KDP pays you a royalty on each ebook sale, but the percentage on the dashboard is only the starting point. Two rates are on offer, 70% and 35%, and the one that applies to your book depends on its price and a few other conditions. Once delivery costs are taken off, the amount you keep can be noticeably lower than the headline figure. Here is how to work it out before you set a price.
How the two royalty rates work
KDP's 70% royalty is available for ebooks priced within a set window, which is $2.99 to $9.99 in the US marketplace and similar ranges elsewhere. Prices outside that window earn the 35% rate. The window and the rules around it are KDP's, and they can change, so check the current terms on KDP before you commit to a price.
The 70% rate is not a clean 70% of what the reader pays. KDP deducts a delivery fee for each copy, calculated from the size of your ebook file. The 35% rate has no delivery fee in the standard arrangement, which means a cheap book with a large file can sometimes earn more at 35% than at 70%. That sounds odd until you run the numbers.
If you enrol in KDP Select and your book is borrowed through Kindle Unlimited, the income works differently again. Borrows pay per page read at a separate rate. That is outside the scope of this article, but it is worth reading KDP's current terms if it applies to you.
A worked example at $4.99
Take a novel listed at $4.99. It sits comfortably inside the 70% window, so the first thing to do is apply 70% to the list price.
0.70 × $4.99 = $3.49 (rounded)
Next, subtract the delivery fee. Suppose the ebook file is 2 MB. At the per-megabyte rate KDP publishes for the US marketplace (currently $0.15 per MB, though you should confirm the figure on KDP), delivery comes to about $0.30.
$3.49 − $0.30 = $3.19 per sale
Now compare the same $4.99 book at the 35% rate, which carries no delivery fee in the standard model:
0.35 × $4.99 = $1.75 per sale
At this price the 70% option is clearly better, and the delivery fee is a small cost next to it. The picture changes at the edges of the window and with heavier files, which is where most of the surprises come from.
The 70% option
Your royalty depends on the list price you set, the file size, and the marketplace. Two details trip up many first-time publishers. First, the 70% figure is generally calculated on the price excluding any sales tax or VAT that the marketplace adds for the buyer. Second, the delivery fee is charged on every copy sold, not once per title, so it adds up over a long sales life.
File size is the lever you control most directly. A text-only novel might be well under 1 MB. A illustrated cookbook or a photo-heavy memoir can run to tens of megabytes, and at that size the delivery fee can eat a meaningful slice of a $2.99 sale. If your book is picture-heavy, look at the images before you export the final file. The Pendrilo Formatter produces an EPUB from your manuscript, so the file you upload to KDP is the one whose size matters here.
The 35% option
The 35% rate is a fixed proportion of the list price with nothing subtracted. That makes it simple, and it applies to prices below the 70% window (very cheap books) and above it (premium or short-run pricing). Be careful with the upper end. A $12.99 ebook earns 35% of $12.99, which is about $4.55 per sale. That looks healthy, but it may sell far fewer copies than a $4.99 book does, so the per-sale figure is only half the story.
Why the price window matters
Most indie authors are better off pricing inside the 70% window, provided the delivery fee does not swallow the difference. The window is the reason a $9.99 book and a $10.00 book can earn very different amounts, even though the reader sees almost the same price.
Work out the break-even point for your own file. At a given file size, there is a list price below which 35% beats 70% after delivery. For a small file that point is well below $2.99, so it rarely matters. For a large file it can be higher, and that is worth knowing before you choose a price for a heavy title.
Price is also a marketing decision, not just an accounting one. Lowering a book from $4.99 to $2.99 may increase sales enough to make up for the smaller royalty per copy, or it may not. The royalty figures tell you what each sale is worth. They do not tell you how many sales you will get.
Checking your own numbers
The fastest way to see what you keep is to run your own book through the free KDP Royalty Calculator at pendrilo.com/tools, which needs no sign-in. Enter your list price, the file size, and the marketplace, and compare the 70% and 35% results side by side. Do this before you publish, and again whenever you change the price or the file.
Then confirm the result against KDP itself. Royalty terms, delivery rates, and the price window are KDP's to set, and they have changed over the years. A calculator is a useful estimate, but KDP's current pricing page and your title's setup screen are the authority. If the two disagree, trust KDP.
A few habits will keep your numbers honest:
- Record the file size of each published edition, since a new cover or added images can change the delivery fee.
- Note the list price and the royalty rate on your own sales log, so you can see the real per-sale figure rather than the cover price.
- Check your royalty report monthly, because returns, refunds and currency conversion show up there and can shift totals.
Once you know what a sale is worth, pricing decisions get easier. You can compare a promotion against a standard price with real figures, and you can see whether a larger, illustrated edition still makes sense at the price you have set. If you are preparing a new ebook and want to produce the EPUB yourself, you can create a free Pendrilo account and try the formatter during the beta.
