KDP Royalty Calculator: Free Tool for Authors

How to Use This KDP Royalty Calculator

The above KDP Royalty Calculator is extremely easy to use. Just follow these steps:

Step 1:

Is your book an eBook, a Paperback, or a Hardback?

Step 2A : Royalty Rate and Book Size

If you selected an Ebook in Step 1, select your royalty rate of either 35% or 70%, depending on your ebook price. Also enter in the number of Megabytes (MB) for your ebook. This will affect the delivery cost.

Step 2B : Interior and Pages

If you selected Paperback or Hardcover in Step 1, then select your Interior and input the number of pages for your book here.

Step 3 : Marketplace

Be sure to input the correct marketplace (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, etc.)

Step 4 : Book Price

Then enter the price that you plan to sell your book for. You can then see in the graph a comprehensive graph of your royalty rates, along with some advice on how to improve.

Barcode With Price Placeholder

Ebook earnings can be the golden goose for authors, often accounting for the lion's share of our profits. Because of that, we want to know how they work. Let's dive in together and make sense of Amazon's ebook royalties, shall we?

Amazon, that giant of the online book world, offers us authors a tantalizing 70% royalty rate on ebooks. Sounds good? Well…this golden rate comes with a pretty long list of requirements:

• Your book has to be priced between $2.99 and $9.99.
• It must be sold in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, or 35 other countries.
• It has to be your original content, not something from the public domain.
• And, the ebook version needs to be at least 20% cheaper than any print version.

So, yes, there are quite a few hoops to jump through to nab that higher royalty. But if you can tick all these boxes, you should be good to go.

One thing I appreciate about Amazon is that they keep the royalty calculation simple:

Royalty Rate * List Price = Royalty.

Let's see how it works for a book priced at $9.99 with that lovely 70% royalty rate. The math is straightforward:

70% of $2.99 = roughly $2.09 (after rounding to the nearest cent)

But before you start counting your future riches, there's one more wrinkle in the 70% royalty arrangement. Amazon also charges a delivery cost for each ebook sold at this royalty rate. It's based on the file size of your book. The bigger your book, the more you pay in delivery costs (more on this below).

So, while the 70% royalty is attractive, it's essential to weigh up these costs when deciding your book price and format.

It's not hard to see that Amazon is encouraging us authors to price our ebooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. There's a clear financial incentive with the higher royalty rate. But remember, there's a long list of requirements to meet, not to mention delivery costs.

Other Considerations for Ebooks:

In addition to the above, you should also take the following into consideration when calculating your Ebook royalties:

Royalties for Kindle Unlimited

If your book is enrolled in KDP Select (or Kindle Unlimited), the royalties follow an entirely different pattern for readers who borrow your book through KU:

• The Global royalty rate is calculated by dividing the KDP Select Global Fund by the Total Pages Read to get the KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) Rate.
• Your specific royalties for each page read is Your KENP Pages Read multiplied by the KENP Rate, which equals Your Royalties.

The biggest advantage is that the royalties can be somewhat good, especially if you have a longer book. The biggest disadvantage is that to qualify, your ebook must be exclusive to Amazon.

If you're looking to distribute elsewhere, KDP Select isn't for you.

See our other tool on calculating your KENP Royalty Rate.

Watch Out for Delivery Fees

If you're at the 70% royalty rate, Amazon also charges delivery fees for each book sold. For every megabyte that your ebook takes up, your delivery charge increases. While Amazon does compress your ebook a bit when you upload, you should still optimize to reduce the size.

Bold text and images add extra megabytes to your fee, so only include when necessary. Keep paragraphs short and chapters concise.

Every cent matters when you're trying to profit from your writing. While KDP Select offers opportunities for greater royalty rates, extra fees can cut into that significantly if you're not careful.

Make sure to weigh all options for your specific book before diving into KDP Select. Consider your genre, target market, and how you intend to promote to determine what program will benefit most in the end.

With some experimenting, you'll find what works best to gain the highest return.

See our article on how to reduce download fees on Amazon.

Calculating Royalties for Print

Amazon offers us a 60% royalty rate for print books priced $9.99 (USD) or higher, and a 50% royalty rate for print books priced lower. That's pretty decent, right? Well hang on, because unlike with ebooks, we have to factor in the cost of production.

So, the formula becomes:

(Royalty Rate * List Price) – Printing Costs = Royalty.

When it comes to calculating those pesky print costs, there are four factors you need to consider:

Page count:

Amazon has a fixed production rate for books under 108 pages (for black and white), after which it goes up by page. More pages means more cost.

Print color:

You've got three choices here—premium color, standard color, or black and white. The better the color, the higher the cost.

Country of sale:

Printing costs vary from country to country.

Paperback or hardcover:

Hardcover books are more expensive to produce.

These four factors can significantly affect your royalty earnings from print book sales.

Example: If you’re selling a paperback book with 300 pages, black ink, and priced at $19.99, you would calculate 60% of $19.99 (which would be about $12), then subtract the printing cost (which in this case is $4.45), leaving you with $7.54 in royalties.

So how can you keep these print costs down without compromising the quality of my book? Good news! I've written an entire article about that very topic. You can check that out here.

The world of print book royalties is a bit more complex than its digital counterpart, but don't let that discourage you. It's just another part of the self-publishing journey, and with a bit of knowledge and strategy, you can easily figure it out.

Other Considerations for Print:

Paperback vs Hardcover

Both paperbacks and hardcovers on KDP Print have a fixed cost for books up to 108 pages. What's more, there's a variable cost per page after that for both formats.

And when it comes to the color choice, both have higher costs associated with color instead of black and white. So far, so similar.

However, there's a catch. Hardcovers are generally more expensive in the fixed costs, meaning it will cost you a lot more overall. But that’s to be expected.

Expanded Distribution

When it comes to distribution, there are a couple of things you should be aware of. For Amazon to distribute copies of your print book to other bookstores, you'll need to enroll your book in something called “Expanded Distribution.”

Before you jump on board, you should know this: you'll need to price higher. Why? Simply put, the royalties for those who buy through Expanded Distribution are far less. Amazon will require this number to be high enough so you’re not making a negative profit.

But don't let that scare you off. Expanded Distribution can actually be a good thing. Despite the common belief that most bookstores typically don't stock books bought by Amazon, there's no harm in checking Expanded Distribution.

It opens up new avenues for your book to be discovered, and on the off chance that a bookstore does choose to stock your book, that's a wider audience reached!

Expanded Distribution

On Amazon, you might notice VAT taxes being withdrawn. If you're asking, “What the heck is VAT?”, let me break it down for you. VAT stands for Value Added Tax, and it's quite similar to the sales tax we know in the US. Simply put, it’s a tax applied to goods and services.

Sounds terrifying, right? Taxes usually do. But before you start tearing your hair out, I've got some good news for you. The VAT for books is quite low. For instance:

• Germany: 7%
• France: 5.5%
• Spain: 4%
• Italy: 4%

Keeping Track of Royalties Outside Amazon

If you're like me and have your books listed on multiple platforms, you might want a more consolidated view of your royalties. That’s why I recommend ScribeCount.

ScribeCount is a fantastic tool for keeping track of all your royalties in one place. It's user-friendly, it's efficient, and it's tailor-made for authors. Give it a shot, and see the difference it makes in managing your sales data.