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I'm interested in using Leanpub Author Services to have Leanpub publish my book on Amazon using Amazon's KDP service. Where does Amazon sell to? Does it have worldwide distribution?
I'm interested in using Leanpub Author Services to have Leanpub publish my book on Amazon using Amazon's KDP service. Where does Amazon sell to? Does it have worldwide distribution?

Keywords: Amazon, KDP, region, countries, where, Asia, Latin America

Leanpub Support avatar
Written by Leanpub Support
Updated over a week ago

Through Leanpub Author Services, you can pay Leanpub to publish your book on Amazon through their KDP service.

Specifically, on our Author Services page, you'll want to look for the Book Light, Upload Book Light, and Book Conversion offerings.

When it comes to answering questions about any third-party service we interact with (in this case Amazon KDP), we try to be as helpful as we can, but please note that everything we say should be qualified as "in our opinion, given our current understanding" etc.


Here's the tl;dr answer, copied from later in this article:

So, our understanding is that in general, anyone from any country in the world who can sign up for an Amazon account can buy things on Amazon, even if that Amazon account is in a different country than the country they live in, but there are exceptions.


Before we try to answer the question of where Amazon books can be purchased from, please note that the best place to go for answers about Amazon is actually not the Leanpub Help Center, but rather the Amazon KDP Help page here:

Now, regarding the question of book distribution: it's a bit complicated and unclear, unfortunately.

(By the way, if you find a better resource than what we've found on this topic, please let us know by emailing the team at hello@leanpub.com!)

Here's what Amazon currently says on the main KDP page here https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US:

"Earn up to 70% royalty on sales to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and more. Enroll in KDP Select and earn more money through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library."

Note the "and more", which shows that you don't need to be in one of the listed countries to buy from Amazon.

Here's what Amazon currently says here regarding "eBook Distribution Rights" and "All territories (worldwide rights)":

"This will allow customers from around the world to purchase your title on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.com.br, Amazon.com.mx, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.ca, Amazon.nl, and Amazon.in. If your book is your original content and you've never published it before, you most likely have worldwide rights."

Note that they say that "If your book is your original content and you've never published it before, you most likely have worldwide rights". (Please note that your ownership of worldwide rights for your content is a requirement for using Leanpub Author Services.)

Here is another KDP Help article on this topic, specifically about "Paperback and Hardcover Distribution Rights", which uses similar language:

So, our understanding is that in general, anyone from any country in the world who can sign up for an Amazon account can buy things on Amazon, even if that Amazon account is in a different country than the country they live in, but there are exceptions.

Here's a good article from Wise on this topic: https://wise.com/us/blog/buying-from-amazon-in-a-different-country

All right, now with all that said, here is an article that says Amazon will stop selling Kindle books in China in June 2023:

But (at least currently) if you search the KDP Help page here for the term China, here's what you'll get:

So, we're sorry that ultimately the answer to the question of where people can buy Amazon books from is "It's complicated and we can't really know for certain and things can change any time", but that's just the reality here!

OK, that's it!


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