KDP's royalty option, Select checkbox and price point each move real money. The 2026 numbers from Amazon's help pages, and what to check on every title.
KDP is free to use, which is why most authors set it up in an afternoon and never revisit the choices they made. The royalty option, the KDP Select checkbox and the price point each move real money every month, and Amazon rarely tells you when a default is working against you. Set a $14.99 ebook on the wrong plan and you keep 35 cents on the dollar instead of 70. Enroll in Select without noticing it renews and you find your ebook still locked to Amazon nine months later. This post covers the numbers as they stand on Amazon's help pages in September 2026 so you can make each decision on purpose.
KDP offers two ebook royalty options and the difference is not just the percentage. Each comes with its own price band and its own conditions.
| 35% option | 70% option | |
|---|---|---|
| List price on Amazon.com | $0.99 to $200.00 | $2.99 to $12.99 |
| Delivery fee | None | $0.15 per MB, minimum $0.01 |
| Where it applies | Every marketplace | 70% territories only; 35% elsewhere |
| Public domain works | Allowed | Not allowed |
| Price versus print edition | No rule | Must be at least 20% below the print list price |
The 70% ceiling moved from $9.99 to $12.99 on July 7, 2026, the first change since 2007. If you priced a longer nonfiction book at $9.99 to stay inside the old band, you now have $3 of room. The 35% option's floor also rises with file size: $1.99 for files between 3 MB and 10 MB, $2.99 above 10 MB. An image-heavy book can therefore lose the $0.99 price point on either plan.
The delivery fee only applies at 70%, and it is charged per megabyte of the converted file. A 1 MB novel pays about 15 cents per sale. A 20 MB photography book pays $3.00, which at a $9.99 price leaves less than the 35% option would have. Check your file size on the pricing page before you assume 70% is the better deal.
The 70% rate is also geographic. Amazon pays 70% only on sales to customers in a listed set of territories that includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia, most of Western Europe, Japan and a handful of others. A sale to a reader outside that list pays 35% regardless of your setting. Four of the 70% territories, Brazil, India, Japan and Mexico, pay 70% only if the book is enrolled in KDP Select.
KDP Select is a 90-day program for the ebook edition only. In exchange for making your ebook exclusive to Amazon, it goes into Kindle Unlimited, you unlock two promotion tools, and you get the 70% rate in those four extra territories. You can still sell the paperback, hardcover and audiobook anywhere, and you can still lend the ebook through public libraries.
The exclusivity is the whole trade. While enrolled, that ebook cannot be on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play or your own website. Enrollment renews automatically for another 90 days unless you untick the renewal box on your Bookshelf before the term ends. If you plan to go wide later, put the renewal date in your calendar. Our post on why going wide too early costs you sales covers when exclusivity is the right call and when it stops being one.
Per term you get either up to five Free Book Promotion days or one Kindle Countdown Deal of up to seven days, not both, and unused days do not roll over.
Kindle Unlimited pays by pages read rather than by borrow. Amazon sets a monthly KDP Select Global Fund and divides it by the total pages read across every enrolled book, using a standardized page count it calls KENP. Amazon announces the fund monthly in its community forum. For July 2026 the KDP Select page reports total author earnings of $71.0 million. Amazon does not publish a per-page rate. Authors work it out from their own reports, and in recent months it has sat under half a cent per page, so a book of 300 KENP read to the end earns a little over a dollar. Earnings cap at 3,000 KENP per title per customer. Whether that beats the sales you would have made on other stores is a question only your own numbers can answer.
Price decides your royalty tier, so it is worth deciding backwards from the tier you want. At 70%, a $2.99 ebook nets about $2.09 before delivery. At $4.99 it nets about $3.49. At $12.99, the new ceiling, it nets about $9.09. Above $12.99 you fall to 35%, so a $14.99 ebook nets $5.25, less than the $12.99 book does. Between $9.99 and $12.99 the choice is now open, and your category and review count decide whether readers will pay it.
Amazon also matches prices. If your ebook is cheaper on another store, Amazon can lower its price to match and pays royalty on the matched price. If you set a promotional price elsewhere, set it on Amazon too.
Print royalties work differently. Amazon takes a flat printing cost per copy and pays you a percentage of list price minus that cost. The percentage depends on the list price: 60% at $9.99 and above on Amazon.com, 50% below that. Expanded Distribution, which places your paperback with wholesalers and other retailers, pays 40% of list price minus printing cost.
