Making KDP
Fast, Easy and Professional!
What Is KDP?
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is Amazon’s Print on Demand platform for book publishing. With KDP you can launch your books directly to Amazon.com where you can benefit from the 300+ million active shoppers who browse and buy from the platform regularly.
What is Tangent Templates?
Tangent Templates is a software suite created by Isaac Gonzalez and Katharyne Shelton to make the process of creating low content books fast and easy.
It includes over 100 templates for a variety of niches. We give you these files as PDFs, Illustrator and InDesign files so they can be easily edited and customized in a variety of third party tools. It also includes customizable prompt pages and dated planners, a builder tool for assembling your book, an interior designer to create your own pages (with over 700 preset images and a range of creative options including handwriting fonts to make beautiful worksheets for kids!) and many more tools. Other highlights include:
- KDP Helper to give you the perfect cover and interior dimensions and perfectly sized cover templates, cleanly laid out for you to use with your favorite tools including Adobe, Powerpoint, Keynote and Canva.
- Listing helper Chrome extension which helps you list books quickly, easily and safely on KDP.
- Category browser to find the perfect category for your book (including hidden categories!)
- Pricing calculator to find the sweet spot for your book
- Our PDF Inspector to check your documents for issues
- Bulk image to interior converter tool (great for coloring or photo books!)
- Document to PNG converter tool (lets you upload your interior pages to Canva for editing)
- Pen Name generator to pick the perfect name, no matter your genre or niche
- 3D Mock-up rapidly creates a 3D image of your book that you can use in your marketing materials
Using Tangent Templates, you can create a book AND the corresponding listing on Amazon in less than ten minutes… from scratch! In most cases, your book will be available for sale on Amazon the next day and you will be a published author!
Wait... I have to write a book? In ten minutes?
No! Tangent is the first and leading book creation software for no content and low content books. You don’t have to write a single word unless you want to!
What are low content and no content books?
The simplest book you can publish on Amazon is a plain lined notebook. Imagine all the designs you would have loved on your composition book as a kid - now you can make those books a reality! Cute animals, political slogans, robots, cupcakes, unicorns...
Just grab a wide ruled interior from Tangent Templates, add your own cover image, list it on KDP and you’re good to go. That notebook is a ‘no-content book’.
Using our templates, you can just as quickly whip up a graph book, sheet music book, calligraphy book, blank comic book for kids to draw in... even a map of hexagons for a roleplaying game campaign.
These templates are incredibly flexible. With a different cover, that hex roleplaying map interior could just as easily be planning paper for 3D printing enthusiasts. And 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 a space for an occupational therapist to teach handwriting skills. The only limit here is your imagination.
But that’s just to get you started. Now with Tangent Templates, you can also create low content books like guided journals, dated planners (in seven languages), prompt books, prayer books, ghost hunting logs, blank recipe books, collectors’ books, picture books, bullet journal style books, educational books and endless other ideas… easily!
You can also use our interior designer to create your own pages. Created specially for low content books it comes with 700 preset illustrations to choose from and a collection of shapes and fonts including our proprietary handwriting fonts. You can even set areas of dot grid, graph and lined paper quickly and easily onto your pages.
How does KDP work?
The model is simple. You upload the interior and cover of your book, create a listing and you’re done! Your book will be processed by Amazon and will usually be live in a few days. When customers buy your book, Amazon handles the printing and shipping and pays you a royalty. You can also buy author copies very cheaply that you can resell or give away to your customers or students.
KDP has proved to be popular with authors looking for a quicker way to create books, for print on demand sellers looking for a new platform to build an income and for coaches, educators and business owners who are looking to create their own branded books. Imagine giving a pretty planner to your clients with your logo on the front and phone number in the back. And a copy will cost you less than $3!
It’s also perfect for resellers who are looking to branch into digital inventory. We have all of these people in mind with Tangent Templates.
Here are just a few reasons why KDP is a fantastic platform for your books:
- Direct access to Amazon’s 300 million shoppers
- Author copies of books can be purchased for as little as $2-$3
- No waiting period for account approval
- Zero cost to create a book
- A blue ocean of opportunity. There are a wealth of 'gaps' to fill in the market.
