Amazon KDP Uploading Post Mortem

Welcome back.

I recently published my first book on Amazon, and this post is a straightforward project management style post-mortem of the process. So, if you’re thinking about publishing your first book, this is for you.

Overall, the process was smoother than I expected, but there were a few moments of confusion that would’ve been a lot less stressful with some advance warning. My hope is that by walking through my experience, new authors can avoid a few unnecessary surprises before they dive in themselves.

This isn't really a full fledged how-to—think of this as field notes from someone who just went first.

Basic Process

Getting your book live on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing is basically a three-step funnel if you think about it as account setup → upload → approval. First, you’ll need to make a KDP account. If you already have an Amazon account you can use it, but KDP will ask you to fill in the financial details so Amazon can pay you—bank routing info, tax info, all that—before you can actually hit publish. That part isn’t glamorous but it’s necessary for getting paid, so no complaints there.

Once your account is squared away, head to the Bookshelf in your KDP dashboard and click the + Create button to start a new title. You’ll walk through entering your book details (title, description, keywords, categories), upload your manuscript and cover files, choose formats (ebook, paperback, hardcover) and set pricing.

After you hit publish, Amazon will review your book—this usually takes several days before your book actually goes live in their store.

To make this smoother, have a quick pre-publish checklist ready: a fully edited book file, a compelling book description, a polished author bio (for your Author Central page), and the A+ content you want to add under “From the Publisher.” You can build A+ content while your waiting for the book to be approved, but you won’t be able to link it to your book until it has an ASIN and is live, so having it ready means one less scramble once your book drops.

This is a condensed overview, and there's tons of resources with more detail, but I wanted you to have a basic idea of what the process is so we're on the same page.

Successes

I made it through the process and published my first book. That alone felt like a small miracle.

And honestly, credit where it’s due: Amazon made it mostly painless. There were a few quirks and gotchas—which I’ll get into—but overall the experience was smoother than I expected. No major fires to put out. No late-night panic spirals.

I also managed to get all the extra pieces in place without too much friction. A+ content went live and actually looked the way it was supposed to. The About the Author section was filled out. My website got updated so the book officially existed in the real world. Everything was clean, consistent, and professional.

All told, it took about a day or two. Less time than I’d built up in my head—which was a nice surprise.

Challenges

The only real friction I ran into was on the financial side. Specifically, entering payment and tax information while using my company’s accounts. My publishing setup is an LLC—not an S-corp—and some of the language in the forms felt like it assumed you were either filing as an individual or a full-blown corporation.

Nothing was wrong, exactly. It was just unclear. A few fields used terminology that made me stop and think, “Wait… which version of myself are you asking about here?” I ended up bouncing around the internet more than once to make sure I wasn’t about to do something dumb.

To be fair, this is more a general tax-and-money confusion thing than an Amazon problem. But a little clearer guidance for small LLC publishers would’ve saved some head-scratching. Either way, I sorted it out, and everything’s working as intended.

Learnings and Warnings

Suggested Age

This one’s on me, but it’s worth calling out so you don’t make the same mistake.

During setup, I misunderstood the suggested age range option and selected 14–18+. The “18+” part threw me. I read it as, This book is for everyone… except kids under fourteen or so. The story has a few damn its and a fair amount of sword-swinging, but nothing wild. In my head, it sat in that comfortable middle ground—upper teens through adults. Think Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Clean fun, clear good versus evil, no grimdark soul-crushing.

That is not how Amazon interpreted it.

What Amazon seemed to hear was: If this book is intended for readers under eighteen, which group under eighteen is it for? By selecting 14–18, I effectively told the system to shelve it as Teen & Young Adult, complete with a 14–18 marker. Not at all what I intended. I blame the “18+” wording in the max field—it implies adulthood when it really doesn’t.

If you do this, don’t panic.

Once the book was live for a bit, I went back to my Bookshelf, hit the little three-dot menu, and chose Edit details. It’s the same three-page form you filled out originally. I simply set both the minimum and maximum age fields back to Select, saved, and republished.

It took a few hours to propagate. First the age range disappeared. Later, the book quietly slid out of Teen & Young Adult and back where it belonged—plain old Science Fiction & Fantasy.

No harm done. Just an easy thing to get wrong if you’re not careful.

About the Author and Other Author Metadata

This part took the most poking around—not because it’s hard, but because everything related to author info is a little… scattered.

Most of the pieces eventually make sense, but the one thing that genuinely stumped me was where the “About the Author” section actually lives. It’s not in KDP where you upload the book. It’s in Author Central, under the Books tab. Each book in that list has its own About the Author section tucked at the bottom. That’s also where you enter Editorial Reviews, which at the moment consist of my mom and two friends.

For completeness, there are actually two different “About the Author” areas that show up on your book’s product page. One appears down in the Editorial Reviews section (the one you control per book, mentioned above), and another appears further down the product page, next to your author photo. That second one eventually pulls from your Author Central bio, but for me it took a few days before it showed up. No idea why. I refreshed more than I’m proud of.

I’m not entirely sure why Amazon splits this information up the way it does, but I noticed other authors fill out both, so I followed suit.

Uploading the author image was another moment of quiet stress. The photo uploaded, then sat there with a spinning circle for nearly an hour. No error. No confirmation. Just spinning. Then—bam—it updated and propagated to the live book page.

So if you see that, don’t panic. It’s slow, not broken.

Time

Everything in this process takes a little longer than you expect—and not always in the ways Amazon warns you about.

Going live took a couple of days. Author Central data took about an hour to start showing up. A+ content warned it could take up to seven days, but in my case it appeared within a few hours. Fixing small mistakes or adjusting metadata? Same deal. You make the change, then you wait while it works its way through the system.

None of this is a problem as long as you plan for it.

What is a problem is creating artificial time pressure. Don’t schedule a launch party, email blast, or big announcement assuming everything will be instantly perfect. Give yourself a buffer week so when people land on your book page, it’s finished, polished, and actually represents what you meant to publish.

To Do in the Future

Once the initial setup is done, there isn’t much left inside Amazon that meaningfully lowers the friction for future releases. Author Central is created and linked. KDP is set. A+ content is understood. The next book will follow the same rails with far fewer surprises.

At this point, the real work moves outside Amazon.

The next hurdle is reviews—and that’s a slower, more human process than uploading files and filling out forms. That part is still unfolding for me, and it’s proving to be its own challenge. I’ll likely dig into that experience in a future post, once I’ve learned a few things the hard way.

Conclusion

If you’re standing on the edge of publishing your first book, hopefully this took a little of the mystery out of it. None of it is insurmountable—it just helps to know where the bumps are. I’ll share more as I keep learning, so feel free to check back for the next post.