How KDP royalties work
Amazon KDP offers two royalty plans for eBooks, and the one you get is decided almost entirely by your list price. Price between $2.99 and $9.99 and you qualify for the 70% plan; price below $2.99 or above $9.99 and you drop to 35%. The cliff is real: a $2.98 eBook earns about $1.04 per sale, while a $2.99 eBook earns roughly $1.94 — a one-cent price change that nearly doubles your royalty. The same effect works at the top of the band, which is why so many self-published eBooks cluster between $2.99 and $9.99.
The 70% plan comes with two strings attached. First, it applies in Amazon's listed 70%-eligible marketplaces, so earnings on some international stores can differ. Second, a delivery fee is deducted from every sale — which is where many authors' "why is my royalty short?" confusion comes from.
Delivery fees, explained
On the 70% plan, Amazon charges about $0.15 per megabyte of your eBook file, deducted before your royalty is calculated. A text-only eBook is usually around 1 MB, so the fee is a rounding error. Worked example: a $4.99 text eBook earns 70% × $4.99 = $3.49, minus a ~$0.15 delivery fee, leaving about $3.34 per sale — exactly what the calculator above shows at the default price. Where delivery fees bite is image-heavy books: a photography guide or cookbook with a large file can give back a meaningful slice of each sale, which is one reason image-heavy formats often do better as print. The 35% plan charges no delivery fee at all.
Paperback royalties: 60% minus printing
Print works differently. KDP paperbacks pay a 60% royalty on list price, and the cost of printing each copy is deducted from that 60% — you never pay printing costs upfront, because every copy is printed on demand after it sells. Worked example: on a $9.99 paperback, 60% of list is $5.99. From that, Amazon subtracts the printing cost for your specific book — set by page count, ink type, and trim size, and shown in KDP's pricing screen before you publish. For a standard 6×9" black-and-white book, a few dollars of that $5.99 goes to printing and the remainder is yours, which is why shorter black-and-white books keep noticeably more of a $9.99 price than long or color ones.
If you enroll in KDP Select, Kindle Unlimited pages read earn on top of sales: roughly half a cent per normalized page (KENP), which adds up for longer books with strong read-through.
How to price your eBook
Start inside the 70% band and work from your genre's norms rather than your effort. For most non-fiction, $4.99–$7.99 hits the sweet spot: high enough to signal quality, low enough to be an impulse buy, and comfortably inside the 70% band. Use the calculator above to compare a few price points side by side, check what the top sellers in your category charge, and remember the band edges — $2.99 beats $2.49 and $9.99 beats $10.99 in per-sale royalty, not just in rate. For the full setup — keywords, categories, and the AI-content disclosure — see our Amazon KDP publishing guide.
Frequently asked questions
What royalty rate does Amazon KDP pay?
For eBooks, KDP pays 70% on list prices between $2.99 and $9.99, and 35% on prices outside that band. Paperbacks earn 60% of list price minus the cost of printing each copy.
Why is my KDP royalty less than 70%?
The most common reason is the delivery fee: on the 70% plan Amazon deducts a small per-megabyte charge from every sale before paying you. Royalties also drop to 35% whenever your list price sits below $2.99 or above $9.99, and rates can differ in some international marketplaces.
How much does KDP charge for delivery fees?
On the 70% plan the delivery fee is about $0.15 per megabyte of your eBook file. A typical text-only eBook is around 1 MB, so the fee is roughly $0.15 per sale — image-heavy books cost more to deliver. There is no delivery fee on the 35% plan.
Do I need to pay anything to publish on KDP?
No. Publishing on Amazon KDP is free — there are no upfront costs, listing fees, or subscriptions. Amazon takes its share out of each sale: the royalty split on eBooks, and the royalty split plus per-copy printing cost on paperbacks.