How to List Your Book on Amazon

There are three ways a book gets onto Amazon. Check which one you need before you start.

Through Nielsen registration. Amazon pulls title data from Nielsen, so if you registered your book with us, a listing will usually appear on its own within a few weeks. Orders come back to whoever is named as the supplier, either you or your distributor.
Through your own Amazon Seller account. Amazon takes the payment; you post the book. This is what the rest of this page covers.
Through Kindle Direct Publishing, for e-books. Amazon’s own print-on-demand and e-book service. You upload files, and Amazon prints each paperback when it’s ordered. For paperbacks, KDP offers a free ISBN, but it only works on KDP.

Why pay for an ISBN when KDP gives me one for free?

KDP’s free ISBN is fine if your paperback will only ever be printed and sold by Amazon. The catch is that it’s locked to KDP. You can’t use it with IngramSpark, a local printer, or a print run you sell yourself at events and bookshops. If you go there later, you’ll need a new ISBN, and that means a new edition record and starting the book’s sales history from scratch.

An ISBN from us is registered with Nielsen BookData, which UK bookshops and libraries order from, and works everywhere: KDP, IngramSpark and your own printer, all with the same number. At £40, it costs less than half Nielsen’s £93 single-ISBN price.

Using it on KDP: enter your ISBN instead of selecting the free one, and set the imprint to Independent Publishing Network, exactly as it’s registered.

More about Nielsen registration.

Before you start

You’ll need an Amazon Seller account. An Individual account charges per item sold; a Professional account charges a monthly subscription. For a first book, Individual is usually enough.

Have ready:

Your ISBN: 13 digits, no spaces or dashes
Your cover image
Title, author, publication date, format and page count
Your price and the number of copies you have
Your category, e.g. Books > Fiction > Adventure

If you see “You need approval to list in the Books category”, that’s a permission issue on your account, not a problem with your ISBN. Amazon Seller Support can resolve it.

Step 1: Search for your ISBN first

Go to Catalogue > Add Products and enter your ISBN, e.g. 9781788085946.

If nothing comes up, your ISBN is free to use. Continue to Step 2.

If your book comes up, it’s already on Amazon, most likely through Nielsen. Add your offer to that existing listing and skip to Step 3. Amazon doesn’t allow the same book to be listed twice, and creating a duplicate is the main reason authors hit errors here.

Step 2: Create the listing

Choose “Create a new listing”, then select your category. Amazon spreads the details across several tabs and renames them from time to time, but these are the fields that matter:

Product ID — your ISBN, no dashes. Select ISBN as the ID type.
Title — exactly as it appears on your cover
Author and contributors.
Binding — paperback, hardback.
Publication date.
Manufacturer, Brand or Publisher — enter Independent Publishing Network. This must match what’s on file for your ISBN.

Description, page count and subject aren’t compulsory, but they’re what Amazon uses to decide which searches your book appears in.

Step 3: Set your offer

Price — yours to set. It doesn’t have to match the price printed on the cover.
Quantity — the copies you actually have. Amazon sells until it reaches zero.
Condition — New.
Seller SKU — leave blank, and Amazon generates one.
Fulfilment — if you’re posting copies yourself, you must dispatch within the agreed timescale.

Save and finish.

Step 4: Check it’s live

Listings are usually public within about 15 minutes. Refresh, check Manage Inventory, then search your ISBN on amazon.co.uk as a customer would.

Watch the video below for a quick demonstration:

If you get an error

The common one is: “You are using UPCs, EANs, ISBNs, ASINs, or JAN codes that do not match the products you are trying to list” (error 8572).

It means your title or details already exist in Amazon’s catalogue against a different number. See Seller Central Help for the policy. What to try:

Search your title as well as your ISBN. If the book is already there via Nielsen, add your offer to that listing. This fixes most cases.
Cancel the half-finished listing and start again.
Change a detail — a different category, or “paperback novel” added to the title — and retry.
Contact Amazon Seller Support. Back-end faults happen, and only Amazon can clear them.

Don’t open a second Seller account to get around it. Amazon allows one account unless it has given permission for more, and the usual result is that both are suspended.

Common questions

My book is on Amazon, but I never listed it. That’s your Nielsen registration working as intended. If you’d rather your book didn’t appear on Amazon, decide before registering.

Who posts the book? You do, unless you’ve appointed a distributor. We issue ISBNs, barcodes and registration; we don’t hold stock or fulfil orders.

Amazon shows a different price to my cover. Cover prices are only recommended. Every seller sets its own. Change yours under Manage Inventory.

Do I need another ISBN for the Kindle edition? Not for Kindle itself, because Amazon assigns its own number (an ASIN). If you also want to sell the e-book through other stores or libraries, give it its own ISBN, separate from the paperback’s. Each format needs its own number.

Can I switch from KDP’s free ISBN to my own later? Yes, but a different ISBN means a new edition, so you’ll publish the book again in KDP with the new number, and reviews may not carry over automatically.

Can I edit the listing later? Yes, under Manage Inventory. That changes your Amazon page only. Nielsen changes are a separate request.

Still working out printing, pricing or bookshops? Read our Guide to Self-Publishing. For barcodes, front matter, and legal deposit, see “How to use your ISBN”.

Still stuck? Read our FAQs or get in touch; we’re happy to help.