Amazon KDP Royalties in 2026: the 70% Band Now Ends at $12.99

Amazon KDP pays 70% of your ebook's list price, minus a delivery fee, when the book is priced between $2.99 and $12.99, and 35% outside that band. That $12.99 ceiling is new: Amazon raised it from $9.99 on 7 July 2026, the first change since the plan launched in 2007. The higher rate is opt-in, so most books priced above $9.99 are still earning 35% today. This guide walks the exact math at real price points, for ebooks, paperbacks and hardcovers.

What changed on 7 July 2026

For nineteen years, $9.99 was the ceiling for the 70% royalty plan. Every pricing guide written before July 2026 told authors to stay under it, and that advice was correct until it was not.

Are you still on 35% without knowing it?

This is worth five minutes today if any of your ebooks are priced above $9.99.

The two ebook royalty bands and who qualifies

Every ebook on KDP sits in one of two royalty plans, and you choose the plan per book when you set pricing.

The 70% plan requires a list price between $2.99 and $12.99 in the US store. It also requires your ebook to be listed at least 20% below the list price of any physical edition of the same book on Amazon, so a $14.99 paperback caps your ebook at $11.99 on this plan. In Brazil, Japan, Mexico and India, the 70% rate additionally requires enrolment in KDP Select. From that 70%, Amazon subtracts a per-megabyte delivery fee before calculating your cut.

The 35% plan covers everything else: prices below $2.99, and prices above $12.99 up to the $200 cap. Its minimum price depends on your converted file size, at $0.99 under 3 MB, $1.99 from 3 MB to under 10 MB, and $2.99 at 10 MB or more. No delivery fee is charged on the 35% plan, which matters more than most authors expect once files get large.

The cliff still exists; it simply moved. At $12.99 you earn about $8.99 per sale. At $14.99, two dollars higher, you earn $5.25. You would need to price at roughly $25.70 on the 35% plan to match the $12.99 royalty.

Delivery fees: the quiet tax on image-heavy books

The delivery fee is charged per megabyte of the converted file and only on the 70% plan. On Amazon.com the rate is $0.15 per megabyte, with file sizes rounded up to the nearest kilobyte.

For a text-only novel, the converted file usually lands around 1 MB, so the fee is about $0.15 and nobody notices. For a photography book, a cookbook with full-color images, or a children's picture book, files of 10 to 30 MB are common. At $0.15 per MB, a 20 MB file costs $3.00 in delivery fees on every single sale.

Run the comparison for a $4.99 illustrated book with a 20 MB file:

• 70% plan: 0.70 x ($4.99 - $3.00) = $1.39
• 35% plan: 0.35 x $4.99 = $1.75, no delivery fee

The "lower" royalty plan pays more. If your book is image-heavy, always calculate both plans before choosing, and compress your images aggressively before upload. Halving file size on a big illustrated book can add more to your per-copy earnings than a price change.

Worked ebook royalties at six real price points

Assumptions: US store, a typical 1 MB text ebook, $0.15 delivery fee where the 70% plan applies.

Read the last three rows together. The same $12.99 book pays $8.99 or $4.55 depending on one setting nobody told you to change. And above $12.99 the old trap returns: a $14.99 ebook earns less per copy than a $9.99 one.

Paperback math: 60% or 50%, minus printing

Paperback royalties work differently. You earn a percentage of list price, then Amazon deducts the printing cost of that specific copy. On Amazon.com the rate is 60% at a $9.99 list price and above, and 50% below that.

Printing cost is a formula, not a flat rate. For black ink on white or cream paper at a regular trim size such as 6x9:

So a 200-page paperback costs $3.40 to print, a 300-page costs $4.60, and a 400-page costs $5.80. Those feed straight into your royalty:

Two lessons fall out of this table. First, page count is a direct cost: every 100 pages costs you $1.20 per copy sold, forever. Trimming a bloated manuscript or tightening interior formatting has permanent royalty value. Second, longer books need higher list prices. A 400-page book at $13.99 earns $2.59 per copy, which barely covers the effort of selling it.

