A finished book nobody can find is still a manuscript.
We prepare your title for Amazon KDP and IngramSpark — the accounts, the ISBN decision, the description, the keywords, the categories, the declarations and the price — and hand you a kit that turns the upload into copying and pasting.
Two platforms, two entirely different jobs.
Most authors are told to “publish on Amazon” and stop there. That reaches readers who already shop on Amazon. It does not reach a bookshop, a school, or a library — and for a great many books, that is where the readers are.
Most of our authors publish on both. The two are not competitors so much as two different doors, and the decisions that let you walk through both have to be made before you upload anything — not after.
Kindle Direct Publishing lists your paperback and ebook on the largest bookstore in the world and prints each copy when somebody orders it.
- Where it puts you: Amazon storefronts worldwide, in print and on Kindle.
- What it is good at: reach, speed, and a royalty rate that is hard to beat on direct sales.
- What it will not do: get your book onto a bookshop shelf or into a library catalogue. Bookshops rarely order from a competitor.
- The catch worth knowing: KDP will hand you a free ISBN. It is owned by Amazon and can only be used for copies sold through Amazon.
IngramSpark feeds the wholesale network that bookshops, schools and libraries actually order from, and prints on demand through the same infrastructure the trade already uses.
- Where it puts you: wholesale catalogues, retail and library ordering systems, and international distributors.
- What it is good at: making your book orderable by anyone in the trade without a special conversation.
- What it demands: an ISBN you own. It will not assign one to you.
- The decision it forces: a wholesale discount and a returns policy — two numbers that decide whether a shop is willing to stock you.
What each platform demands before it will take your book.
None of this is difficult. All of it stops the upload dead if it is missing, usually four screens in, at the exact moment you least want to go and find a routing number.
Amazon KDP
- Account
- A valid email and a KDP account in the name that should receive royalties.
- Tax interview
- Completed in full. For U.S. authors this generates a W-9 equivalent and needs a Social Security or EIN number.
- Bank details
- Routing and account numbers. KDP pays no royalties until this is connected.
- Interior file
- A print-ready PDF at your exact trim size, fonts embedded, bleed set correctly.
- Cover file
- One wraparound PDF — back, spine and front on a single flat sheet, spine width calculated from the final page count.
- Ebook file
- EPUB. Reflowable or fixed-layout depending on how illustrated the book is.
- Metadata
- Title, author, description, seven keyword phrases, two browse categories.
- Declarations
- An AI content declaration and an ISBN choice.
IngramSpark
- Account
- Plus a publisher name — the imprint that appears on the spine and in trade databases as publisher of record.
- Tax & banking
- Required before a title can be made available for distribution, not after.
- Your own ISBN
- Non-negotiable. IngramSpark will not assign one. In the U.S. these come from Bowker.
- Interior file
- The same print-ready PDF, which must pass an automated technical check.
- Cover file
- The wraparound PDF, matched to trim size and page count or it is rejected.
- BISAC codes
- The trade classification system — not Amazon browse categories. Different system, different codes.
- Descriptions
- Usually both a long and a short version, which flow into retailer and library catalogues.
- Discount & returns
- A wholesale discount percentage and a returns decision.
Everything above, written for your book, in one document.
The Platform Launch Kit is the deliverable. Every field either platform will ask you for, already written, already reasoned, ready to paste. You are not being handed a tutorial — you are being handed the answers.
What is inside
- 01Your book at a glance — how it reads, and who buys it
- 02Before you begin — accounts, tax, banking, and the ISBN decision
- 03Your files — what each one is and why it is built that way
- 04Amazon KDP, step by step, with the value for every field
- 05IngramSpark, step by step, with the value for every field
- 06Paste-ready values — descriptions, keywords, categories
- 07Pricing, royalties, wholesale discount and returns
- 08The AI content declaration, explained honestly
- 09After you publish — timelines and what to check
- 10The strategy in one paragraph
Every number in it — price, royalty, discount — is marked as an estimate to be confirmed against the live calculator on the day you upload. We will not print a royalty figure and let you discover it moved.
The Girl at Turn Three
Eight-year-old Maya goes to a college bike race to cheer for her cousin, watches his team fight back from a fumbled exchange, and goes home having decided she will race it herself one day.
How it reads: a children’s picture book for roughly ages 4–8 — a warm, event-driven sports story with a strong sense of place.
Your readers: families with a tie to the university and the town, households where cycling or collegiate tradition is part of life, and grandparents shopping for a regionally meaningful gift. School and public libraries in the region are a secondary buyer.
- university children’s bookAlumni parents and grandparents shopping for a child with a tie to the school type almost exactly this.
- college bike race book for kidsFamilies who have just attended the race want a way to share it with a young child.
- cycling picture book for young readersReaches the sport-interested audience beyond the regional fan base.
- midwest college town children’s storyRegional pride is a powerful purchase driver, and few children’s titles are rooted in this place.
- sports picture book about perseveranceTeachers and parents shopping for growth-mindset books search in these words.
- kids book about cheering for familyThe emotional centre of the story is a child cheering for someone she loves.
- college tradition book for childrenAlumni families introducing their children to the traditions they love.
These were built from what the manuscript is actually about and how readers in this space search — not from live search-volume data, which no one outside Amazon has. They spread across four distinct reader intents. Once the book has real sales history, revisit them.
The central event is a bicycle race, which makes cycling the most precise primary classification available. Family carries the emotional engine of the story. The broader sports code exists so the book still surfaces in catalogue searches where the cycling code is not browsed separately.
