Amazon KDP Has Changed... THIS is What's Working in 2026

0:00 Amazon KDP has changed and what worked few years ago does not work the same way today. But don't worry, I'm not saying KDP is dead or that it got harder. I'm just saying that it is different now. KDP is still great and you just need to use strategies that still works now rather than what used to work years ago. People see KDP change, they panic, and they might call it dead. However, I've been doing Amazon KDP for over 10 years now, and I've watched this business change over three or four times now.

0:25 Every single time when the old strategy stopped working, people said, "Oh, it's over. Amazon KDP doesn't work anymore. But as we all know, that is not the case. There are more people making more money than ever with Amazon KDP right now than in the history of the business. So, in this video, I'll show you why and how KDP changed, what stopped working, and what is still working right now so that you can continue to crush it with this business. It doesn't matter if you're brand new or you already have multiple books up on Amazon. What I'm going to talk about in this video applies to both. So, let's get into it.

0:54 So, first I want to talk about why Amazon KDP changed. And there's basically one very clear reason and that's AI making a book. When I first started 10 years ago, this process used to take months. I literally have multiple books where it took 5 months, 6 months, even 7 months plus to create one book. Now it takes only days if not hours. So the barrier to entry basically disappeared. So way more people started publishing for this reason and most of them are pumping out garbage as fast as they can because people think in order to succeed in this business it is playing the volume game rather than the quality game. So because it's so easy to create books they're just pumping out as much as possible and that is the flood everyone's complaining about. If you read the comment section of any videos about Amazon KDP on YouTube, everyone's saying that oh people are just pumping out AI slop and flooding the market with junk. And although there is some truth to that, it's actually not a big issue which you would understand if you understand how the Amazon algorithm works. But anyways, the main thing is to understand that this is not an Amazon KDP problem. This is literally a every single business model in the entire world problem, right? Every single business got flooded for the exact same reason of AI lowering the barrier.

2:04 Agencies, ecom, freelancing, courses, YouTube, all of it. AI lowered the barrier everywhere, not just with Amazon KDP. So if your plan is to leave KDP for some other business because you think for whatever reason this specific issue is only happening in the KDP space and if you go to the other side, grass is always greener on the other side. So you think it's better, you go to another business, you will encounter the exact same thing. So now that we understand what happened, right? Let's talk about what stopped working because of that change. In my opinion, this is the biggest change. publishing a pile books that all look like everyone else's, that doesn't work anymore. So, if you're just simply ripping off the number one book in the niche, basically seeing, you know, the top seller in whatever topic you're trying to go into, and then just copying everything from the cover style to the title to the positioning, everything without having any unique angle for your book, that doesn't work either. And publishing your book and just waiting for Amazon to bring you sales, that never really worked before, even before AI anyways. But it definitely doesn't work now. Yes, Amazon puts your book in front of millions of shoppers and it handles payments, printing, shipping, and refunds.

3:08 Absolutely amazing stuff. Like, it's crazy how much Amazon does for us, but it doesn't market your book for you and it doesn't get your reviews, right? That part is yours. At least in the beginning, you know, once you do that yourself and the book starts picking up momentum, yes, Amazon will absolutely take over a good chunk of that, but you still have to get that started. So, a lot of people complain how Amazon KDP is too saturated and how you competing with thousands of books, right? But as I said earlier, if you understand the Amazon algorithm, you would understand that that is actually not true because even if there are 10,000 other books on your topic, you're not actually competing with all 10,000 of them. So, let's say there are 10,000 books in your niche, right? And people see that number in the Amazon search results, they see the 10,000 and they get discouraged and they quit before they even start. But once again, you're not competing with 10,000 books because almost all of them are terrible. Most of them, like a lot of people in the comment section complain about, are AI slop. Most of them have horrible covers. They have no reviews.

4:04 They have terrible title from people who don't understand how to title your book properly. And the good news is the way the Amazon algorithm works is that if your book is bad and if there's no buying signal from the customer, like the customers aren't buying it, the customers aren't reviewing it, Amazon will quickly drop your book to page 10, 20, page 100, basically way below page one. Most of the 10,000 books, literally like 9,980 books or so, most of them will just get dropped to page 100 or something. So again, you're not even competing in that area because you're not competing in this bottom of the barrel zone, right?

