Free tool
Ebook royalty calculator
What a list price actually pays after the band and the delivery fee — and a warning when the price you picked earns you less than a lower one would.
The 70% band runs from $2.99 to $9.99. Outside it, the rate is 35%.
Delivery fee is $0.15 per MB, charged on 70% sales only. Text-only books are usually 1–3 MB.
You keep, per sale
$6.69
70% band · $0.30 delivery fee deducted
Per month
$334.65
Amazon keeps, per sale
$3.30
The two bands, and why there are two
Amazon offers ebook authors a choice of two royalty rates. The 70% band applies inside a price window and comes with conditions attached — the book must not be priced lower elsewhere, it must be available in certain territories, and a delivery fee based on file size is deducted from your share. Outside that window the rate is 35%, with no delivery fee.
Nobody chooses a band. You choose a price, and the price chooses the band.
The cliff
Because the higher rate stops at the top of the window, raising your price past it can lower what you earn per sale. A book at the top of the 70% band beats the same book a few dollars higher in the 35% band, and it beats it while also being cheaper for the reader — which usually means more sales too.
Set the price above the band in the calculator and it says so explicitly. That warning is the reason this tool exists.
And the comparison nobody runs
A store takes 30% at best and 65% at worst. A checkout on your own site takes a few percent plus a fixed fee. On a $15 book that is roughly $5.25 against roughly $14 — nearly three times the money per copy.
The catch is the words “per copy”: on Amazon, strangers find the book on their own, and selling direct they do not. The full arithmetic, and when each one wins, is here.
Questions people ask
Why do I earn more at $9.99 than at $12.99?
Because the 70% band has an upper edge. Above it you drop to 35%, and 35% of $12.99 is less than 70% of $9.99. It is a cliff rather than a slope, and it is the most common self-publishing pricing mistake.
What is the delivery fee?
A per-megabyte charge deducted from 70% royalties only, based on your file size. For a text-only book it is pennies. For an illustrated one it can be a real deduction, which is a genuine reason to compress images before uploading.
Are these rates current?
They are the long-standing US figures and they are editable in the calculator. Amazon sets every one of them and can change them without notice — check KDP’s own royalty tables before pricing anything.
Does this cover paperback royalties?
No. Print is calculated differently: a percentage of list price after the printing cost is subtracted, and the printing cost rises with page count. A long book priced low can pay nothing, or be rejected for being below its own cost to print.
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