Guides

What Can I Sell on Amazon as a New Seller? Open Categories, Gated Ones, and the Restrictions Nobody Mentions (2026) As a new seller on Amazon US you can list in most categories on day one without asking anyone. A short list of categories needs approval before you can list at all, a separate policy bans some products outright, and a third set of gates — brand, ASIN, condition, hazmat and fulfillment — sits underneath the category and catches sellers who thought the category was the whole question. This guide maps all three layers so you know which bucket a product is in before you spend money on it. ...

KDP advertising runs on Amazon Ads, not inside KDP. The links on your KDP Bookshelf are entry points; the campaign is built, funded, and reported in the Amazon Ads console. Three ad types are associated with books, and they do not share the same door. Sponsored Products is open to an author with one published title — Amazon lists “professional sellers, vendors, book vendors, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors, and agencies” as eligible advertisers. Sponsored Brands is gated: “To create a Sponsored Brands campaign, you must add at least one pen name with three unique titles to your Author Central account” (KDP Help, data checked 2026-08-22). Kindle lockscreen ads are a third, separate thing — bought through Amazon DSP, not through the Sponsored Ads console. ...

Amazon Direct Fulfillment is Amazon’s 1P dropship program: a shopper buys an item on Amazon, Amazon issues you — the vendor — a purchase order for that order, and you ship it from your own warehouse to the shopper’s door. There is no global “24-hour” or “48-hour” shipping deadline. Amazon’s API model carries the ship deadline inside each purchase order, in a required field called requiredShipDate, so the clock arrives with the order rather than applying to all of them. The one flat deadline Amazon does publish is a different one: you have 24 hours to acknowledge the order. ...

There are two different things people mean by “Amazon FBA Canada,” and confusing them is the expensive mistake. Route one is Remote Fulfillment with FBA: your existing US FBA inventory fills Amazon.ca orders, nothing crosses the border until a customer buys, and Amazon’s own page states that “Customers pay any import duties, taxes, and fees as the importer of record” (sell.amazon.com, data checked 2026-08-22). Route two is real FBA in Canada: you ship inventory into Canadian fulfillment centres yourself, become the importer of record for that shipment, and pay Canadian FBA fulfillment fees on every unit. Same three letters, different customs posture, different landed cost. This guide puts the two side by side using only what Amazon publishes — and says plainly where it publishes nothing. ...

Amazon Local Selling lets you list products to shoppers inside a delivery area you draw yourself — down to the zip code — and fulfill those orders out of your own local stock instead of an Amazon fulfillment center. On fees, Amazon’s program page is unambiguous: “There are no additional fees to participate in Local Selling. You’ll continue paying a category referral fee per unit sold and a Professional selling plan fee.” (sell.amazon.com/programs/local-selling, data checked 2026-08-22.) ...

Selling books on Amazon FBA runs on the same account, the same plans, and the same fulfillment network as any other category — with one difference that decides most of your margin: books have their own published condition definitions, and the Used - Like New definition for books is visibly looser than the general one. Amazon’s general guidelines describe Used - Like New as “An item in perfect working condition”; the book-specific guidelines say “Item may have minor cosmetic defects (marks, wears, cuts, bends, crushes) on the cover, spine, pages or dust cover” (data checked 2026-08-22). Grade a used paperback against the general wording and you will list a legitimate Like New copy as Very Good — and give away the price gap on every unit. ...

US Amazon FBA taxes start with one form — Form 1099-K — and one number that is wrong in most places you will read it. Checked 2026-08-21, the IRS states the federal threshold this way: “Third party settlement organizations (TPSOs) (payment apps and online marketplaces) are required to report payments on Form 1099-K when the total amount of payments you receive for goods or services through the platform exceeds $20,000 in more than 200 transactions.” Both conditions, not either. Amazon’s own 1099-K FAQ matches it. This guide covers what that form reports, when Amazon issues it, and how to bridge it to your books — it is orientation, not tax advice, and every position below is one a licensed accountant or tax adviser has to sign off on for your facts. ...

Amazon FBA vs Dropshipping: The Policy Gate First, Then the Cash-Flow Math Dropshipping is not banned on Amazon — Amazon’s own Drop Shipping Policy calls it “generally acceptable” and then attaches conditions, the hard one being that you must be the seller of record and that no third party’s name may appear on the packing slip, invoice, or outer box. FBA is not the opposite of dropshipping; it is a fulfillment method you can also fail those conditions with. The real difference between the two models is when your cash leaves your bank account: FBA spends it weeks before the first sale, dropshipping spends it after the order. ...

No. Amazon’s own seller registration guide states: “You don’t need to be an LLC or registered business, or be otherwise incorporated, to sell in the Amazon store.” The page tells unincorporated sellers to “Select None, I am an individual for your Business type and we’ll update the registration process to collect relevant information” (Amazon Seller registration guide, checked 2026-08-21). Whether you should form one is a different question, and it is a legal and tax judgment — consult a licensed attorney or CPA. This article does not substitute for professional advice. ...

Selling on Amazon Business means offering business-only prices and quantity discounts to buyers shopping on Amazon Business — and there is no separate application or approval gate to pass first. Amazon’s seller-facing page describes the entry point as a Professional selling account plus a visit to B2B Central in Seller Central. The numbers most guides leave out are the floors: a product earns the Business Savings Blue Badge when it carries at least a 4-star rating and either a single-unit business price at least 5% below the standard price, or a first-tier quantity discount of at least 3%. Quantity discounts stop at five tiers. Data checked 2026-08-21. ...

Amazon does not track a single “suppressed” condition. Its own listings data model tracks two independent flags — whether shoppers can buy the item and whether shoppers can see it — plus a separate list of issues that may or may not have triggered an enforcement action. So a listing can be buyable but invisible in search, visible but unbuyable, or live and still carrying open warnings. Most guides on suppressed listings on Amazon collapse that into one word and one fix, which is why a seller can read three of them and still not know which problem they have. ...

If you sell with FBA on Amazon.com, you are most likely already exporting. Amazon says so in one sentence: “Most sellers who use FBA are enrolled in FBA Export automatically” (sell.amazon.com, data checked 2026-08-20). Turning it off is a single dropdown in Seller Central. The money question is narrower than most articles make it: Amazon charges no program fee and the buyer pays international shipping and import fees, so the “cost” of FBA Export is never a line item on your statement. It shows up as compliance exposure, distribution-agreement risk, and the way cross-border returns get adjudicated. This guide separates what Amazon actually publishes from what it does not, then gives you a way to decide. ...