix and relaunch.
Before You Scale
The process of building a KDP catalog gets faster as you standardize it. Use templates for your interiors, a consistent cover structure, and a repeatable keyword research process so each new book takes less time than the last.
Tools like BookGenie.io compress the interior production step significantly — puzzle books that would take days to build manually generate in minutes. That time savings is most valuable when you're trying to maintain a consistent publishing pace without cutting corners on the parts that matter.
Final Thoughts
Publishing on KDP is fast enough that the temptation to skip steps is always there. Most of these steps take less than five minutes each. The ones that take longer — proofing, writing the description, researching keywords — are the ones that actually determine whether your book earns anything.
Run the checklist every time, even for your tenth book. The publishers who build stable income from KDP are the ones who treat each title like it matters, because compounded over a catalog, it does.