The six subjects we cover
Every article on this site sits inside one of these six clusters. Pick the one that matches the question you actually have, rather than reading in order.
Amazon KDP publishing
How the platform actually pays: royalty bands, delivery fees, print-on-demand margins, and the 60-day payment lag nobody warns you about.
- 70% vs 35% royalty explained
- Ebook vs paperback margins
- What a first year realistically earns
Kindle Unlimited income
Why KU pays per page instead of per sale, why the rate changes monthly, and why read-through across a series decides whether you earn anything.
- How the KENP page rate works
- Series depth over single books
- KDP Select exclusivity trade-off
Getting paid to write
The freelance side: articles, blogs, reviews, short stories and poetry — who pays, what they pay, and how beginners get the first three clips.
- Realistic per-word rates
- Where beginners actually get hired
- Which "paid to write" offers are scams
Cozy fantasy
The genre that quietly became one of the most reliable earners on Kindle Unlimited — what defines it, which tropes readers demand, and how to write one.
- Genre rules and reader expectations
- Tropes that sell
- Why it is cheap to write
AI-assisted fiction
Using Claude and similar tools as a drafting partner without producing the flat, obviously-machine prose that gets books returned and reviewed badly.
- Planning before drafting
- Killing AI tells in prose
- Staying consistent across chapters
Rules and compliance
What Amazon requires you to disclose, what the FTC requires of paid endorsements, and the policies that get accounts suspended.
- KDP AI content disclosure
- Daily upload limits
- Review policies that bite
How these fit together
The three income models — freelancing, publishing and audience-building — are covered in the pillar guide on how to make money writing. The clusters above go one level deeper into each. If you are entirely new, read the pillar first and pick a single model before touching anything else; splitting effort across all three is the most reliable way to spend a year earning nothing.
If you already know you want to self-publish, the fastest useful path is how to make money on Amazon KDP, then how Kindle Unlimited pays, then which niches actually sell.