Can I Publish on Amazon and Other Stores at the Same Time?

Can I Publish on Amazon and Other Stores?

Yes. Selling on Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play and Barnes & Noble simultaneously is standard practice — it is called going wide. The single exception is KDP Select, which requires 90 days of ebook exclusivity to Amazon in exchange for Kindle Unlimited income. Print books and audiobooks are never exclusive, regardless.

The longer version

Nothing about publishing on Amazon prevents you selling elsewhere. Amazon is not a publisher and takes no rights; it is a retailer with a distribution agreement. You keep everything.

The only lock is one you opt into.

The one exclusivity that exists

KDP Select trades 90 days of ebook exclusivity for Kindle Unlimited page-read income and a couple of promo tools. During the term the ebook cannot be sold or given away anywhere else.

It is per title, not per account — so you can run book one in Select and book two wide, or keep a series in KU while a standalone goes wide.

Print and audio remain free in every case. Being in Select does not stop you using IngramSpark for paperback or ACX for audio.

See Should indie authors use KDP Select?

Two ways to go wide

Direct to each retailer. Separate accounts with Apple Books, Kobo Writing Life, Google Play Books, Barnes & Noble Press. More admin, better royalty rates, direct access to each store's promotional tools — which is the part that actually matters, because Kobo and Apple merchandising is where wide authors get traction.

Through an aggregator. Draft2Digital and similar upload once and distribute everywhere, taking a small cut. Far less work, slightly less money, and you lose some direct promotional access.

The common compromise: direct to the two or three stores that perform for your genre, aggregator for the long tail.

What wide actually costs you

Honesty matters here, because "go wide" is often given as advice without the caveat: wide is slow. Amazon is where most English-language indie discovery happens. On other stores you start from nothing, ranking builds over months, and the first quarter frequently looks like a mistake.

Wide rewards a backlist, a series, a mailing list, and patience. It punishes a single standalone launched with no audience.

Print and wide

For print, "wide" usually means KDP for the Amazon edition and IngramSpark for everywhere else — bookstores, libraries, wholesalers. That is a different decision from the ebook one and is made independently. See KDP vs IngramSpark.

Common exceptions

A free KDP ISBN cannot be used elsewhere, so if you plan to go wide in print, buy your own ISBNs from the start.
Price matching. Amazon may match a lower price found on another store, which can drop your Amazon royalty unexpectedly. Keep list prices consistent across retailers.
Selling direct from your own site counts as another channel and breaches Select.
Some aggregators overlap with direct accounts — publishing the same title both ways creates duplicate listings.

Sources

Amazon KDP Help — KDP Select exclusivity terms and price matching.
Draft2Digital and IngramSpark distribution documentation.

Verified 9 August 2026.