4:37 So your real competition is the 10 or 20 books that actually are pretty decent and they are ranking on page one. So whatever you see on page one, that's like 10 20 books, those are your real competition and that is it. So to summarize, you're not competing with 10,000 books, you're competing with 10 to 20 books. And if you simply create a book that's somewhat decent, you have a real chance of positioning yourself in page one. And this is how to actually be better, right? You just need a better book cover, high quality content that customers actually enjoy and leave a positive review. You want more reviews.

5:05 And this is the biggest one that people miss is that you need a unique angle/positioning, which brings me to how Amazon KDP is moving forward. Again, this is not a KDP thing, right? in every other business. If you do other businesses, you probably will relate to this a lot is that positioning will be more important than ever. So finding a unique angle for your book was always important, but it matters way more now because everyone is making the same book, right? AI is very good at recycling content as we all know. So if you just take, you know, your bestselling competitor and have AI just create a very similar book to that, then you're essentially going head-to-head with all of them. And if everything else is the same, like you got similar cover, title, positioning, everything once again, then the only difference a customer will see is a difference in reviews. And since your book is newer than the ones on page one that you're competing with, obviously you will have less reviews, which means you will lose. But if you come up with something a little bit different, right?

5:59 You're the first one in the spot, first one with the unique angle. That is much, much easier to win. Now, having less reviews doesn't matter as much anymore. So, let me show you some real examples of finding your unique angle so you can stand out. So there are three ways to find your angle. Number one is niching down by the audience. So that could be like writing a book on the same topic, but you're targeting a different reader.

6:20 Like instead of doing a normal Taichi book, you're doing Tai Chi for women. Or instead of doing normal yoga, you're doing yoga for seniors, right? So the topic already sells. We know that. But you're just making it for a specific person. The second way is to combine two proven topics. So you're taking two topics that both already sell on its own and you're putting them together. examples. Bold and easy coloring book sells extremely well. Halloween books sells extremely well. Bam. Put it together. Now you got bold and easy Halloween or like you know a lot of people do like the the creepy characters but they're kind of cute type of coloring book. That is what I'm talking about. Another example, murder mystery word search. So yeah, there's so many different ways to combine two topics.

6:58 The third way is using the same topic but you got a new method, right? So this is coming up with a completely different approach. Like the book topic is the same, but it has a totally different method or a different format. So you don't need a brand new idea to stand out. You just need a different way into an idea that already sells. Once again, here are some real examples. Okay, so instead of just doing a Taichi book, this book niched down to Taichi for seniors, niching down by the audience.

7:22 So this is example number one. And this book is probably doing $500 to $1,000 per month if you include all the formats. This is the example of combining two different profitable topics and coming up with a unique combination. So, this book is a murder mystery puzzle and it's number four currently in the entire Amazon store. And this book is doing 64 to $107,000 a month. It's crazy. It's blowing up on TikTok right now. And that's another reason why. By the way, don't try to rip this book off. Most likely, you'll get your book blocked because that's what's been happening. So, this is exactly why you don't want to just, you know, see what's working and just rip them off, right? You have to come up with your own unique angle. And this is a new method example. So, instead of doing just Taichi, we're doing Taichi walking for weight loss, right? So walking is the new method here. You know, there's also chair Tai Chi. So sitting on a chair and doing Taichi is the other method. So it's the same topic Taichi, same goal of weight loss. However, the method in between is different. So that's exactly what you want for every single one of your book. You always want to come up with a new angle because if you just create the same book as everyone else, you're going head-to-head with all of them. You need hundreds of reviews to compete because that's the only metric your customer will use to compare your books with others. you'll be competing on price and the buyer compares you side by side. However, if you introduce a new angle, something unique about your book, then now you're the first one in the spot. You need far fewer reviews, you set the price because no one else is competing with you, right? You can price your book high, it doesn't matter because the customer has nothing to compare you to. So, this is the biggest thing. A unique angle means you need much fewer reviews. And this is a part most people miss. If your book is basically the same as a top book, the buyer puts them side by side and they just pick based on how many reviews it has and what's the price. And nine times out of 10, you lose that because you're a brand new book. Most likely, you don't have any reviews or not a ton and you're competing against this book that's been established on Amazon for years. But if your book is the only one made for that specific reader, there's nothing to compare to and you can get away with way less reviews. So that's one big thing moving forward is that I think every single book needs a unique angle. And this is the second thing that I think will be very important moving forward with Amazon KDP and that is speed to market. So there are new niches and new angles popping up constantly now. And you have this limited amount of time after finding that topic or finding that new niche and jumping onto it and securing your spot and start, you know, getting a ton of sales and racking up a ton of reviews because you're getting sales. You have a very limited time. And this window is real. Once you miss it, it's going to be a lot harder to go into it because the first couple books that jumps on it and secure their spot picks up all the reviews and the rank before anyone else shows up. Now, it's not like you're guaranteed to secure your spot and no one can knock you off because of course, you know, like I said in point number one, if someone who publishes after you comes up with their unique angle that's way better than yours, then they carve out their own market and they can still make money, but that requires skills, right? It's a lot easier to jump on trends before anyone else. Like that's one of the fastest and easiest way to make money quick. So since it's so important to find a profitable topic and jump on it as quickly as possible, you can't really take a year to write one book anymore. That's way too slow.

