I understand your frustrations on having to wait for a long time before you can get your royalties. Learn about the reasons why KDP is implementing this rule and how you can get royalties faster on KDP.
Before I answer the question on how to get royalties faster on KDP, there are three answers to this question. I wanted to let you know that the third answer to this question is something.
It's a secret you're not going to want to miss. That's going to make this question somewhat less relevant.
Let's get into it. So, the question that was sent to me was, can I get my royalties faster on KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing?
This is an excellent question. Many publishers, when they first start getting publishing, they discover something that can be quite annoying.
It is that you have created your book, you have put it into a sale, you may be run ads against it, and you start seeing sales coming in. You even can see how much money you are making from those sales.
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But the problem of course is that, well, wait for a second, why is my money not transferring to my bank account? Why am I having to wait a really long time for that?
Well, this is an excellent question and everyone, including myself, have had this question from time to time. When it comes to earning royalties and then the long wait to get the money into our bank account which is sort of the whole point of selling the books in the first place.
But before I get into the three answers, you can check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist that will get you started on your journey. To not just creating your self-published book but also making sales on it. So, that's something you are not going to want to miss.
Now, let's get into it. So my story, when I first started, I also created my first book. I made sure everything was correct.
I even had set up a webpage. I was creating a blog. There was a whole series of things I was doing.
I got the right cover in place. I was putting it on to Amazon on to KDP. And that exciting day after it had been on sale for just a little bit, I saw my first sale come through.
You'll Get The Hang Of It
It was very exciting and I saw, I think even when somebody had read some pages or think about at that time, they pay you for a download. And you could see, oh look, a few cents was coming through.
A few pennies, nothing particularly special to talk about but I was seeing my first sales coming through and I thought, wow, this is fantastic. But where's the money?
I mean I had set up my bank account, I had everything in place but the money wasn't coming through. So I was like, wait, something's wrong here. Because I have earned the money, so why is Amazon not paying me the money?
Why are they keeping the money that I have earned? The answer was, something that was a little bit dismaying in the beginning. It was that well, they have a waiting period.
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You are going to have to wait a couple of months before you get the money. So I waited that period, I used up all the money that I had dedicated for self-publishing.
The idea I had was, well, you earned the money and then you reinvest the money back into your self-publishing business. So that would give me more money to create the next books that I would be doing.
But the money hadn't come in yet. So I had to wait a couple of months and it came through. After a while, I began to get the hang of it.
So let's get into the exact three answers on how to get royalties faster on KDP? The first is on KDP, it will take you 60 days. In some of the publishing places where I publish my books, it can take 90 to 100 days before I see the money coming through.
It is because they give people the ability to return books. They give people all sorts of flexibility. They themselves want to make sure that everything is in order.
Cash Reserve Is A Must-Have
In the case of KDP if they have to see irregularities in the account. They can freeze those royalties to ensure that you will never see them. So that's the reason why it's a good idea to generally follow the rules that Amazon puts forward.
It takes 60 days for your normal sales and for the extended sales, those are outside of the Amazon network, it can take up to 90 days. You may be thinking well, maybe you should go with somebody else. Somebody who might pay a little bit faster.
The problem is nobody pays faster. Amazon is the fastest. So you are not going to do any better no matter where else you decide to try to go about doing this.
Another thing to remember is there is no way to speed this process up. So, no matter how fast you would like to see that, you can send messages to them but they will not pay you any faster. So you are just going to have to live with that rate.
Now, let's get into the speed at which they go. Let's get into the third answer which is a secret that many people are not thoroughly thinking. It is that you don't want to be living from royalty to royalty like a paycheck to paycheck.
You are going to want to make sure that you are creating a cash reserve in your bank account so that you aren't waiting for the money to come in. So you are not sitting there, sweating for 60 to 90 days for that money to come in.
Instead, you are going to save up money. So you are using that money and living off of the previous month's royalties. You start building up this backlog ideally 6 months to 1 year's worth of royalties.
You would have this pile of cash that gives you both flexibility if something goes wrong. At the same time, it gives you the ability if something goes wrong, you've got that. Also for the money you are going to live off of, you can also use that same money with those royalties.
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So, that's something that a lot of publishers realized. But when you first get started, this is a secret you don't want to forget.
What have you found? Do you save up money for this? Do you find it frustrating having to wait 60 days for the money? Or do you know other ways on how to get royalties faster on KDP?
Go ahead and let me know and check out my other blogs and videos that are like this one that answers your self-publishing questions.