KDP Royalty Calculator

Kindle Direct Publishing offers two royalty plans for ebooks, and you choose one per book:

• 70% plan. You earn 70% of the list price, minus a delivery fee based on the file size. On Amazon.com the fee is $0.15 per megabyte, with a minimum of one cent. The list price has to be between $2.99 and $12.99 (the top of the band was $9.99 until July 2026), and it must be at least 20% below the list price of your print edition on Amazon. Sales to some countries outside the 70% territories earn 35% instead.
• 35% plan. You earn 35% of the list price and pay no delivery fee. The minimum price depends on the file size: $0.99 under 3 MB, $1.99 from 3 to 10 MB, $2.99 above that. It is the only option for prices below $2.99 or above $12.99, and for books that are mostly public-domain content.

For a typical text-only novel the delivery fee is small, so inside the $2.99–$12.99 band the 70% plan nearly always pays more. The exception is a very large file, such as an illustrated children’s book or a cookbook full of photos, where the per-megabyte fee eats into the royalty. Enter your real file size; KDP shows it on the pricing page after you upload the manuscript.

A paperback royalty is the royalty rate times the list price, minus the cost of printing that copy. On Amazon.com the rate is 60% at a list price of $9.99 or more and 50% below $9.99. The lower band arrived in June 2025, and it makes pricing just under $10 a poor deal: a 300-page black-ink paperback earns $0.39 at $9.98 but $1.39 at $9.99.

Printing cost is a fixed charge plus a charge per page, and depends on the ink and the trim size:

• Black ink, regular trim: $2.30 flat up to 110 pages, then $1.00 + $0.012 per page. A 300-page novel costs $4.60 to print.
• Black ink, large trim: $2.84 flat up to 110 pages, then $1.00 + $0.017 per page.
• Standard color (72–600 pages): $1.00 + $0.0255 per page regular, $1.00 + $0.0402 large.
• Premium color: $3.60 flat (regular) or $4.20 (large) up to 40 pages, then $1.00 + $0.065 or $0.08 per page.

Large trim means wider than 6.12 inches or taller than 9 inches, so 6 × 9 is the largest regular size. Choosing 6 × 9 over 7 × 10 can save over a dollar a copy on a long book. Page count matters more than anything else, which is why our book page count calculator is worth running before you pick a trim size and font.

• Avoid pricing a paperback just under $9.99. Because of the 50% band, the same 300-page book earns about $0.15 at $9.49 and $1.39 at $9.99. If your printing cost is high, the jump is the difference between earning something and earning nothing.
• Keep ebooks inside the 70% band. $2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com. A $1.99 ebook earns about $0.70; a $2.99 one earns about $2.
• Mind the print price. Your ebook must be at least 20% cheaper than your print edition on Amazon to qualify for 70%.
• Color costs a lot. A 32-page premium-color picture book costs $3.60 to print, so at $9.99 you earn about $2.39. Check what comparable books charge before you settle.
• Royalty is not profit. Ads, editing, cover design and any tools you pay for come out of it. Work out how many copies you need to cover them.

Numbers checked on November 8, 2026 against KDP’s help pages: eBook royalties, eBook list price requirements, delivery costs, paperback royalties and printing costs.

The calculator covers Amazon.com sales in US dollars. It doesn’t include Kindle Unlimited page reads, Expanded Distribution (which pays a different rate), hardcovers, other marketplaces, VAT, or tax withholding. Your KDP Bookshelf always shows the authoritative figure for your book.

Anthra exports print-ready PDFs, EPUBs and covers that you upload to KDP yourself; it doesn’t publish to Amazon for you. To go from an idea to those files, see the agentic book creator or the AI book generator.