Building Your Author Business Without KDP

Is it possible to succeed as an Indie author without KDP?

By “succeed”, I mean being able to build an author brand and have a decent reader base.

The market certainly seems to be there, even without the 800 lb Amazon KDP gorilla.

This is the concept of “going wide”, meaning you are not locked into the KDP ecosystem, where you have your books enrolled in KDP Select exclusively and cannot be published anywhere else (even your own author website).

Going wide gives you far greater exposure to international markets, many where Amazon doesn’t have a presence yet or where it’s not as trusted as the local booksellers (for example, there are 18 million readers of English language books in the Netherlands).

Sure, it may take longer to build your author brand this way, but it will be a solid foundation for a long-lasting career as an author of creative fiction.

You will also be better protected against over-reliance on any one entity for your income.

I learned the lesson the hard way. The more you rely on external platforms, the more vulnerable your income and business is. If everything you publish is on KDP Select, for example, then you are locked in to the KDP ecosystem and all your sales come from that one channel. You are dependent on Amazon and if they decide to disable or terminate your account for any reason (and there are plenty of horror stories where this has happened), your royalties immediately stop and your income and business are suddenly in jeopardy.

As the proverbial saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversification is important to protect your income streams and your author business.

The way to do this is to go wide, and in addition, to sell directly from your own storefront (your own website). As you build your reader base, your profits will increase and you will also protect yourself over reliance on external platforms.

The more control you exercise over your IP and sales channels, the stronger your business will be. I’m the long run, it will establish a solid foundation for your author brand and set you up for continued, long-term success as an author.