Free Amazon KDP royalty calculator. Switch between Kindle ebook and paperback formats; enter list price, royalty tier or page count; outputs royalty per sale, printing cost, and the minimum viable list price for paperbacks.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Last verified · Sources
Use when choosing a launch price for a new KDP title, or when deciding between the 35% and 70% royalty tiers, or when setting a paperback price that needs to clear its printing-cost floor.
Amazon's own KDP pricing page shows royalty tables, but this tool lets you flip between ebook and paperback and immediately see the paperback price floor without cross-referencing separate charts.
At $4.99 on the 70% tier, you earn $3.04 per sale. The 70% tier requires a list price between $2.99–$9.99 and enrollment in eligible territories.
Ebook royalty: at the 70% tier, royalty = price × 0.70 − (file size in MB × $0.15 delivery fee); at 35%, royalty = price × 0.35 with no delivery fee.
Paperback printing cost = $0.85 + $0.012 × (pages beyond 108), approximating KDP's US 6×9 black-and-white print rate. Royalty = 60% × (price − printing cost).
Minimum viable list price = printing cost ÷ 0.60, rounded up to the nearest cent — the price floor below which royalty would be zero or negative.
KDP pays 70% royalty only when your list price is between $2.99 and $9.99 and the book is enrolled in eligible territories; a delivery fee based on file size is subtracted. Outside that price band, or if you choose the 35% tier, you earn 35% with no delivery fee deducted.
KDP paperback royalty is 60% of (list price − printing cost), so the printing cost — which rises with page count — sets a hard floor. Below that price you'd earn $0 or a negative royalty, so KDP won't let you publish under it.
On the 70% royalty tier, Amazon charges $0.15 per megabyte of file size to cover delivery bandwidth. Image-heavy books can lose a meaningful chunk of royalty this way, so keeping file size lean matters.
Ebooks have simpler economics and no per-unit printing cost, so margins are more predictable. Paperbacks add a physical-product feel and print cost that scales with page count — run both formats through this calculator to compare royalty per sale before committing to a launch price.
Input
Ebook: $4.99 price, 70% tier, 3 MB file.
Output
Royalty ≈ $3.04/sale ($4.99 × 0.70 − 3 × $0.15).
$4.99 × 0.70 = $3.493 minus a $0.45 delivery fee (3 MB × $0.15) leaves about $3.04 per sale — switching to the 35% tier at the same price would only pay $1.75.
KDP ebook royalties come in two tiers and the higher one is not a straight upgrade. The 70% rate applies only inside a list price band — broadly $2.99 to $9.99 — and only in eligible territories. Outside that band or those territories, the same book earns 35%.
That produces a genuine cliff. A book priced at $9.99 on the 70% tier earns considerably more per sale than the same book at $10.99 on 35%, so raising the price can cut the royalty. The tool exists largely to make that visible before you set a price.
The 70% tier also deducts a delivery cost based on file size, charged per megabyte. For text-only books this is negligible. For anything image-heavy — cookbooks, illustrated children's books, technical books with screenshots — it becomes significant, and it is the reason a large file on the 70% tier can net less than a small one.
Paperbacks work on a different model entirely: royalty is a percentage of list price minus a printing cost driven by page count and interior type. Page count has a minimum of 24, and colour interiors cost several times mono. A short colour paperback can have a printing cost that exceeds any sensible list price, which is the constraint to check before committing to a format.
This calculator applies rates set by someone else, and they change. Check them against the source below before pricing anything that matters.
The 35% and 70% royalty tiers, the price bands that gate them, and the delivery-cost deduction.
Amazon pays paperback royalty as 60% of price minus a print cost that rises with page count. Below a break-even list price the royalty hits zero — here is how to find that floor before you publish.
How Amazon KDP's price-band eligibility rule, per-megabyte delivery fee, and paperback print-cost floor determine what a self-published book actually earns.
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