You've finished your manuscript. You've designed the cover. Now you need to get it live on Amazon KDP—and that means navigating keywords, categories, a description that works in a cramped preview window, and making sure you don't accidentally push the wrong version live.

Pendrilo's Workshop dashboard consolidates all of this into one place. The KDP tab is a four-step flow that walks you through each lever you control on Amazon, shows you how long your keywords and description really are (not how they feel), and keeps a version history so you can see exactly what's live versus what you're still testing.

The Four Steps: Keywords, Categories, Description, Publish & Track

Open your book in Pendrilo and click Workshop at the top. Navigate to the KDP tab. The first thing you'll notice is a listing bar at the top that lets you pick which listing you're working on. If you're selling an ebook on amazon.com and a paperback on amazon.co.uk, those are two separate listings with their own keywords, categories, descriptions, and version history. You can work on them independently and track them side by side.

Once you've picked your listing, you're in the four-step flow. It's linear but not locked—you can jump between steps, save drafts, and come back. A step rail shows where each piece stands (nothing yet · draft in progress · live vN). Nothing goes live until you deliberately push it.

Step 1: Keywords

Amazon gives you seven keyword slots. Most indie authors stuff them with single words ("vampire", "romance", "paranormal"). That wastes the slot. Better to use keyword phrases: "paranormal romance vampire", "dark paranormal romance", "vampire romance series". Each slot has a 50-byte limit.

Since v3.30, the Keywords step is a two-column workbench. On the left sits a pinned card with your seven keyword boxes. Type or paste a phrase and press Enter to chip it in; each slot can hold multiple phrases. A live byte meter shows your byte count below each box. Amazon counts bytes, not characters, so "café" costs 4 bytes but "cafe" costs 3. The meter turns red if you exceed the 50-byte limit—you'll see it in real time.

Below the seven boxes, a rule checker flags keywords that have blockers (words Amazon forbids, like "free" or trademarked brand names if used in a misleading way) and offers suggestions (redundant terms, oversaturated phrases). Blockers prevent you from marking the listing as live until they're fixed; suggestions are optional guidance. A Start over button wipes all seven boxes at once if you want a fresh start.

On the right, a helper card displays keyword suggestions and ideas. For members with Publisher Rocket set up, this is where Rocket's harvest and ready-to-paste phrases land, ranked by search volume and competition difficulty. You can click a phrase to chip it into a slot directly, or seed a new harvest if you want fresh suggestions. A Copy all 7 button copies your final keywords as seven plain lines, ready to paste directly into KDP.com.

Step 2: Categories

Amazon KDP lets you choose up to three categories (or a mix of BISAC and Browse categories). Pendrilo gives you three slots for tracking them.

Each category you pick affects your book's Best Seller Rank (BSR) within that category. A narrow, less-saturated category might let you hit #1 faster than a broad one, even if the broad category has more eyeballs. Pendrilo doesn't tell you which category to pick—that's your strategy call—but it does let you see the current BSR of each category you choose.

Type your categories into the fields using the full browse path. Then click Log BSR on each category and Pendrilo pings Amazon's API for the current ranking threshold. You'll see how many books are in the top 100 and what the current #1 book is selling. Again, this is data to inform your choice, not a rule.

Step 3: Description

Your book description on Amazon is ruthless. The first 150 characters appear before the "read more" fold. Most readers don't click it. You need a hook in those first three lines.

Pendrilo's description workbench is a raw HTML editor with a live preview window that shows how your description looks on Amazon's website. The preview shows the fold line. You'll see the character count (up to 4,000, though Amazon is vague about hard limits). If you include HTML tags—bold, italic, line breaks, links to series or your website—you can test them here before you go live.

Type your description directly. Use <b></b> for bold, <i></i> for italic, <br/> for line breaks. Pendrilo's preview updates as you type, so you see your formatting in real time. Amazon allows only a small set of tags; Pendrilo shows an alert if you use a tag Amazon doesn't support (like <u> for underline).

A helpful rule checker runs across your description and catches common blunders: broken HTML, too-long first paragraph (before the fold), missing line breaks, and accidental copy-paste formatting (curly quotes, smart dashes from Word). It's not a style checker—it's a "did you mess up the HTML" checker.

Once you're happy, the Copy HTML button copies it and you paste it into KDP.com when you go live. Pendrilo doesn't upload your description directly; you paste it yourself, which keeps you in control and makes sure you've read it one more time before it goes public.

Step 4: Publish & Track

This is the checkpoint. Before you mark anything as live, review all three previous steps in read-only cards. Check your keywords one more time. Make sure your first 150 characters sing. Verify your categories.

When you're certain, click Mark as live on each lever (keywords, categories, description) as you paste it into KDP. Pendrilo records a timestamp and locks the version. From this point, a version history entry appears for each lever you've marked live. Each entry shows the date you marked it live, your keywords, categories, or description at that moment. If you later edit your KDP Listing in Pendrilo (changing a keyword, tweaking the description), you're not overwriting the history—you're creating a new draft that you'll mark live later.