Printing costs on Amazon.com, black ink, as listed today:
| Format | Pages | Cost per copy |
|---|---|---|
| Paperback | 24 to 110 | $2.30 flat |
| Paperback | 110 to 828 | $1.00 + $0.012 per page |
| Hardcover | 75 to 108 | $6.80 flat |
| Hardcover | 110 to 550 | $5.65 + $0.012 per page |
Color costs more. Standard color paperback interiors run $1.00 plus $0.0255 per page for 72 to 600 pages, and premium color runs $1.00 plus $0.065 per page. Premium color hardcover runs $5.65 plus $0.065 per page.
Worked example: a 300-page black ink paperback costs $4.60 to print. At $14.99 it earns 60% of list, $8.99, minus $4.60, so $4.39 per copy on Amazon. The same book through Expanded Distribution earns $6.00 minus $4.60, or $1.40. The hardcover of that book costs $9.25 to print, so at $24.99 it earns $14.99 minus $9.25, or $5.74. KDP's minimum list price is the printing cost divided by the royalty rate, and it will not let you go lower.
Setup runs in three pages per format. Details holds the title, description, keywords, categories and the AI disclosure question. Content takes the manuscript and cover and, for print, trim size and paper. Pricing is where you pick the royalty option, territories and Select.
The AI disclosure is a requirement, not a courtesy. Amazon distinguishes AI-generated content, where a tool wrote the text, made the image or produced the translation, even if you edited it heavily afterwards, from AI-assisted content, where you wrote it and used a tool to check or refine it. Only AI-generated content must be disclosed, and the obligation applies both to new books and when you republish edits to an old one. Our post on Amazon KDP's AI disclosure rule walks through the checkbox and what Amazon does with the answer.
Once you press Publish, Amazon's guidance is up to three business days for the book to go live, up to ten for low-content books such as journals, and up to 72 hours after that before it shows in search results. Plan a launch date with at least a week of margin, and use pre-order for the ebook if the date matters.
KDP will assign a free ISBN to your paperback or hardcover. It is a real ISBN, but it works only on KDP, and the imprint on the record reads "Independently published." You cannot take that ISBN to IngramSpark, a printer or a bookstore. If you want your own imprint name as publisher of record, or you expect to print the same edition anywhere other than Amazon, you need an ISBN you own. Bowker sells them in the US, and resellers such as ISBNdirect do too. Our guide to ISBNs for self-publishing covers the decision in detail. Ebooks on KDP do not need an ISBN at all.
The KDP dashboard refreshes every 15 minutes, but ebook orders take up to 24 hours to appear and KU pages read take 24 to 48 hours. The Orders report counts ebooks once payment clears and print books once they ship. KENP reads are finalized monthly around the 15th, which is also when the Prior Months' Royalties report closes the previous month using month-end exchange rates. That report is the one to trust; the dashboard is an estimate.
Royalties are paid roughly 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, so January sales arrive by the end of March. Expanded Distribution runs 90 days. Direct deposit has no minimum. Wire transfers and checks hold your balance until it reaches $100 on Amazon.com, with equivalent thresholds on the other marketplaces. If you sell in several marketplaces, each one pays separately.
Amazon Ads runs from a separate console linked to your KDP account. Sponsored Products put a single book in search results and on product pages. Sponsored Brands show a set of your books under your name. Both are pay-per-click with a daily budget you set, and a book becomes eligible shortly after it goes live. Ads do not fix a book that does not convert. Get the cover, description and first reviews in place before you spend, and treat the first month as a keyword test.
Open your Bookshelf and check three things on every title. First, the royalty option and price: if your ebook sits between $10.00 and $12.99 on the 35% plan, you can move it to 70% now. Second, whether Select auto-renew is on and whether you still want it. Third, the AI disclosure on anything you have republished since 2023. Then run your print edition against the table above and decide whether the free ISBN or your own fits where the book is going. Each item is money you either keep or leave with Amazon.
Indie bookstores doubled since 2009 and B&N is opening stores again. Why most self-published books still miss the shelf, and the settings that fix it.
IngramSpark offers wide distribution, print-on-demand, creative control, and ease of use, though it also comes with some challenges.