Most people starting Kindle Direct Publishing obsess over cover design and formatting before they've validated that anyone wants the book at all. That's backwards, and it's why so many first books sell zero copies in the first month.

Here's the actual order that works:

1. Reverse-engineer demand first. Go to Amazon, search your rough topic/niche, and look at the top 20 results. If the top sellers all have 500+ reviews and were published years ago, that's a saturated niche — you need a genuinely different angle, not a better cover. If the top results are thin (low review counts, inconsistent quality, gaps in sub-topics), that's your opening.

2. Check the sub-categories, not just the main category. Amazon lets you pick two categories per book. The real money is in finding a specific sub-category where you can realistically hit page 1 — "Journals > Travel Journals for Teens" beats "Journals" every time for a new publisher.

3. Price against the category norm, not your gut. If everything in your niche sells at $6.99-$9.99, pricing at $14.99 "because it's worth more" just kills your conversion rate. Match the category, differentiate on content.

4. Only THEN worry about cover and interior design. Once you know there's demand and you know your positioning, design becomes about matching what already converts in that niche — not standing out for the sake of it.

If you skip step 1, no amount of formatting polish saves the book. Validate the niche before you invest a single hour in production.

Happy to go deeper on any of these steps if useful.