10:23 But you also don't want to whip up a book so fast that the quality is horrible because then you'll get replaced very quickly after the second book shows up and the quality of that book is better than yours. So you want both, right? You want to be the first in a trending topic. Then you lock in your position because your book is high quality. This is a relationship you have to understand on fast versus good, right? If you're fast but you got a bad book, you're gonna get replaced by people who come after you. If you're slow and you have a good book, you just miss the window to jump on the trending topic. So, you need fast and good. You take the spot and you keep it. And this is why it's very important to learn AI because AI helps with speed. If everyone else is using AI and you're not, it's going to be really tough keeping up with others and jumping on hot trends before them because you're just not fast enough. And the whole goal with AI is to create better books faster. Although not everyone is following that, that's what it should be and that's exactly what we want. And if you're wondering how I constantly find new keywords that has extremely high demand with almost no competition, that's because I use a niche hunter tool by co-author.ai. So co-author is a software I built myself and I talk about it often on this channel. But we created one of the research feature that we have here called niche hunter. And what you can do here is literally to sort the entire Amazon bookstore and find books that matches whatever criteria you set. So let's say I only want to find self-published books only in the book category that is selling extremely well.

11:41 So that is 30,000 BSR or below, which usually means it's making thousands of dollars per month, but I don't want it to be super competitive. So let's say it has less than 10 reviews. So it's selling extremely well, but only less than 10 reviews, right? And if you hit search, literally within seconds, we have all these books that fits that exact criteria. This one, 300 train track logic puzzles for adults. This is my first time appearing train track logic puzzles. And I guarantee this is a new hot topic. I don't think this is a trademark topic either because it's just a generic phrase, train track logic. So obviously double check that. But I think this is going to be one of the new trends in the medium content space. So, this book only has seven reviews and yet it's at 562 in the BSR, making an estimated $18,000 almost $19,000 per month. In fact, when I go to Amazon and type in Train Track Logic Puzzles for adults, there's only 556 results, which if you understand Amazon KDP and you've been doing this for a while, you know that that is a really good number. And all the books on page one got very low amount of reviews, but every single one of them are selling extremely well. like eight reviews, 300 bucks per day. 34 reviews with a bad rating, hundreds of dollars per day. This one as well. This one, three reviews, 18,000 BSR. And I just found this within seconds. Not scripted. I did not know this keyword existed until just now. Right. So, that's how you can find new topics. Like even this one. This is a new bold and easy coloring book idea that's selling really well. Two reviews and it's making thousands of dollars per month. And it's just a bold and easy coloring book of nail arts. And from here you can click on the analyze competitive advantage and co-author will start analyzing this topic reading the reviews what people are complaining what people are liking in the reviews and is coming up with your unique positioning on how you can create your book to be different and better than what already exists on the market. And this is what we got. This is the more value angle. So it's train track logic and brain teasers. Now, it's 600 puzzles because it says, "While the competitor offers only 300 puzzles with standard solutions, this volume doubles the content to 600 train track puzzles and adds comprehensive step-by-step visual solving guides for every single grid size. Gives you the positioning angle, why it fits the market. High volume puzzle searchers actively filter for large or mega collections, which is true, right? That is the case. A lot of mega or super big jumbo puzzle books are selling really well on Amazon. This is a niche audience. So this is the large print train track logic and brain teasers for seniors right to boost memory and cognitive health. So this book adapts a popular train track puzzle format specifically for seniors utilizing high contrast draw and print grids and simplified jargon-free instructions to ensure frustration-free cognitive exercise. So now we're doing the niching down as well as combining two different topics that are profitable, right? Train track puzzle and the memory and brain boosting, you know, puzzle book, two topics combined.

