You've written the story, the art is done, and there's one box left to tick: getting the book onto Amazon. For most self-publishers that means KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), Amazon's free platform where the majority of books actually get bought. The good news is that publishing is genuinely doable in an afternoon once your files are ready. The catch is that children's books carry a few extra rules, because they're image-heavy and usually printed in full color.
This guide walks the whole KDP journey for a picture book, from opening an account to a live listing, and cites Amazon's own help pages so you can trust every number. Where a figure is date-sensitive, we flag it "as of 2026" and point you at KDP's own calculator instead of guessing, because those numbers move.
One note on scope. This is the KDP-specific companion to our broader guide, how to self-publish a children's book, which covers writing, illustrating, ISBNs, and the other platforms. If you want the full picture, start there. If you're ready to publish on Amazon specifically, you're in the right place.
Step 1: Set up your KDP account
Go to kdp.amazon.com and sign in with your existing Amazon account, or make one. It's free to open a KDP account and free to publish; you don't pay anything up front, ever. Before you can be paid, KDP walks you through two setup pages: your tax information (an interview that produces the right tax form for your country) and your bank details for royalty deposits. Do these once and they apply to every book.
Once you're in, you'll land on your Bookshelf. Click "Create" and pick a format: Kindle eBook, Paperback, or Hardcover. Each is its own listing, but KDP links them together on the same Amazon product page so readers can switch between them. Most children's authors start with a paperback and add a Kindle edition after.
Step 2: Choose paperback, Kindle, or both
Decide early, because the two formats need different files.
Paperback (and hardcover) is what most people picture: a physical book a child can hold. KDP prints on demand, so a copy is only manufactured when someone orders it. There's no print run and no inventory in your garage. This is where most picture books sell.
Kindle eBook reaches readers instantly. For an illustrated children's book the format that matters is fixed-layout, which locks your text in place over full-page art (an ordinary reflowable ebook would scramble the layout). Amazon's Kindle Create tool prepares fixed-layout illustrated ebooks with text pop-ups, per KDP's fixed-layout help. (Amazon has since retired the older standalone Kids' Book Creator app; Kindle Create is the current path.)
For a first children's book, aim for both. Nail the print layout, and a fixed-layout ebook usually follows from the same art without much extra work.
Step 3: Prepare your interior file
This is the part that trips up first-time authors, because a folder of pretty images isn't yet a printable book. Print files have rules, and getting them wrong means muddy color, cut-off art, or a rejected upload. Using KDP's paperback specs as the reference:
- Pick your trim size first. Trim is the finished page dimensions, and it fixes the shape of every page, so choose before you finalize art. Picture books lean large and often square. KDP supports square trims like 8.25" x 8.25" and 8.5" x 8.5", plus larger sizes like 8" x 10" and 8.27" x 11.69" (A4), per KDP's trim size and bleed page.
- Add bleed if art runs to the edge. Any image that reaches the page edge has to extend 0.125" past the trim line on the top, bottom, and outside edges, so the cut never leaves a white sliver, per the same KDP bleed guidance. For most picture books, where art fills the page, you'll want full bleed.
- Respect the margins. KDP asks for outside margins of at least 0.375" when your book uses bleed, plus an inside (gutter) margin that grows with page count, per its trim and margin guidance. Keep text and faces away from the trim edge and the spine.
- Use 300 DPI images. KDP says images should be inserted "at a minimum resolution of 300 DPI" so art prints crisp instead of blocky, per its image quality help. Anything under 200 DPI is flagged as low resolution.
- Submit the interior as a print-ready PDF. Full-bleed picture-book interiors are uploaded as a single PDF with everything embedded.
This is exactly the seam where DIY tools show. If you build your book in Storybench, the trim is a one-time choice per book and every page inherits that shape, so you're not resizing art page by page (we wrote up how to think about it in choosing your page shape). You write the words; the AI only illustrates, keeping your cast looking like themselves on every page. When you're done it exports a print-ready PDF sized to your KDP trim, a fixed-layout EPUB, and per-page images, and runs a print-readiness check so you catch bleed and resolution problems before you upload. The details are in export formats.
Step 4: Prepare your cover
A paperback cover isn't just the front. It's a single wraparound file that spans back cover, spine, and front cover as one piece. KDP requires "a single PDF file that includes the back cover, spine, and front cover as one image," per its paperback cover help.
The tricky part is the spine, because its width depends on your page count and paper type. More pages means a wider spine, so you can't design the cover until the interior is final. KDP's free Cover Calculator (at kdp.amazon.com/cover-calculator) generates a template with the exact spine width and bleed once you enter your trim, page count, and paper, per the same cover guidance. Two details worth knowing: cover files also need 0.125" of bleed on the outer edges, and KDP only prints text on the spine for books over 79 pages. There's also a simple Cover Creator tool if you want to assemble a basic cover inside KDP.
A Kindle ebook is simpler: it just needs a single front-cover image, not a wrap. Storybench exports a computed cover wrap alongside your interior, so the spine math is handled from your real page count.