This step also holds the Keyword check-in section. For your live keyword set, Pendrilo shows each phrase as a chip with a verdict dot—click one to open the Performance tracker. Log the rank you saw on Amazon, call it Working or Underperforming, and add a date. Pendrilo keeps a history so you can spot trends over time. A Snooze button pushes the check-in reminder out; when a due date arrives, Pendrilo shows a banner across the top of every page reminding you to check in.

The Shown on Amazon list shows what Amazon actually displays on your product page. This often differs from the three categories you chose. It's auto-matched against your chosen categories when you mark the listing live, and you can manually edit the list to keep Pendrilo in sync with what you see live on the store.

Finally, the KDP Select card shows whether you're enrolled in KDP Select, the term start and end dates, and whether auto-renew is on. If auto-renew is off, Pendrilo shows a reminder 14 days before the term ends so you don't miss the window to decide.

Why Version History Matters

Many authors manage KDP directly on Amazon's website. They edit the description, hit save, and hope they didn't fat-finger it. If they change their mind an hour later, they have no record of what the old version said. They're flying blind.

Pendrilo forces you to be deliberate. You edit in a draft state. You see a preview of how it looks. You mark it live. Only then do you go to KDP.com and paste the actual text. And every time you mark something live, Pendrilo saves a snapshot—keyword set, categories, description—so you can look back and compare.

This is especially useful if you're running keyword experiments. You might try a broad keyword one month and a narrow one the next. The version history shows you when the swap happened and what the old keyword was. Combined with Pendrilo's keyword check-in system (a simple Working or Underperforming indicator), you can see trends over time and understand which keywords are actually driving sales.

Multiple Listings: Ebook & Paperback, Multiple Stores

One of Pendrilo's biggest time-savers is the listing bar. If you're publishing an ebook on amazon.com and a paperback on amazon.co.uk, those are two separate listings with completely independent keywords, categories, descriptions, and version history. You don't have to switch between them in KDP's UI or hunt through spreadsheets—just click the listing bar and pick the one you want to work on. Changes to one listing never affect the other.

This becomes essential if you're a series author or you manage multiple pen names. Each book × format × marketplace combination is a separate listing, and Pendrilo keeps them all organized on one tab.

Integration with the Rest of Your Book

The KDP Listing tab lives in the Workshop, which also holds your Releases tab (tracking ISBN, price, and go-live date for KDP, IngramSpark, Apple, and other platforms), your Amazon Ads tracker, and your marketing log. This means you can see your entire publish-and-promote pipeline in one place—not scattered across five browser tabs.

When you export your book to EPUB (in the Exports panel), Pendrilo uses the book title, author name, and cover image you've already set in your Book Details. When you export to PDF for print, it uses those same details. Consistency across formats is automatic. If you update your author bio, it flows into every export without you having to re-enter it.

Similarly, your KDP description and keywords sit in the Workshop, not buried in the editor. You can draft them while your manuscript is still in progress—useful if you're planning your launch weeks ahead. Then, on launch day, you have everything ready to copy-paste into Amazon in seconds.

Getting to Live: From Pendrilo to Amazon

Here's the real-world workflow.

  1. Draft and refine in Pendrilo. Write or paste your keywords, categories, and description. Use the live preview and rule checker to stress-test them. Tinker until you're happy.
  2. Mark as live in Pendrilo. When you're ready, click the button in Step 4 for each lever (keywords, categories, description). A version history entry is created. You're now recording this state of your listing.
  3. Copy and paste into KDP.com. Go to your book on Amazon KDP. Paste your keywords into the seven slots. Paste your description into the description field. Select your categories. Click Save. Amazon processes your changes—sometimes instantly, sometimes over a few hours.
  4. Check Amazon for errors. A few minutes after you save, visit your book's Amazon page in a private browser window (to bypass cache). Read your description as a customer would. Make sure the formatting rendered correctly. Check the Look Inside to see if your cover and first page show up.
  5. If you spot a typo or want to tweak, repeat from step 1. Edit in Pendrilo, mark as live, paste into KDP. The version history still holds the old version, so you can always compare.

Pendrilo doesn't automate the final paste-into-KDP step because Amazon doesn't allow third-party apps to upload directly for security reasons. But by keeping your listing in Pendrilo, you get a single source of truth. You're not managing keywords in one spreadsheet, description in a Google Doc, and categories in a Word file. It's all in one place, versioned, previewed, and checked.

The Workflow Scales

If you're publishing one book, this feels like overkill. But if you're a series author or you manage multiple pen names, the KDP Listing tab saves enormous time. You can use Pendrilo's free KDP keyword byte counter to test keywords before you enter them into Pendrilo, and you can draft descriptions offline and paste them in bulk.

Because Pendrilo is self-hosted, you're not beholden to a SaaS provider's uptime or price changes. Your listing data is stored locally. You can back it up. You own it.

And if you're running Amazon Ads or experimenting with ad keywords, Pendrilo's Amazon Ads tab lets you log campaigns and track budget and status right beside your organic listing. You can see both the keywords you're bidding on and the keywords you've optimized for search. In one dashboard, the full picture of your book's discoverability.

The KDP Listing flow is designed for authors who want control, speed, and a record of what they've done. It's the publishing equivalent of having a checklist you can always refer back to, and a paper trail that proves you were intentional about every choice.