Expanded distribution: reach vs. royalty

Expanded distribution lists your paperback with distributors that supply bookstores, libraries, and other online retailers. The tradeoff is steep: the royalty rate drops from 60% to 40% of list price, and the same printing cost still comes out.

For the 300-page book at $15.99: standard Amazon sales pay $4.99, while expanded distribution pays 0.40 x $15.99 - $4.60 = $1.80. Same book, 64% less per copy. At longer page counts and lower list prices the math turns negative, which is why KDP enforces a higher minimum list price when you enable it.

Enable expanded distribution if bookstore and library availability matters to your goals, or if you use the paperback mainly as a credibility asset. Skip it if Amazon is where your buyers actually are, which for most self-published authors it is.

Hardcover and KU page reads, briefly

Hardcovers follow the paperback structure, a percentage of list minus printing cost, but the printing cost is meaningfully higher, so hardcovers need list prices in the mid-$20s and up to earn sensible royalties. They are worth doing for gift-market nonfiction and as a premium tier, not as your main earner.

If you enroll an ebook in KDP Select, it becomes available in Kindle Unlimited and you earn from pages read instead of a sale. Amazon divides a monthly global fund across all pages read that month, producing a per-page rate that historically floats around $0.004 to $0.005. A fully read 300-page novel (KENP page counts run higher than print pages, often 1.5x or more) might earn $1.50 to $2.50, roughly comparable to a discounted sale. Select requires ebook exclusivity to Amazon, so weigh KU income against sales you would have made on other stores.

Common royalty surprises and how to fix them

"My $12.99 ebook is only earning 35%." The new 70% ceiling is opt-in. Open the title in KDP, change the royalty plan to 70%, and republish.

"My 70% book is earning less than 70%." Delivery fees. Check the file size in your KDP bookshelf, compress images, and re-run the 35% comparison for heavy files.

"My report shows sales but no money arrived." Reports update daily, but KDP pays roughly 60 days after month end. A sale on 10 July pays at the end of September. Plan cash flow around that lag.

"My $1.99 promo price is only paying 35%." Correct, and by design: below $2.99 the 70% plan is unavailable. Price promotions below $2.99 are volume plays, not margin plays.

"My royalty changed and I touched nothing." Marketplace currency conversion, a price-matching adjustment, or a change in which marketplace the sale occurred in. Check the per-marketplace breakdown before assuming an error.

"Expanded distribution sales pay almost nothing." That is the 40% rate working as documented. Recheck whether you still want it enabled.

Pricing strategy that respects the math

Start from the bands, not from instinct. For most ebooks, test within $3.99 and $12.99 and stay on the 70% plan. Fiction typically converts best at $3.99 to $5.99; specialist nonfiction now has real room up to $12.99, where it used to stop at $9.99. Use $0.99 and $1.99 only as time-boxed promotions where visibility, not margin, is the goal.

For paperbacks, price backward from the royalty you want: target royalty plus printing cost, divided by 0.60, gives your minimum list price. A 300-page book where you want $4 per copy needs ($4.00 + $4.60) / 0.60 = $14.33, so $14.99 is your floor. Then sanity-check against comparable titles in your category, and revisit pricing after launch. Our guide to publishing a book on Amazon covers where pricing fits in the full launch sequence.

Key takeaways

• The 70% ebook royalty applies between $2.99 and $12.99 on Amazon.com. A $12.99 ebook earns $8.99; a $14.99 ebook earns $5.25.
• The $12.99 ceiling arrived on 7 July 2026 and is opt-in. Books priced above $9.99 before then are still on 35% until you change the setting.
• Delivery fees of $0.15 per MB are negligible for text books and punishing for image-heavy ones. Compare both plans on any file over a few MB.
• Paperback royalty is 60% of list at $9.99 and above, 50% below, minus printing cost. Every 100 pages costs $1.20 per copy.
• Expanded distribution pays 40% instead of 60%. Enable it for reach, never for revenue.
• Reports update daily; money lands about 60 days after month end. Budget accordingly.

Royalty rates and printing costs verified against Amazon KDP's published pricing pages on 2 October 2026. Amazon changes these terms from time to time; confirm in your own KDP dashboard before setting a price.