Education & Textbooks
Prepare, publish, and promote interactive textbooks and educational content in Kindle Stores, and reach millions of students worldwide.
Prepare Your File: Amazon’s Kindle Textbook Creator helps you convert PDFs of your textbooks and other educational content into Kindle books and add interactive content like audio, video, and image pop-ups. Plus preview your book across all supported devices.
Publish and Reach a Large Audience: Publish your book through KDP and reach millions of students worldwide across a wide variety of devices.
Promote Your Book: Benefit from Amazon’s powerful marketing tools and global reach. Enroll in KDP Select to get more promotional benefits.
Join the thousands of educators and authors published on KDP. Here are some of their stories…
"KDP allowed us to reach even more students.”
Armando Fox and David Patterson, authors of Engineering Software as a Service
When we decided to write our textbook in 2011, many of our decisions were informed by over twenty years of experience. We were early adopters of eBooks and believers in their future because of potential integration with online resources. Another reason for our enthusiasm for eBooks was speed to market. Our book was going to be about the rapidly-changing field of SaaS development, so we needed much quicker turnaround for revisions and we envisioned being able to make minor changes and have those updates on sale within 24 hours. We knew that an eBook would be the only practical way to do this. We discussed our eBook ideas with some publishers, but we found that in general they were no farther ahead than we were in thinking about how to create interesting eBooks.
We chose to self-publish to keep the price low: the Kindle version costs $9.99 in an era where $100 printed textbooks and even $100 eTextbooks are common. In addition, eBook distribution lets us easily reach readers in countries where distribution of a print book might be impractical or too expensive. As our book ended up being used in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that has had over 100,000 students from 120 countries, this expanded reach was important to us.
We also believed many readers would also want a print book, so we created this and sold the print edition through CreateSpace print-on-demand. Sure enough, when we surveyed our students, the single most requested feature about the book was the ability to purchase a "bundle" of the print and eBook together, so we were excited when Kindle MatchBook went live in 2013.
While doing our own marketing has not been without its challenges, we're happy with our decision. Working directly through KDP allowed us to keep the book affordable and still expect to recover our costs. We continue to improve existing content and add new material. And the global reach of the book has resulted in potential translation opportunities.
“I wanted my vision for my books to remain intact.”
Chris Bryant, Founder of The Bryant Advantage, Udemy Instructor, and author of the CCNA and CCNP Success Series
I wrote my first eBook in 2005. The main reason I began writing professionally was my frustration with the study guides available back then – they were really just bundles of technical documentation. They were technically complete, but they were very difficult to learn from. That’s what a lot of technical study guides were like.
When I began writing my own material, I vowed to make it complete, concise, and comprehensive while still being enjoyable to read. I found I had a knack for explaining difficult technical concepts in everyday language, and it’s a skill I bring to my readers today via the Kindle and CreateSpace.
My main attraction to independent publishing is that my writing style remains intact. I was offered a contract by one of the largest computer certification study guide publishers in 2007, but I realized they wanted all of their authors to sound alike. I had zero interest in that. I wanted my vision for my books to remain intact. Another is the opportunity to do better financially. The money in the contact from the study guide publisher wasn’t that good, and the royalty plan stunk. If my books sold well, I wanted to make money.
I’ve been very pleased with KDP, and as I expand my book line, it’ll be a tool I refer to often to check sales, incoming payments, and see where I need to improve regarding my Amazon sales. KDP has been easy to learn and use when I’ve had to upload book files, change pricing and/or descriptions, etc.
"Amazon’s fresh and dynamic views on academic publishing attracted me to self-publishing."
Dr. Chris McMullen, physics instructor at Northwestern State University of Louisiana and author of Trigonometry Essentials Practice Workbook with Answers: Master Basic Trig Skills
Publishing combines my two passions: teaching and writing. For over 20 years, I’ve been preparing material that allows me to teach through writing. In 2008, I discovered that I could reach millions of students by self-publishing through Amazon. Now, my teaching can even impact students on the other side of the world.
Amazon’s fresh and dynamic views on academic publishing attracted me to self-publish. Educators are already very busy in the classroom. Amazon lets teachers focus on writing more books. Readers get to decide which material best meets their needs, and that’s exactly the way it should be.
Kindle also allows authors to keep up with a rapidly changing publishing environment. For example, the Kindle Textbook Creator allows educational authors to publish books with audio or video clips, and flash card capabilities and X-Ray functionality helps students use technology to study smarter. If an author wants to deliver material to the market segment quickly, or suddenly release a new edition, this can be done almost instantly via self-publishing.
The Kindle Textbook Creator is a very convenient tool for turning a complex print layout into a Kindle-friendly eBook. It’s incredible what the Kindle Textbook Creator can do starting with a PDF, which is normally not the best format for Kindle. It turns each page into an image that generally works quite well across a variety of devices, yet, unlike a picture, it can recognize the text on the page. That’s simply amazing.
I love both Amazon KDP and CreateSpace. Several times over the years, representatives from both Amazon KDP and CreateSpace have contacted me, soliciting my input; and I’ve heard from many other authors who have had similar experiences. Amazon is run by people, those people do interact with and care about authors, and they seek our input. I’ve had very positive interactions with the Kindle team, and I’ve seen Amazon implement a number of suggestions that authors have made like Kindle pre-orders, advertising for Kindle, improved reporting, and advertising about Countdown Deals on Amazon’s home page.
