Self-published authors on Amazon get a real choice between two royalty plans, and the difference is enormous: 35 percent of list price no matter what you charge, or 70 percent of list price on eligible sales, minus a small delivery fee. The catch is that the 70 percent plan comes with pricing rules, territory limits, and a price band that Amazon just widened, per KDP's own eBook Royalties page.
What does the 35 percent royalty option actually pay?
It pays exactly what it says: 35 percent of your list price, before VAT, on every unit sold, regardless of where the buyer is or what you charge. There's no price band to hit and no territory restriction — it's the plan every book defaults to if it doesn't qualify for, or isn't enrolled in, the 70 percent option, per KDP.
The trade-off is straightforward math. A $9.99 ebook on the 35 percent plan earns roughly $3.50 per sale. The same book on the 70 percent plan, in an eligible territory and price range, earns roughly $6.93 after the delivery fee — nearly double. That gap is why most self-published authors pricing a full-length novel try to qualify for 70 percent rather than default to 35.
What does the 70 percent option require, and what does it cost?
The 70 percent option pays 70 percent of list price, before VAT and less delivery costs, but only on sales to customers in Amazon's designated "70% territories"; sales outside those territories on the same book still pay only 35 percent, per KDP's eBook Royalties page. Delivery costs average $0.06 per unit and scale with file size — image-heavy ebooks cost more to deliver than plain text, per the same page.
Two more conditions apply. The 70 percent option is for in-copyright work only; public-domain texts are restricted to the 35 percent plan unless the author adds enough original material or a fresh translation to qualify, per KDP. And if Amazon price-matches a lower price found elsewhere, the author still earns 70 percent of that lower sale price in eligible territories, minus delivery costs and VAT — not 70 percent of the original list price, per KDP.
How much has the 70 percent price ceiling just changed?
As of July 7, 2026, KDP's list-price band for the 70 percent option on Amazon.com runs from $2.99 to $12.99, up from a prior ceiling of $9.99, per KDP's eBook List Price Requirements page. That's a meaningful shift for authors of longer or more heavily formatted books who previously had to price under $10 to keep the higher royalty rate, or accept 35 percent above it.
The band varies by marketplace: KDP lists $2.99–$12.99 in Canadian dollars on Amazon.ca, £1.77–£12.99 on Amazon.co.uk, R$5.99–R$31.99 on Amazon.com.br, ₹99–₹599 on Amazon.in, $34.99–$199.99 Mexican pesos on Amazon.com.mx, $3.99–$15.99 Australian dollars on Amazon.com.au, and ¥250–¥1650 on Amazon.co.jp, per the same page. There's also a separate rule tying digital pricing to print: authors on the 70 percent plan must keep their ebook list price at least 20 percent below the list price of any physical edition of the same book sold on Amazon, per KDP's Digital Book Pricing page.
How is Kindle Unlimited different from a regular sale?
Enrolling a book in KDP Select — the program that also unlocks Kindle Unlimited — means committing that book's digital edition exclusively to Amazon for the enrollment period; it can't be distributed digitally anywhere else, though print and audio formats aren't affected, per KDP's Select page. Once enrolled, the book automatically becomes available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers while staying on sale to everyone else, and the author keeps earning ordinary purchase royalties on any direct sale, per the same page.
Reads through Kindle Unlimited are paid separately, out of a pooled KDP Select Global Fund rather than through the 35/70 percent structure. KDP's own dashboard put that fund at $71.0 million for July 2026, the most recent figure the company has published, per KDP's Select page.
35 percent vs. 70 percent: the real comparison
| Factor | 35% plan | 70% plan |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty rate | 35% of list price, any price, any territory | 70% of list price in eligible territories, less delivery costs; 35% outside them |
| Eligible price band (US) | No price restriction | $2.99–$12.99, effective July 7, 2026 |
| Delivery fee | None | Averages $0.06 per unit, varies by file size |
| Public domain works | Eligible | Not eligible unless substantially transformed |
| Price vs. print edition | No rule | Must be at least 20% below any Amazon physical edition |
Every figure above comes directly from KDP's own royalty, pricing, and Select help pages — there's no independent auditor verifying Amazon's royalty math, and none of the pages this piece drew on publish the per-page payout rate for Kindle Unlimited reads or the exact length of a KDP Select exclusivity term. Authors budgeting around Kindle Unlimited income specifically should treat the $71.0 million fund figure as a snapshot, not a guarantee, since KDP describes it as a monthly total that Amazon sets independently rather than a fixed per-page rate.
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