Publish comics and graphic novels for free using Kindle Direct Publishing.
Create and sell beautiful Kindle books to millions of readers worldwide.
Kindle Comic Creator: Import illustrations, create panels and preview your comic book with the Kindle Comic Creator.
Cover Creator: Use our Cover Creator tool to upload your own images or use templates to create your own book cover.
Marketing Tools: Benefit from Amazon’s powerful marketing tools and global distribution. Enroll in KDP Select to get more promotional benefits.
Join the thousands of comic book authors on KDP. Here are some of their stories:
“KDP gave us the ability to have the final say on what we were creating, allowing us to not compromise on quality.”
Brandon Perlow, publisher of Watson and Holmes
Like many fans of comic books, I felt compelled to get my stories out there. So, when the opportunity came to work with Karl Bollers and Rick Leonardi on a new take on Sherlock Holmes, I was thrilled. Creating comics has been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child and I got extremely excited as the pages started to come in.
It’s very difficult for a smaller publisher to get their books into comic book shops and ultimately into the hands of readers. KDP has allowed us to reach an audience that we wouldn’t normally have access to and build an international fan base. Through the ratings and reviews on Amazon, we get to see the impact our work has had on people throughout the globe.
KDP makes it quick and simple to get our books in front of our fans, to build a fan base, and allows us to have the final say on what we’re creating.
“KDP enables me to create manga for readers across the globe, while living in Japan.”
Sayuri Sakai, author of Because I’m a Maid
When I was about 18 years old, I started taking manga written by me to a reputed publishing house in Japan. A year and a half later, I participated in and won a competition to create a comic based on a simulation game. That was my debut as a professional manga writer. I still remember how difficult it was for me at the time to create a whole series of comics as my first professional endeavor.
While my family continued to support my efforts to become a manga writer, I struggled to find the time to write manga as I lived on my own and was also working elsewhere at the time. Acquiring the skills required to become a professional manga writer through self-study and understanding industry trends was also a challenge.
However, production and distribution through independent publishing using KDP enables me to create manga that are translated into English, French and other languages for readers across the globe, while living in Japan. Further, the numerous customer reviews that I receive allow me to reflect on my work objectively and serve as a source of inspiration for future manga writing.
Five-star ratings, in particular, reinvigorate me and make me happy that readers around the world enjoy my manga in many different ways.
BECAUSE I’M A MAID!’s success as a long-time best seller has served to enhance awareness of manga worldwide. Buoyed by its popularity in the U.S., I plan to publish the manga in Japan and Southeast Asia, with the objective of enhancing my skills as a professional manga writer. I hope that by launching the digital version of BECAUSE I’M A MAID! through KDP, more people will be able to enjoy reading it.
“You can't lose with KDP!”
Peter J. Ang, author of PANDORA End of Days
It seems everywhere I look online these days, there are dozens of success stories from self-publishing authors being posted in blogs and pop-culture news websites. These stories usually have to do with a decision to abandon the traditional route of approaching major publishers by diving headlong into the e-book industry, and driven largely due to the explosive growth of the Kindle.
But how does Kindle Direct Publishing offer success to comic book (graphic novel) creators? I can say that it is in many ways similar to "novel authors," yet in some ways very different. My love for writing began in high school upon my induction into the messy world of fan-fiction. Reading the best of Marvel and DC comics was one thing, but being able to control the fate of my favorite superheroes by writing my own renditions, then receiving feedback from fellow fans, was invigorating. Soon after college, I decided it was time to go in for the real thing. Collaborating with a very talented artist, Jin Song Kim, our first comic book series was accepted and published. But after a bad experience with the publisher, it was time to go look for a real job.
Fast forward to 2011, and the buzz around the e-book market got too loud to ignore. Since I still owned all the copyrights to our comic book series, I gave self-publishing a try using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Initially, this endeavour had its own challenges, namely EPUB format conversion problems. While many e-book authors use professional conversion services, my extensive background in graphic design and web development enabled me to handle this task myself. I didn't get my hopes up after listing my first graphic novel in the Kindle store as I went on with my usual grind in life. For three months after it was listed up online, I did not even check my sales reports. Basically, I just forgot about it. Then one day, I was contacted by KDP support telling me that I needed to update my bank account information in order to receive some $2,000+ in royalties. What? I couldn't get back home fast enough to verify it online. Sure enough, the numbers were all there. I felt light headed, almost euphoric. This was it, I thought. The e-book industry had levelled the playing field for us against the looming mountains of broken dreams surrounding major publishers.
Nearly six years after our first project, I called Jin and pleaded to meet for lunch. I said there was no way I could explain the good news to him over the phone. Full control over creativity, instant delivery of digital files with no overhead printing costs, and a no-nonsense royalty payment system. It didn't take long to convince him for another collaboration. Just over a year later, we published our newest 200-page graphic novel online, PANDORA End of Days.
Although our comic book dream was effectively rekindled, largely thanks to Amazon's KDP, I still hesitated to opt in for the KDP Select program. Determined to give all e-book markets a good try. However, the multitude of authors blogging about the program was hard to ignore. I decided that the safest time to test KDP's 90-day exclusive agreement would be this summer, just enough time before the usual holiday winter rush. Lo and behold, in the first month of June alone, downloads increased significantly, rising even more with the launch of Kindle Unlimited. Our book also skyrocketed in sales rank. Should we have been in KDP Select all this time? Maybe.
Lastly, to all self-publishing comic book creators aspiring to enlist their works on the Kindle, Amazon's Kindle Comic Creator is a superb new (free) tool that eliminates all the hassle of EPUB Formatting and auto-resizes images to fit all Kindle models perfectly. You can't lose with KDP! This isn't just the future of reading comics, it already is. Give it a go!
