KDP Select Exclusivity: What Enrolling Locks You Out Of
Enrolling an ebook in Amazon's {{KDP Select}} program grants Amazon exclusive digital distribution rights for a 90-day, auto-renewing term. The author cannot sell or give away the digital edition anywhere else, including their own website, while it is enrolled. Print, audio, and video formats are unaffected, and the exclusivity is per-title, not per-author.
KDP Select is the optional, exclusive arm of Kindle Direct Publishing. Enrolling a digital book gives Amazon the exclusive right to sell and distribute it in digital format during the enrollment term, and is the only way to make a book available in Kindle Unlimited and earn page-read royalties from the KDP Select Global Fund. The exclusivity clause is broad. While enrolled, the author cannot sell or distribute the digital edition, or a \"substantially similar\" book, anywhere else in any territory where they hold rights. This includes the author's own website, blog, or newsletter, and even giving the digital file away for free elsewhere counts as a violation. Splitting a novel into halves to sell one \"wide\" does not evade the clause because of the substantially-similar language. Key mechanics: - **Term**: Enrollment runs 90 days and auto-renews unless the author turns off auto-renew, after which the book can be distributed anywhere once the current term ends. - **Scope**: Only the digital format is locked. Print (paperback/hardcover), audiobooks, and video adaptations can be sold or given away anywhere. - **Per-title**: Exclusivity applies to the enrolled title, not the author. A common pattern is to publish Book 1 \"wide\" while enrolling Book 2 in Select. Tolerated exceptions are narrow: sample excerpts of roughly up to 10 percent on the author's own site (matching Amazon's \"Look Inside\" share), distribution through public libraries via Amazon's own lending pipeline, and genuinely private sharing with beta readers, editors, agents, or ARC reviewers. Public ARC platforms where strangers can download the full file are a grey zone. Amazon scans competing retailers and acts on reader tips; penalties escalate from a warning email to removal from KDP Select to account termination with royalty forfeiture. The core trade-off: Kindle Unlimited page-read income plus Amazon promotional tools, OR self-hosting and selling across multiple stores. Plain Kindle Direct Publishing without Select is non-exclusive, letting an author use Amazon as one channel among many while keeping full distribution rights, at the cost of forgoing KU page reads. See Web Fiction \"Stubbing\": How Serial Authors Comply With KDP Select Exclusivity for how this plays out on serialization platforms.