Unlock the secrets of earning through Kindle Direct Publishing! Discover realistic timelines and expert tips to profit faster
The time it takes to publish a book might take weeks or years, but the question on everyone’s mind is…how quickly can you start making money?
The short answer is that you can start making book sales the same day your book goes live on Amazon KDP. The longer answer regarding when you’ll actually see that money and how much you can get is a little more complicated.
Keep reading for the not-so-secret formula for small tweaks that make a big difference in book sales and how to maximize the royalties you earn.
Note: If you want to save time and earn money quicker, you need to follow a proven system. Sign up for our webinar where we'll take you by the hand and show you a process hundreds of our students are using to earn money online every month through book royalties.
Amazon KDP pays publishers that hit their minimum royalty threshold every month, with a slight caveat. Royalties are paid about 60 days after the month the book sales are reported. So, if you hit your royalty threshold in January, you'll get paid those royalties by the end of March.
For books enrolled in Expanded Distribution, it takes a bit longer—around 90 days.
In other words, you might not see a paycheck for your book until a few weeks after the fact, but publishing is all about the long game. As long as you’re consistent, those royalties can keep rolling in on a steady basis.
Amazon KDP keeps things simple when it comes to payments. Your royalties will be sent directly to your bank account via electronic funds transfer (EFT) or by check, depending on your location and preferences.
Just set up your payment method in your KDP account settings, and you’re good to go.
If something changes, like moving to a new location or opening a new business bank account, you can go to the settings panel and update it as needed.
Even the bestselling publishers know what it’s like to obsessively refresh the KDP dashboard, hoping to see more book sales. It can be really disheartening when there aren’t as many people buying your book as you expected.
Although there’s never any guarantee that a book will sell, here are some ways we teach our students to get out of a rut:
Change Your Book Cover
Revise Your Marketing Plan
Make Sure You Have Solid Amazon A+ Content
Experiment with Pricing
Bundle Your Books
Update and/or Re-Release
Here’s a riddle: What beginner-friendly self-publishing course has already helped tens of thousands of students earn millions of dollars in royalties and consistently earns a Trustpilot score of 4.7/5 stars?
That’s easy. It’s the AI Publishing Academy, or AIA for short.
Contrary to popular belief, publishing can’t be fully automated, and we’ve never advocated for that, either. Readers are looking for a human touch and human emotions that they can connect to.
The right systems and processes can cut the time and cost it takes to self-publish a quality manuscript by at least half (if not more). We show you how to do this with a proven A-Z step-by-step process.
Learning Amazon ads from someone who’s actually dealt with them before makes sense, right? Of course, it’s a lot better to learn from someone who hasn’t just run thousands of ads but actually profited over half a million dollars from them.
Brian is just one of the dozens of experts within our AIA community who also started out as a student himself:
Our growing Facebook community of 40k AIA students and coaches is always on standby for a little extra motivation, support, and troubleshooting. Many have been self-publishing for years and love dishing out the industry secrets they wish they had known at the start of their digital publishing careers.
The majority of our AIA coaches were students themselves, including Mel, who recently just accepted a promotion. In this interview, she gets real about how much her books are earning and the importance of routine:
The AIA modules are filled with quick-start templates, guides, and prompts to make every step of the publishing process as digestible and easy to understand as possible.
You can dig into everything at your own pace, and you can also rest easy knowing the course is updated regularly.
A ghostwriter, editor, and designer aren’t in everyone’s budget.
It’s why we’re building a first-of-its-kind AI publishing copilot that helps you create quality book outlines, competitor research reports, and even first-draft manuscripts at a much more reasonable price point.
Access is currently limited to AIA community members, so if you value being an early adopter of industry-leading tech, this is the ticket.
If a course sounds like too much commitment and you just want to learn more about this business model in general, we’ve also got you covered with our 100% no-cost publishing training.
Wondering how quickly you can start selling on Amazon KDP?
It varies from publisher to publisher, but here are seven factors that can speed things up:
There’s technically no limit to how much money you can make selling your book on Amazon KDP.
There are plenty of books earning well over six figures per year right now, which you can find with tools like KDSpy.
Realistically, you shouldn’t bank on every book being a bestseller, but you don’t even have to be a bestseller to make decent money. Making $500 per book and publishing 6 books would put you in a pretty good spot, for example.
These things can influence your earnings:
Publishing is a roller coaster of emotions. One day, you’re feeling on top of the world, and the next day, you’re not even sure what you’re doing.
But here’s a little secret: Most of us in the industry have felt like that.
Sure, there will be challenges—tweaking your cover design, experimenting with pricing, or revamping your marketing strategy. But each challenge is a stepping stone in your publishing journey that you can use as fuel for all your future works.
Don’t stress about immediate sales. Enjoy the ride! Celebrate milestones, learn from setbacks, and keep pushing forward. You’ve got wisdom, experience, and passion to share that can make a real difference in other people’s lives.
Great stories take time, and at the end of the day, this is just the beginning of how publishing can shape your life.
You just have to be willing to see how the next chapter plays out.