KDP Royalty Rates Explained: 35% vs 70%, and What Amazon Actually Pays You
The 70% royalty option is not automatic and not always the better deal. Here is exactly how KDP's 35% and 70% ebook tiers work, what the delivery fee really costs, how paperback and hardcover royalties are computed, and the pricing traps that quietly cut your royalty in half.
"Amazon pays 70%" is the sentence that gets most authors into self-publishing — and it is only true under conditions Amazon spells out in the fine print. Choose the wrong price, publish a large file, or sell in the wrong marketplace, and the same book quietly earns 35% instead. Here is how the royalty tiers actually work, with the math Amazon runs on every sale.
The two ebook tiers
KDP gives every ebook a choice between two royalty plans:
| 35% plan | 70% plan | |
|---|---|---|
| List price (US) | $0.99 – $200.00 | $2.99 – $9.99 only |
| Delivery fee | None | Deducted before royalty |
| Where it applies | Every marketplace | Most marketplaces; in Brazil, Japan, Mexico and India only with KDP Select |
| Price-matching | Royalty paid on list price | Royalty paid on the promotional price if Amazon discounts |
The price window is the rule most often tripped over. Price your ebook at $1.99 to "sell more" or at $12.99 because it is a 600-page reference work, and the 70% option simply is not available — you earn 35% whether you like it or not.
The delivery fee: the 70% plan's hidden toll
On the 70% plan, Amazon charges you to deliver your own file — about $0.15 per megabyte on Amazon.com — and deducts it before computing the royalty:
Royalty (70%) = 0.70 × (List price − Delivery fee)
Royalty (35%) = 0.35 × List price ← no delivery feeFor a typical 2 MB novel that is $0.30 — noise. For a 50 MB illustrated cookbook it is $7.50, which at a $9.99 price makes the 70% plan pay less than the 35% one:
70% plan: 0.70 × ($9.99 − $7.50) = $1.74
35% plan: 0.35 × $9.99 = $3.50Image-heavy publishers should run this math per title, not assume. Our free KDP royalty calculator does it with Amazon's current fee constants.
Print royalties: one rate, minus printing
Paperback and hardcover have no tiers. The rate is a fixed 60% of list price, and the printing cost is subtracted from your share:
Print royalty = (0.60 × List price) − Printing costA 300-page black-and-white US paperback costs about $0.85 + 300 × $0.012 = $4.45 to print. At $14.99 that leaves a $4.54 royalty — around 30% of list price, less than half the headline "60%". Page count is a royalty decision: every 100 extra pages costs you about $1.20 per copy, forever. (Expanded Distribution, if you enable it, drops the rate to 40% on those channels.)
Same book, three very different royalties
| Format | List price | What Amazon subtracts | Your royalty | Effective share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ebook, 70% plan | $9.99 | $0.30 delivery | $6.78 | 68% |
| Ebook, 35% plan | $12.99 | — | $4.55 | 35% |
| Paperback, 300 pp | $14.99 | $4.45 printing | $4.54 | 30% |
This table is why per-format profit tracking matters: an ad click on the paperback needs to work twice as hard as one on the ebook before it breaks even — the exact subject of break-even ACOS.
Three traps worth knowing before you price
- The 70% window is checked per marketplace, in local currency. The qualifying band on Amazon.de or Amazon.co.jp is its own range in EUR or JPY — a price that qualifies in the US can fall outside it elsewhere, silently switching that marketplace to 35%.
- Kindle Unlimited page reads are a separate royalty stream. Neither 35% nor 70% applies to borrows — pages read are paid from a monthly fund at a per-page rate (see how KENP page reads become royalties).
- The minimum list price for print is set by the printing cost. Amazon will not let you price a paperback below the point where your 60% share covers printing — page-heavy books therefore have a floor price whether you like it or not.
Where TrueRoyalties fits
Your royalty is not one number — it is a per-format, per-marketplace, per-price computation that changes with delivery fees, printing costs and currency. TrueRoyalties reads your actual KDP royalty data instead of estimating it, joins it to your ad spend, and shows what each book truly earns after every deduction — because a 70% headline rate means nothing until it lands in the only equation that matters: Net Profit = Royalties − Ad Spend. To model a price before you publish, start with the free royalty calculator.