So I’ve been doing KDP work for a while now and I figured I’d just put this out there for anyone who needs it.
Last year I formatted and uploaded a 175,000-word non-fiction book. 650 pages. The client left a 5-star review and wrote “handled the project as if it were his own.” That was a formatting and upload job. But the part I actually got obsessed with was the launch strategy I built around it – back cover copy, a full Amazon listing written for SEO, keyword and category research (picking categories where you can realistically hit #1, not just the obvious ones everyone piles into), pricing with royalty math for both print and Kindle, and two Facebook ad concepts with targeting angles.
Six pages of strategy for one book. That’s the kind of thing that gets me going.
I also do AI-powered cover design. I spend real time researching comps in your genre and then design covers that actually look like they belong on the bestseller shelf next to them, not like someone typed “fantasy book cover” into Midjourney and called it a day. I’ve done cozy mysteries, sci-fi, noir thrillers, health non-fiction, literary family drama. If you can’t afford a designer charging $500+ but you don’t want something that screams “self-published” either, this is that middle ground.
What I can do for you, roughly:
If you just need formatting and upload – you send me a clean manuscript, I format it for KDP (paperback, hardcover, ebook, whatever combo you need), handle the metadata, get it uploaded and looking right. One round of revisions. For a standard-length book that’s somewhere around $150-250. Longer books cost more because they take more time, and I’m not going to pretend a 200,000-word manuscript is the same job as an 80,000-word one.
If you want the full launch package – formatting plus keyword research, category selection, Amazon listing copy, back matter setup, cover coordination or AI cover design, and a couple rounds of revisions. That’s $400-600 depending on scope.
If you want me to basically be your launch team – everything above plus I run the entire cover process (or design it myself with AI), build your pricing strategy, set up your first KDP ad campaign, and check in after 30 days to see what’s working. $800-1,200.
Ground rules so nobody’s surprised: 50% upfront. I need to see your manuscript before I quote anything because if it’s a mess that needs cleanup before I can even format it, that’s a different conversation. Page count matters – a 120-page memoir and a 700-page reference book are not the same project. And revision rounds are capped so we don’t end up in an infinite loop where I’m reformatting the same chapter for the fourth time because you changed your mind about fonts.
DM me if any of this sounds like what you need. Happy to look at your manuscript and tell you honestly what it would take. If you let me write up your project as a case study on this Substack, I’ll knock 10-15% off.
