Why publish on KDP? There's a lot of Print on Demand services out there, but there are only two that launch your products directly to Amazon.com where you can benefit from the 300 million active shoppers who browse and buy from the platform regularly. One is Merch by Amazon, the t-shirt platform that gets all the attention. The other is Kindle Direct Publishing (now also incorporating Amazon’s previous platform, CreateSpace.) KDP is best known as a platform for authors and writers, but really, it’s a potential goldmine for all kinds of product creators, no matter how you feel about writing. Our KDP paperback books are consistently outselling our Merch T-Shirts and many of them have no words in them at all! Switching from Merch? We understand why Merch has found such popularity. It's an easy platform and t-shirts are sexy - you upload a t-shirt design, write a few bullets and you're done. It's passive income as Amazon print and ship each shirt sold, paying you the royalties each time. But our community report that it is also beset with challenges, from heavy competition to trademark trolling to possible throttling... not to mention a long waiting period for approval.

KDP Has no waiting period for approval

Has a similar POD model to Merch - you upload the book files, Amazon handles the printing and shipping and then pays you a royalty.

Is a blue ocean of opportunity. There aren't many sellers and there are a wealth of 'gaps' to fill.

Does not have any serious issues with copycats or trademark trolls

Has sensible enforcement of copyright and trademark issues

Does not throttle the visibility or shipping options of your books

Rarely issues performance warnings or removes sellers (without good reason)

Is way easier than you think Switching from Bookselling? Many second hand booksellers are also jumping in the deep end with KDP. Why? Well, booksellers understand the market. You guys know that unusual books are sought after and can command high prices. Hours of scanning have given you an insight into the niches people search for and an understanding of the keywords that sell. With KDP, instead of spending hours sourcing and scanning for those books at sales, you can make your own - and have an unlimited supply of them in your inventory for free. For example, if you regularly source car maintenance books, what about creating a log book for mechanics? If you regularly sell books about health conditions, what about creating a simple diary for people who have health conditions, so they can log their weight, blood sugar, sleep habits and so on? KDP books are listed on Amazon in the book category, right alongside all the other books you sell… but YOU control the listing and set the price.

So what's stopping you from selling on KDP? We asked our community and we heard that you felt that books were complicated and slow to create. Some of you mentioned it was difficult to come up with ideas. Well, we'd like to solve that for you right now. We've been using templates to create KDP books rapidly, which means we can take a book from idea to upload in minutes. Take one of our templates, add a cover image and brief description and your book can be on sale the next day. We have opened up our templates so that you can do the same thing and create composition books, journals, planners, sheet music books or even gaming or 3D printer paper rapidly. Just select a template style, book size, page count and hit the button and your ready to upload book interior PDF is generated.

Imagine all the designs you would have loved on your composition book as a kid - now you can make it a reality! Political slogans, cute animals, robots, cupcakes...

These templates are incredibly flexible. Take squared graph paper as an example. Sure you can make quad rule graph books for school, but if you switch out the cover, it could be a book for Granny to plan out her knitting patterns or for an occupational therapist to teach handwriting skills. The only limit here is your imagination. And what about guitar tabs or sheet music? Why hasn't anyone made a guitar tab composition book just for girls yet? And that death metal guy isn't going to want to write out his tabs on a book with an acoustic guitar on the cover. Use the same interior but throw in some skulls!

Now think of all the things you can do with hexagonal grid paper. Roleplay game maps, craft patterns, floor planning or tiling designs. Our system now includes 40 of these ‘static’ template styles, with more planned. These include story paper, dot grids for bullet journal fans and isometric graph paper which is huge in the 3D printing world. They also include calligraphy paper, spellbook paper, church sermon logs, ukelele tabs, comic book pages and even shorthand notepaper… and many more! With these templates, you can create hundreds of books quickly and easily. The only limit is your imagination. Not only that, Tangent Templates includes a Template Builder tool which allows you to easily mix and match templates in your interior. Alternate sheet music tabs with writing pages and you can create a ‘Music and Lyrics’ book. Or create an activity book for kids by mixing story paper, sketch paper and comic book paper.

Testimonials

New! Dynamic Templates including Planners and Prompt Books In September, we added twelve additional ‘dynamic’ template styles to the mix for planners and prompts. The planner templates allow you to generate customized planners for any date range you choose, while the prompt templates allow you to upload a list of prompts, quotes, questions or inspirational messages and then generate a prompt book from them in seconds.

Tangent Templates is a standalone system that gives you: 40 Static Templates. That’s 40 different Styles of paper in ready to upload PDF format - the complete interior of your book done. Just add a cover design and description.

12 Dynamic Templates including 4 customizable planner styles to create weekly or daily planners for the date range you choose and 8 prompt styles to create guided journals, workbooks, 365 books or prompt books. Simply upload your prompts and let Tangent instantly generate your book interior.

Template Builder tool to mix and match our 40 static templates into your own layout. Want writing paper and sheet music for a ‘Music and Lyrics’ composition book? You can make it in a minute with the Builder.

All the templates are available in the 15 standard book sizes supported by CreateSpace and KDP, including the square and landscape formats.

For more advanced users, the static templates are also available in editable files for Adobe Illustrator and InDesign

Templates can also be imported into Powerpoint and Keynote for easy customization.

28 different cover panels for composition books

’KDP Helper’ tool gives you the exact pixel dimensions for the cover of the book you are creating and generates a cover template that you can upload into Canva and other design programs. This template indicates the bleed portion of the cover so you can design accordingly and know your design won't get cropped in printing. It also calculates dimensions for creating your own interiors.

Additional tools including an HTML listing builder to quickly create bullet lists and add other professional touches to your listing.

Simple instructions to get you rolling.

A straightforward reference chart to show you the minimum and maximum page count and extended distribution availability of each size and style of book.

Cover Creator color palette to match spine and back cover colors exactly to your front image.

DPI conversion tool to check picture quality is acceptable

For writers, we include a blank, numbered page that is editable in Microsoft Word.

Excellent customer support at support@tangent.rocks

Thriving, supportive, friendly community support at https://facebook.com/groups/amazoncreatespace

Hours of free tutorials, ideas and guidance on our YouTube channel

Tangent Templates is a one-off payment for $59 which includes any updates made to the core system. This price hasn’t changed since we launched in April with only 12 templates. Now there are 52 and a wealth of additional tools! Why do we love KDP so much? Publishing through KDP means your books are published straight onto Amazon. They also offer some exciting features including free IBSNs for your books. And through their extended distribution system, they even allow your books to be ordered by major chains like Barnes & Noble and even your local library, so they are ready for distribution. It costs nothing to upload a book to their platform so this is a low risk venture with no financial investment needed to get started. If you choose appropriate themes and branding for your books, you can even offer them to subscription box sellers and sell hundreds at once or offer them to a local boutique or business. Who wouldn't love a notebook that perfectly fits their niche or brand? We hope you enjoy these templates. They make the KDP process very straightforward