Amazon browse pathsBooks > Children’s Books > Sports & Outdoors
Books > Children’s Books > Growing Up & Facts of Life > Family Life
Confirm before you click. Amazon’s browse tree changes often. These paths reflect the right placement logic for this book, not a guaranteed live path — navigate the live tree at the time of upload.
The upload, field by field.
These are the fields each platform asks for, laid out the way they are asked. The wording and layout below are ours, not theirs — platforms redesign their dashboards constantly, and what matters is knowing what goes where before you log in.
Twelve screens, in order
KDP will not let you skip ahead, so the order matters. Confirm the tax interview and bank details first — ten minutes of housekeeping that otherwise interrupts you four screens deep. Then paperback before ebook: it is easier to complete print first and return to add the digital edition.
Everything marked in coral below is already written in your kit. You are copying, not composing.
Maya is eight years old and ready for the biggest day of her year… [full description, 240 words, in your kit]
Children’s Books > Growing Up & Facts of Life > Family Life
The trade record
What you type here does not just sit on one retailer’s page. It flows into wholesale catalogues and library databases, which means a typo becomes the permanent trade record for your book. This is the screen to slow down on.
Note the two fields at the bottom. They have nothing to do with Amazon and everything to do with whether a bookshop is willing to order you.
JUV013000 · Family / General
JUV032170 · Sports & Recreation / General
Four fields authors rush. Each one is expensive to get wrong.
These are not formalities. Two of them decide whether anyone ever finds your book, and two of them are legal statements you are making to a company that can remove your title.
Keywords
Amazon gives you seven phrases. They are not tags and they are not a summary — they are the search queries you are betting your book can be found by. A shopper types a phrase; the platform decides which books to show. Your seven phrases are your entire entry in that competition.
The mistake: using all seven on variations of the same idea, or repeating words already in your title, which wastes the field entirely. Spread them across genuinely different reader intents — the subject, the setting, the emotion, the occasion — so that four different kinds of shopper can arrive at the same book.
Categories and BISAC codes
A category is the shelf your book stands on. Amazon uses its own browse tree; the rest of the book trade uses BISAC codes, a standard classification system. They are different systems with different names for the same shelf, and a book set up for one is not set up for the other.
The mistake: choosing the biggest, most obvious category because it sounds important. A precise, smaller category means fewer competing titles and a real chance of visibility; the enormous one means being invisible in good company.
The AI content declaration
Amazon KDP asks you to declare whether your book contains AI-generated content, and it draws a real distinction: AI-generated means the content was produced by an AI tool, while AI-assisted means a human made the creative decisions and used AI as a support tool. It asks separately about text and about images.
This is a question only you can answer, because only you know how the manuscript and the cover were actually made. It is worth answering carefully rather than quickly: the declaration is a legal representation to the platform, and answering it inaccurately carries real risk to your listing.
Where it gets subtle: the answer for the text and the answer for the cover can legitimately differ. If a human designer drew your cover with traditional tools, that is a different answer from however the manuscript was produced — answer each part based on how that specific element was made.
Copyright, the ISBN, and whose book it is
Copyright in your book exists the moment you write it — you do not have to register anything for it to be yours. Registration is a separate step that strengthens what you can recover if somebody infringes it, and it is worth doing, but it is not what makes the book yours.
The ISBN is a different thing entirely, and this is where authors lose ground without noticing. An ISBN identifies a specific edition, and whoever owns the ISBN is listed as the publisher of record. Take the free platform-assigned ISBN and the platform is the publisher of record for that edition, and that number cannot travel with you to any other retailer.
The copyright page matters too. The notice, the edition line and the rights statement printed inside the book are the record a librarian, a rights buyer or a court looks at first. We set that page deliberately rather than pasting a template.
The ISBN decision, in one screen.
This is the one choice on the whole upload that you cannot quietly change later. It takes about ninety seconds to understand and it shapes where your book can be sold for the rest of its life.
Take the free ISBN
KDP will assign one at no cost. It is owned by Amazon and can only be used for copies sold through Amazon — it cannot list the same edition on IngramSpark or anywhere else.
For an author who genuinely only wants an Amazon listing, this is a sensible choice that costs nothing.
Buy your own
IngramSpark requires an author-owned ISBN for every title — it will not assign one. In the United States these come from Bowker at myidentifiers.com.
Buy at least one, then use that same number on KDP as well. One ISBN across both platforms creates a single unified record for your edition, and you are the publisher of record.
Bowker sells them singly or in packs, and the per-unit price drops sharply in a pack — worth knowing if there is any chance of a second book.
Print on demand is not a lesser kind of printing.
Both platforms print each copy as it is ordered, on industrial equipment, to specifications your files have to meet exactly. That is why the trim size, the bleed, the embedded fonts and the calculated spine width are not fussiness — they are the difference between a book that passes the automated check and one that comes back.
It is also why we tell you to order a physical proof before you approve anything. A screen preview cannot show you paper, ink density or how the colour actually landed — and for an illustrated book, those are the product.
What happens after you click publish.
Neither platform is instant, and the two run on different clocks. Knowing that in advance is the difference between waiting and worrying.
What we need from you.
Short list. Most of it you already have, and anything you do not, we will help you sort out on the first call.
Let us get your book on the shelf.
A free, no-obligation conversation. Bring the book and we will tell you what the platforms will need — and what they will not.