14:27 And then the last one simple and faster. So daily train track logic and brain teasers in just 5 minutes a day. So so many angles and from here if you want to make any of these books you can click on this button. It will take you to the guided book flow and you can follow it step by step to create the book. So if you try to manually do this you're literally just scrolling through Amazon endlessly hoping you stumble upon a hot keyword that's going to take hours if not days. But with co-author it's seconds. So that's exactly how I do it.

14:51 If you want to check out co-author I'll leave a link in the description below. So, what I suggest you do if you're a beginner is you want to shotgun first and then build a series later. So, a lot of people hate on doing the shotgun method, but I think in the beginning you kind of have to do that, right? So, you want to test several ideas fast on what looks good and you need actual feedback. So, you want to see what actually sells and then once you have a winner out of the multiple books that you publish, you'll have one that's an outlier that's selling better than others. Then, you stick to that niche, right? You build the series around that winner. Another thing that's important moving forward to understand is AI is an assistant. It's not a replacement. So there are two ways people use AI at the moment, right? The people drowning right now are using AI as a replacement, completely replacing themselves and trying to build a KDP business. They prompt the AI software, they copy the content, they just paste it into Google Doc, and then they upload it to Amazon. And that's exactly the garbage that's flooding the market. And that's the 9,990 books that nobody buys that will just get dropped in the algorithm. The people winning right now use AI to do the slow parts a lot faster, right? accelerating the research process, outline, first draft, but they still pick the angle. They still set the quality bar. They still read the actual book and edit it before it goes up. So, same exact AI, completely different end results. Now, if you tried using Claude or Chad to write a full book, you probably have some experience on what happens after generating a few chapters.

16:09 It gets very repetitive over time. The voice gets inconsistent between sections, and when you finally read the whole book, it doesn't sound like an actual human wrote it. Generic AI creates short conversations really well. But writing a complete book with 100 plus pages is a completely different challenge. And that's exactly why we built co-author. Co-author is an AI tool built specifically for Amazon KDP by people who publish their own books on Amazon and makes real money doing it.

16:33 It's designed to create complete books so the tone stays consistent across every chapter. The structure connects to each section and the finished book reads like a real human wrote the whole thing. Links in the description if you want to check it out. So, the next strategy that's working really well is to create a better book and price it higher. Most people price their book at whatever everyone else is charging and then they never touch the price again. But if your book is generally better than what's on page one, you should be able to charge more for it. And a higher price changes the whole math on when you're running ads. If you have a higher price, you'll have a higher profit margin, which means you can bid higher on Amazon ads and still make money. And this is one of the best ways to start making money with KDP by simply making a better book and selling it for a higher price. So, we had one of our students, Dan, who was netting around $300 a month. But then his coach told him to raise his price from $9.99 to $19.99. So, that's a $10 increase in the book price when everyone else in his niche was down a $6.99 to $12.99. So, he priced his books significantly higher than everyone else.

17:31 And a few days later, his ad account ran dry, meaning he used up all his budget for ads for the month. He figured sales would slow down. Instead, the book held its rank and he made $1,244 net profit in a single day with zero ad spend. And that is just from one change of increasing the price. Another big change that I'm observing right now is that there are a lot more ways to market your book now. So book marketing used to be just one option running Amazon ads, right? It was paytoplay or you get nothing. But now you got Amazon ads, you have Tik Tok shop, you have organic social media like on YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok. There are multiple ways.

18:07 Organic social costs you time, right? It takes time and effort to post these videos, but not money. So, you can do it completely for free. So, that's a free traffic channel that did not exist for book publishers a few years ago. So, the barrier to entry in creating a book dropped, right? The cost of creating a book dropped significantly and the cost of marketing a book dropped as well. Like, it's basically free now if you want to do that route. As an example, one of her students, Heather, she's a 40-year-old mom of eight kids, which is absolutely incredible. and she joined about a year and a half ago. And this past June, her Tik Tok shop did $775,000 in sales, over 27,000 orders at about a 20% margin. And this is just on Tik Tok shop. There are a lot of spillover sales, a lot of extra traffic from her videos on Tik Tok, searching for her book on Amazon, and she's making a lot on Amazon organic sales as well.

