Before I became a freelancer, I started off my online writing career by writing ebooks and publishing them on Amazon. But can you still make money doing it, and is it still worth publishing on Kindle today?

Is Kindle Publishing Still Worth It? Self-publishing on Amazon isn’t a get rich quick scheme, but it’s still a great opportunity to earn an honest living if you’re willing to put in the work. If you plan to publish a book anyway, I think Amazon KDP is the natural platform that all authors should use.

In this article, I’ll give my take on whether Kindle publishing is still worth it.

Is Kindle Publishing Still Worth It?

I got my start by publishing short (around 10,000 word) non-fiction ebooks on Amazon Kindle.

The days of easy money publishing on Kindle is gone. In the sense that Amazon has fixed a lot of loopholes that less ethical writers were using to sell tons of copies of their work.

It’s still possible to succeed self-publishing on Kindle today. But you’ll need great content to make it work, and it’s not a get-rich quick scheme.

My Amazon Kindle Publishing Story

I ended up giving up on publishing books for Kindle pretty quickly. I wrote about a dozen books of varying quality before moving on to freelancing.

Freelancing just seemed like the more profitable and steady stream of income at the time.

To date, I’ve earned about $2,000 from all of the books that I published. And I still get about $30 to $50 in royalties coming in each month from work that I did two years ago.

So publishing on Kindle is nice in the sense that it’s a truly passive form of income. Although it’s unlikely that you’ll make entire passive income from your Kindle ebooks to retire from, or even replace a sizeable portion of your income.

Would I Still Recommend Self-Publishing on Amazon Kindle Today?

If I could go back in time, I wish that I would have put more work into publishing on Amazon a few years ago when I was just getting started.

If I really buckled down and treated self-publishing as a full-time job for a year, I probably could’ve written 50 or more high-quality books that would be making a sizeable income to this day. Although with publishing it’s more risky, and you never know whether a book will sell well, or not sell a single copy.

But if I suddenly found myself unable to find more freelancing work any more, even today I’d still consider going back to publishing on Amazon KDP.

Personally I think creating blogs and niche sites would probably be more profitable. But I think there’s still a great market for people self-publishing Kindle ebooks too.

Amazon is still great as a publishing platform. But its affiliate program has really taken a hit in recent times. Read my article Amazon DESTROYS Affiliate Commissions: Alternatives To Consider to learn more.

Getting Started With Kindle Publishing

Uploading your book to Amazon KDP and putting it on sale is an easier process than most people think. You can do most of it in an afternoon, even the first time you try.

Amazon is a bit limited in that to get a 70% royalty rate, you’ll need to list your book between $2.99 and $9.99. If you go higher or lower than that range, your royalties will drop to 30% or less.

If you are going to publish on Amazon, I also recommend enrolling in the KDP Select program. You have to enroll for 90 days a time, but you can always cancel before the next period starts if you want to withdraw.

The KDP Select program allows Amazon to lend your book out to people in the Kindle Unlimited program. Instead of selling copies of your book, you earn money based on pageviews and how much of your book gets read.

You also get access to expanded distribution, meaning that you can even get your book in bookstores. When bookstores and bigger companies buy your book in bulk, you earn less, but they also may buy 10 or 15 copies at once.

I would recommend you start off by offering your books free or on sale for a reduced price for the first five days to boost initial sales. You can also use Amazon’s advertising to increase your sales, but it could be risky and you could lose money that way.

Don’t forget to make your ebook available in paperback and audiobook format too. It’s a great way to get some extra sales. Plus how cool is the idea of someone actually holding a physical copy of your book?

So Do I Recommend Kindle Publishing In 2020? Is It Still Worth It?

Self-publishing on Amazon is free, easy to set up, and gets your book out to one of the largest possible markets. So I still think it’s the best choice for self-publishing, even to this day.

I also think that publishing ebooks is one of the best ways to get started in online business. Once you earn your first $1, it really shows you that it’s possible to make money online or from your writing, and it motivates you to invest even more time and energy into it.

Why I Stopped Publishing On Amazon

Freelance writing or self-publishing books are both potential ways to earn a living as a writer.

I made the switch to freelance writing for one main reason.

With freelance writing, I usually earn about $50 per hour for the time that I actually spend writing. And I get paid for it within the same month. In fact, most of my clients pay me the next day after I send them an invoice.

Publishing on Amazon is much more of a long-term game. You won’t get any payouts for the first 90 days. And even once those 90 days have passed, your sales will likely trickle in slowly over months or years.

Your book might have a huge launch where you sell lots of initial copies. But that requires a lot of marketing and other effort. For someone just getting started, you probably won’t be able to afford that. So you’ll just have to put your book out there and cross your fingers that it does well.

So while the passive income from self-publishing is pretty nice, it’s a bit of a gamble as to how much you’ll make a few years from now. Most books gradually taper off and stop selling over time.

That’s not to say that I’m completely done with self-publishing on Amazon and Kindle. I plan to publish a novel using Amazon KDP at some point in the near future. I’ll be sure to actually market it and do everything else needed to maximize its chances of success. But I don’t plan to going back to writing non-fiction ebooks again any time soon.

Conclusion

Amazon has closed a lot of the loopholes that made self-publishing Kindle ebooks very profitable in the past. That’s not to say that there’s no money left to be made though.

I still think you could earn a decent living by publishing ebooks on Amazon if you know what you’re doing. I know of several authors who are doing just that. Both in the non-fiction and also the fiction spaces.

Self-publishing on Amazon is a great way to earn money online, especially if you’re just getting started. Selling the first copy of your book will motivate you and show you that writing can actually be profitable.