- Sensible enforcement of copyright and trademark issues
- Books are far more difficult to copycat than t-shirts and other POD products
- Sensible rule enforcement. KDP rarely removes sellers without very good reason.
- KDP give you an ISBN number, so no stressing about barcodes and costs!
- KDP currently allow you to upload up to a thousand books per week
- It’s way easier to make a book than you think!
With Tangent Templates we give you the power to go much… much further than that!
If you’ve ventured near a bookstore lately, you’ll notice that low content books are everywhere! Guided journals, planners, workbooks, activity books and so much more! Everyone from Tony Robbins to Michelle Obama is publishing them!
Tangent Templates includes over 100 templates and all of them include hints and tips on how to use them and the kind of books you can make with them. Our templates range from simple, versatile graph and journal papers through to a variety of niches. Here are just a few of the templates we offer:
- Meal planners
- Workout logs
- Prayer Journals
- Spellbooks
- Sleep Trackers
- Cruise Diaries
- Make Up and Fashion Templates
- Paper Games like Hangman and Sea Battle
- Night Sky Observation
- Vision Boards
- Podcast Planner
- A variety of blank Comic Book Pages
- And much more!
All of these pages can be mixed together in the Tangent Builder to create any combination you can think of. For example, you could mix our Meeting Agenda, Business Napkin, Budget Sheet and Vision Board templates together with dated pages for a entrepreneurial power-planner. Or you could mix guitar tabs, sheet music and lined paper together for a comprehensive composer’s notebook. You can also upload and mix in your own templates!
All the interiors can be generated in any of the 16 standard trim sizes supported by KDP and can be used as-is, but we do recommend you add your own customizations that your audience will appreciate!
Dynamic Planners
We also give you a collection of ‘dynamic’ prompt and planner pages. Our weekly, monthly and yearly planners can be generated for any date range, any trim size and in seven languages. That means you can make pocket diaries, academic planners, family planners and all kinds of niched planners and calendars.
If you would like to create a prompt book (with journal prompts, story prompts, sketch prompts etc.) you can type or paste in a list of prompts and Tangent Templates will generate the full book for you.
What if I want to create my own pages?
We’ve got you!
We have recently launched our Interior Designer tool which allows you to create journal and workbook pages from scratch and add them to your book. Our designer presets make it simple to add pages with copyright notices, customized questions and much more. There are over 700 images and counting that you can use to decorate your pages and you can add areas of lines, dot grid and graph grids to create modern looking, exciting workbooks and journals.
Alternatively, we provide simple templates and video tutorials that make it easy to create perfectly sized pages in InDesign, Keynote, Powerpoint and Canva.
You can then mix them back into your book using the Tangent Builder tool.
What if I want to customize them further?
All our static templates include Adobe Illustrator and InDesign files so they can be fully customized using Adobe or Affinity tools. If you’re looking for a more entry-level solution, you can edit the PDFs directly in any tool that imports and exports PDFs. I prefer Keynote or Powerpoint. You can even use the PDF to PNG converter tool in Tangent Templates to create an image file that can be edited in Canva or any other graphics tool. We have tutorials on all of these options.
How do I make a cover?
There is a wealth of great graphics packages out there, many of them free. We chose not to reinvent the wheel by adding a cover creator - and KDP already has one built into their platform!
Instead, we give you easy to use cover templates that are tailored for Canva, Photoshop, Gimp or any other design tool you like to use. We recommend Canva if you’re new - it’s free, very easy and has a lot of powerful features! ,
We also provide video tutorials for making covers in both Canva and Photoshop.
There are also many places to obtain additional artwork for your covers. Publicdomainreview.org is a great intro to public domain art. There are also a lot of paid services to buy graphics and you can even hire artists from sites like Fiverr. Be warned, creating covers is fun and can get very addictive! :)
What about CreateSpace? Isn’t Kindle for eBooks?
