When you publish a Kindle ebook, KDP asks you to pick a royalty: 35% or 70%. The 70% option usually pays you more for each sale, but only if your price sits inside a set range, and a small delivery fee comes off first.
So this week, before you set a price, open your ebook’s pricing page in KDP and compare the two numbers. The steps below show you what to look for. This note covers ebooks only.
The two choices
Everything here comes from three KDP Help pages, all checked 5 October 2026: KDP eBook Royalties, the KDP Digital Book Pricing Page, and KDP eBook List Price Requirements.
- 35% option. You get 35% of your list price, after any VAT is taken out. VAT is a sales tax some countries add to the price. No delivery fee comes off.
- 70% option. You get 70% of your list price, after VAT and a delivery fee are taken out.
What the delivery fee is
Amazon charges a small fee to send your ebook file to the reader. On Amazon.com it is $0.15 for each megabyte (MB) of file size, per the Digital Book Pricing Page. The eBook Royalties page says the average is $0.06 a sale. Photos make a file bigger, and a bigger file costs more to send. The 35% option has no delivery fee at all.
The price range for 70%
On Amazon.com, the 70% option works only if your list price is between $2.99 and $12.99. The eBook List Price Requirements page says the top of that range went up from $9.99 to $12.99 on 7 July 2026. Below $2.99 or above $12.99, only the 35% option is open to you. Other Amazon stores have their own ranges on the same page.
Two more rules from the Digital Book Pricing Page. If you also sell a print edition, your ebook price must be at least 20% below that book’s price on Amazon to keep 70%. And books made mostly of public domain content, meaning old works that are out of copyright, can only use 35%.
Why you may see both rates
Even on the 70% option, some sales pay 35%. It depends on where the buyer lives. The eBook Royalties page explains that buyers outside the listed 70% countries earn you 35%, so seeing both rates listed for one book in your KDP account is normal.
A worked example
These numbers are made up, just to show the sums. Say your ebook is $4.99 on Amazon.com, the file is 2 MB, and the buyer pays no VAT.
- At 35%: 0.35 × $4.99 = about $1.75 a sale.
- At 70%: the delivery fee is 2 × $0.15 = $0.30. Then 0.70 × ($4.99 minus $0.30) = about $3.28 a sale.
Price the same book at $1.99 and it falls below the 70% range. Then 35% is your only choice, which is about $0.70 a sale.
What to do this week
- Open the eBook List Price Requirements page and find the 70% range for your main Amazon store. For Amazon.com, that is $2.99 to $12.99.
- If you have a paperback, multiply its Amazon price by 0.8. Keep your ebook price at or below that number. For a $12.99 paperback, that is $10.39.
- If your book has lots of photos, expect a higher delivery fee on the 70% option.
- Before you publish, go to the Pricing, royalty, and distribution section of your ebook’s pricing tab in KDP. The FAQ on the List Price Requirements page says it shows the estimated royalty for each option at your price. Compare the two and pick the one that fits.
Inside $2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com, 70% minus a small delivery fee. Outside that range, 35%.