Amazon KDP Royalty Rates & Pricing Strategies

You want to self-publish on Amazon KDP, the largest publishing platform on Earth. Well, it’s best to get familiar with Amazon KDP royalty rates. How do book prices appear for shoppers? How do you select the right pricing? How much book royalties are left for you? Here’s your quick guide. ⬇

First, How Your Book Shows Up For Shoppers

Have you browsed for products on Amazon? If not, this is how the sales page looks for most products:

We see a similar page for books, but with a couple of differences:

There’s the book cover on the left. Then we’ve got the book title and description. We see three main cards or book formats – ebook, audiobook, print – with their corresponding prices.

The price under audiobook shows up as $0.00 because of the free trial option with Audible, Amazon’s audio app. On the right panel, we see how much the reader can save by going for the Kindle ebook price versus the print price. Pretty nifty.

Now, how do you set your own KDP pricing?

How to Price a Book on Amazon

You can sell your title for however much you’d like, as long as it’s within KDP’s range of minimum and maximum book prices. Amazon self-publishing pricing differs depending on the format type:

To learn how to make money on Amazon with your book, there are best practices to know when pricing your ebook, print, or audiobook format –

Kindle Direct Publishing Pricing Strategies

Most self-published books are priced lower than traditionally published books. That’s because a lower price will trigger more sales. While traditionally published titles get more commercial backing, self-published titles may work harder to get initial sales.

• Ebooks: Generally priced under $5.99.
• Prints: Generally priced between $9.99 and $19.99. Depends on the subject matter and length (due to manufacturing costs).
• Audiobooks: As mentioned above, Amazon’s Audible bases pricing on audio length.

For first-time authors, it’s recommended to price lower than average market prices. (Readers won’t invest a ton of money in a newbie author.) If this is your first book release, one of your top priorities should include generating attention and collecting reviews. Setting your title for a lower price will generate more traffic and, therefore, more reviews.

You can also experiment with different price points. Try starting with a low price and gradually price higher as you collect more reviews and credibility. You can change Kindle book prices at any time. For print-on-demand books, don’t forget to update the price on the barcode of your book.

As you plan your book marketing timeline, include periodic sales events where you offer your title for free or at a discounted price. Promote in newsletters like Bargain Booksy or Freebooksy where readers are browsing for book deals. See these book promotion success stories.

Most importantly, research your market. Take a look at other books in your genre and see how much they’re selling for:

• Go to Amazon and click on the category of your book. Check the prices of bestselling books as well as books by authors with name recognition like yours.
• Make sure to look at self-published titles. You can do this by scrolling down to the product details section.
• You can also identify self-published titles by looking for relatively low prices, if the book is in Kindle Unlimited, and if the print book’s publisher imprint shows as “Independently published” or other indie entities.
• See if the book is part of a series. Usually, the first book in a self-published series gets priced free or at 99 cents. This is a popular strategy for bestselling authors, treating book one as a marketing tool for the rest of their catalog. See these insights on how book series can increase royalties.

Now, onto Amazon royalties explained –

How Amazon KDP Royalty Rates Work

By the way, Amazon book royalties are the percentages you keep after KDP takes their initial cut. How much does Amazon take from book sales? The cool thing about self-publishing is that you earn a higher royalty percentage with channels like Amazon, compared to traditional publishing, which takes most of your earnings.

There are different KDP royalty plans to be aware of. Let’s go over Amazon KDP royalties for each format:

Last Note on Amazon Self-Publishing Costs

If you’re wondering about the overall Amazon book publishing costs for indies, rest assured that you can self-publish on Amazon and other major retailers for free. The rest of the costs that go into book production and promotion depend on how much you’re able and willing to invest. With many resources available today, it’s possible to run your indie business without breaking the bank. See how to market a self-published book under a budget.

To fully optimize your workflow, consider publishing with PublishDrive. You get a powerful dashboard with tools for formatting, royalty reporting, marketing, and distributing to all markets possible (including major retailers like Amazon, Google Play Books, and beyond.) This kind of wide publishing is called book aggregation.

Unlike other book aggregation platforms that take an additional 10% to 40% of royalties on top of the ones you give up to stores like Amazon, PublishDrive is subscription-based, and it doesn’t take any sales commissions. That means you save not just time but money with PublishDrive. You deserve all the book royalties you earn!