Until 2018, KDP was more commonly seen as a platform for eBooks while Amazon’s CreateSpace was the place for paperbacks. Createspace and KDP merged into KDP and now, KDP offers both eBooks and paperbacks.
What tools are included in Tangent Templates?
As well as the static and dynamic templates for planners and prompts, Tangent Templates includes a whole suite of tools to make your publishing life easier.
KDP Helper
The KDP Helper makes designing your books easy, no matter which tool you use for your covers or interiors. Simply choose the trim size, page count and paper type (white or cream) for your book and let Tangent do the hard work for you. We give you perfectly tailored templates for your cover and interior, as well as all the dimensions you might need for Canva, Keynote, Powerpoint or Adobe. No more worrying about calculating bleed or margins!
Tangent Builder
The Tangent Builder is a brilliant but simple tool that allows you to easily plan and arrange the pages of your book. Click each page to choose from our templates and build a book fast. You can then drag and drop them into place or repeat multiple page sections with ease.
Not only that, you can upload your own custom PDFs, including multipage documents, perfect for customizing planners, adding copyright pages or getting creative with additional content. We currently allow you to upload up to 20mb per book.
Interior Designer
The new interior designer is the first tool of its kind and allows you to create custom pages for KDP without leaving Tangent Templates. This is a designer tool which allows you to easily create custom pages including boxes, lines, circles as well as area of lines, graph and dot grid. There are plenty of presets to choose from including a copyright page template that can be quickly edited and there are over 700 images to add to your pages.. Because we designed this tool specifically for KDP, it seamlessly formats your page to include the correct margins and dimensions for any of KDP’s 16 trim sizes.
The interior designer is currently in beta and we expect to add increased functionality in the coming months.
Listing Helper
Amazon currently allow you to upload up to 1000 books a week. That’s a lot of typing! But our listing helper makes listing your book on Amazon fast and easy. Now you don’t have to type the same keywords or description details each time you list a book. Instead, you can set up templates that include details like Title, Subtitle, Author Name and Keywords. When you go to KDP’s dashboard, the listing helper Chrome Extension will fill out the information for you rapidly. It will even select the correct categories for you.
The listing helper also includes a simple HTML editor so you can add KDP approved HTML elements like bulleted lists, underlining and bolding to your listing text so it looks snazzier!
Note: The listing helper is NOT an automation tool. Using automated uploading or allowing third parties to login to your account is against Amazon/KDP’s terms of service. Our tool replicates simple copy and paste functionality to list your books quickly, while adhering to Amazon’s TOS.
Category Explorer
The category explorer is an easy interface to help you to find the best categories for your book. It also cracks KDP’s ‘keyword code’ allowing you to select categories that can be accessed by using the correct keywords.
Price Calculator
Not sure how much you’ll get paid when your book sells? Enter the page count of your book and experiment with list prices and color/black &white selection to find the optimal price for your book.
Image to Interior
This handy tool is perfect for art books, coloring books and photography books. Upload a collection of images and Tangent Templates will convert them into a ready to use PDF interior.
PDF Inspector and Converter
The best kept secret in Tangent Templates. This tool lets you check any PDF document. It can save you stacks of time by checking whether KDP is likely to detect any errors in your interior. It also gives you comprehensive stats about the PDF including the dimensions, file size, and even helpful info like which fonts are embedded in it and when it was created.
Quick Mockup:
Need a 3D mockup of your book for your website, advert or marketing materials? You can generate and download one in seconds from our Quick Mockup tool.
Pen Name Generator:
We've also added a very nifty pen name generator. Whatever the genre of your book, you can find a name to fit. Choose from a variety of styles including Victorian, Sexy, Trendy, Rockstar, Gothic, periods (1880s-2010s) and a wide range of nationalities to choose a pen name that is uniquely you, then copy and paste it quickly to the listing helper.
Tangent Templates is available for a one-off price of $59 which gives you permanent access to our software and you can create as many books as you like using it. No subscriptions! Plus, we keep updating and adding to the tool. We started in April 2018 with only 12 interior templates. Now we have a huge collection of templates and a whole suite of tools and that price has never changed!
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