18:57 So, this is her words, not mine. She says, "If a 40-year-old mom of eight kids can do this, you can, too." So, those are the new changes that I'm observing and how you should move forward. Now, I want to talk about what hasn't changed. First is people still buy books. That never changed. A good book in a real niche still sells same as it did 10 years ago. So, the book business is definitely not dying, right?

19:16 A lot of people say, "Oh, books are dying. Who reads books anymore?" They're just kind of projecting their own experience. But just because they don't read books, doesn't mean the whole world doesn't read books, right? Even like the blogging and SEO business, way older than Amazon KDP, by the way. You would think that business would be dead, but there are people still making a lot of money with SEO. Even outside of online business, right? The restaurant business as an example. This is the oldest, most crowded business there is, right? There are thousands of new restaurants open every single year and most of them close. However, the good ones, the ones that do it right, still fills up every single night and you make a lot of money. And nobody stands outside of packed restaurants saying the restaurant business is dead. Because the fact is, right, not even my opinion, this is facts right here. The numbers are going up. If you look at the Amazon KDP website, they always tell you how much the Amazon KDP author earnings are, right? Like total combined. And this number when I started was like literally 19 million or something like that. And over the years, month after month, this number has only gone up, never down. So this is still true. People still buy books. Good books still sells. Amazon still is the best place to sell books.

20:18 Although there are other ways like Tik Tok shop on the rise. So KDP is dead is an excuse, not facts. Most of the time when someone says KDP is dead or when someone says, you know, anything is dead, they're just looking for permission to not try because if it's truly dead, then they don't have to do the work, right? They don't have to spend the money. They don't have to spend the time to actually do this business and they can't fail if they don't try. And that's the real reason people are so scared of failing. So they find a reason to never start, right? If they actually try and fail, all of a sudden their ego is hurt. They have to admit that they couldn't do it. So they're just coping and they're just justifying their fear of taking action.

20:54 So if that's what you're doing, that's a choice that you're making, right? It has nothing to do with Amazon KDP. As an example, one of our students, Juan, spent a whole year watching his numbers go down. And he blamed competition. He blamed AI. He blamed everything outside of him. And this is his words, right? He says, "What I didn't do at first was look in the mirror. And then he did exactly that. His old books weren't good enough. So he rebuilt it with new brand, better covers, better positioning. and then he turned his business around. Now it's on the rise again. And he says what changed is just simply taking ownership.

21:25 So there are always going to be two types of people. Those who believe they can't, so they look for reasons why they can't do something. And those who believe they can, so they look for ways to do it. Every successful person looks for ways to succeed, not for reasons not even try. Change is constant, not just in KDP, but in life, right? Things are always changing. And you can either complain or just accept that this is life. Things are always going to change and adapt and keep going. Again, this isn't the first time KDP changed. This is like fourth or fifth time or maybe even more. So many people quit at every single one of these changes in the past.

21:57 But the ones killing it right now with this business are the ones who adapt and found a way to succeed despite the change. Now, if you're learning KDP from free YouTube videos, they can teach you what a good niche looks like, but they can't tell you if your niche is a good pick or look at your book and cover and tell you what's wrong. That's what Royalty Hero Fixes. It's my mentorship program for Amazon KDP. You get one-on-one coaching from coaches who are verified to have earned over $10,000 in a single month doing this business themselves. They look at your niche, your book, your cover, and tell you exactly what to do next. Over 2,300 people have gone through the program with a 4.8 average rating on Trustpilot.

22:33 If you want to see if our program is a good fit for you, you can book a free discovery call with the team. It's 30 minutes long, and you will walk away with a personal plan whether you join or not, plus a bonus just for showing up. the links in the description and the pin comment. So, to summarize everything, no KDP didn't get harder, it just got different. You want to focus on creating good books, learn AI so you can jump on trends faster. And if you can do that, you can do very well with this. If you enjoyed this video, if you want more videos like this where I go a little bit deeper into the KDP topic with real examples, then let me know in the comments. Comment the word unique to let me know that you made it and you watched it until the end. And if you have any questions, I'll answer it, too. But basically, these comments, likes, subscribe, those metrics will let me know to make more videos like that. So, if this video does well, I'll do more of that.