Step 5: Fill in the KDP details screen
Before you upload files, KDP asks for the book's information. This is what readers and Amazon's search see, so it's worth doing carefully.
- Title and subtitle. Your book's name, exactly as it should appear on the cover and the listing.
- Author and contributors. Add yourself as author, and credit an illustrator or editor if you have them.
- Description. The blurb on your product page. Remember the buyer is usually a grown-up choosing a gift, so speak to them: age range, the feeling, why a child will ask for it again.
- Keywords. KDP lets you enter "up to seven keywords or short phrases" that help readers find the book, per its keywords help. Think about how a parent searches: "bedtime story for toddlers," "picture book about kindness."
- Categories. You can select up to 3 categories that place your book on the right digital shelves, per KDP's categories help. Pick specific children's-book categories over broad ones.
The one decision people agonize over here is the ISBN. KDP will assign a free ISBN for your paperback or hardcover, but there's a catch: per KDP's ISBN help, "Free ISBNs from us can only be used on KDP. They cannot be used to publish outside of KDP." So if you'll only ever sell through Amazon, the free one is fine. If you plan to also list the same edition elsewhere (say through IngramSpark or Lulu for bookstores), buy your own ISBN instead so it travels across platforms. For a Kindle ebook, an ISBN is optional, per the same page. We walk through filling this in inside the app in book details and ISBN.
Step 6: Set your price and understand royalties
Here's the surprise that catches new authors: on print-on-demand you don't earn your cover price. You earn the cover price minus the printing cost, times a royalty rate. For full-color picture books, printing cost is the number to watch.
For paperbacks, per KDP's royalty help, you earn a 60% royalty on Amazon sales when your list price is $9.99 or higher, and 50% at $9.98 or below. The formula is (royalty rate x list price) minus printing cost. KDP's own worked example: a $15 book at 60% with $5.00 printing cost earns (0.60 x $15) minus $5.00, which is $4.00 per sale. Sales through Expanded Distribution pay a lower 40% rate.
Printing cost itself is a fixed charge plus a per-page charge, and color costs more than black ink, per KDP's printing cost page. Because those numbers depend on your exact trim, page count, and color choice, and because they change, don't guess: run your real specs through KDP's built-in Printing Cost & Royalty Calculator before you set a price. The practical upshot for picture books is that full color raises your break-even, so many authors price a color kids' book a little higher than a text-only paperback.
For Kindle ebooks, KDP offers a 35% or 70% royalty, and the 70% option is charged a small delivery cost based on file size (averaging about $0.06 per unit), per KDP's ebook royalty help. Fixed-layout picture-book files are image-heavy, so that delivery cost is worth checking against the 70% payout. We're deliberately not naming one "right" price here, because it depends entirely on your specs. Run your own numbers, then price so the book earns you something real while staying friendly to a parent buying a gift.
Step 7: Preview and publish
Don't skip the preview. KDP gives you an Online Previewer for ebooks and a Print Previewer for paperbacks, and the print tool "shows you what your paperback will look like before you publish it" and "checks for errors you need to fix before submitting," per KDP's preview help. Page through the whole book here. Watch for art that creeps into the gutter, low-resolution warnings, and anything cut off at the trim.
When it looks right, hit Publish. KDP reviews every submission. Per its publishing schedule help, "it takes 3 business days for your book (or update) to be Live on Amazon," and it can take up to 72 hours after that to show up in search results. So it's normal not to see your book the same day. Plan any launch around that window.
Step 8: After you publish
Publishing isn't the finish line; it's the start of the book's life on the shelf.
Reach beyond Amazon with Expanded Distribution. For paperbacks, KDP offers a free "Expanded Distribution" option that makes your book available to distributors "so booksellers and libraries can find your book and order it," per KDP's Expanded Distribution help. It's free to enroll, though it doesn't guarantee any store will actually stock you, and those sales earn the lower 40% rate. Many authors pair KDP for Amazon with a second platform for wider bookstore reach; we compare the routes in getting onto KDP and Lulu.
Update freely. You can go back and edit your description, keywords, categories, price, or even re-upload corrected files at any time from your Bookshelf. Each change goes through the same short review before it's live, so treat the first publish as a beginning you can improve, not a final exam.
Think in a series. The quiet superpower of a children's book is the next one. A reader who loves your character wants more of that character, and if your cast stays consistent from book to book, each new title lifts the ones before it. That's the whole reason to keep your characters reusable.
You're closer than it looks
Publishing a children's book on KDP comes down to eight steps: open a free account, choose your format, prepare a print-ready interior, build a wraparound cover, fill in the details screen, price it against the real royalty math, preview and publish, then tend it afterward. None of it requires a gatekeeper's yes, and every number above comes straight from Amazon's own help pages.
If the part that's really holding you back is making the book itself (the pages, the consistent cast, the print-ready files that KDP won't reject), that's exactly the gap we built Storybench to close. You write the story; we keep your characters looking like themselves on every page and hand you a print-ready PDF, a fixed-layout EPUB, and per-page images sized to your chosen trim.
The first book takes the longest. Start your first one whenever you're ready, and KDP will be waiting when your files are.