Kindle eBook Royalty Calculator
See how much you keep per Kindle sale across 13 marketplaces. Auto-picks the better of 70% / 35% lanes and deducts the file-size delivery fee.
Inputs
70% lane eligible.
Bigger files cost more delivery fee on the 70% lane.
Drag to project revenue.
Royalty per sale
Margin 65.7% on $4.99
/month
Disclaimer: Estimates use Amazon KDP's published rates. Final amounts vary by marketplace, promotions and Amazon policy changes — always verify against your KDP dashboard.
Two royalty lanes, and you do not fully choose
Kindle pays either 70% or 35% of list price, and the price itself decides which. On Amazon.com the 70% lane is open only between $2.99 and $9.99. Price at $2.98 or $10.00 and you drop to 35% — not as a penalty setting you toggled, but automatically.
The consequence is sharp. A 1 MB $9.99 eBook earns $6.89; the same book at $10.99 earns $3.85. One dollar more on the sticker nearly halves the royalty. If you are tempted to break $9.99, you need to sell about 1.8 times as many copies just to stand still.
The delivery fee only the 70% lane pays
This is the part most calculators skip. On the 70% lane Amazon deducts a delivery fee based on your file size before applying the percentage:
royalty = (list price − (file size in MB × per-MB fee)) × 0.70
On the 35% lane there is no delivery fee at all. So a large illustrated book can occasionally do better at 35% than the arithmetic suggests — worth testing in the calculator above rather than assuming.
| Marketplace | Delivery fee per MB |
|---|---|
| Amazon.com, .ca, .com.au | 0.15 (USD / CAD / AUD) |
| Amazon.co.uk | £0.10 |
| Amazon.de / fr / es / it / nl | €0.12 |
| Amazon.co.jp | ¥1.00 |
| Amazon.com.br | R$0.30 |
| Amazon.com.mx | MX$1.00 |
| Amazon.in | ₹0.07 |
A 5 MB Kindle book on Amazon.com loses $0.75 before the 70% is applied — about 52 cents of royalty per sale, every sale. This is why file size is a pricing decision and not just a technical one.
Shrinking the file is free money
For a text-only novel the file is usually under 1 MB and the fee is noise. For anything with images it is not. Three things move the number:
- Image resolution. Kindle displays cap out well below print DPI. A 300-DPI interior image is print-grade and wasted here.
- Image format. Photographs belong in JPEG; flat line art and puzzle grids compress far better as PNG.
- Embedded fonts. Each one adds weight for a reader who can override them anyway.
Getting a 12 MB file down to 4 MB is worth about 84 cents a sale on Amazon.com. Over a thousand copies, that is more than most authors spend on a cover.
Worked example, Amazon.com
| List price | File size | Lane | Delivery fee | Royalty per sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2.99 | 1 MB | 70% | $0.15 | $1.99 |
| $4.99 | 1 MB | 70% | $0.15 | $3.39 |
| $9.99 | 1 MB | 70% | $0.15 | $6.89 |
| $9.99 | 10 MB | 70% | $1.50 | $5.94 |
| $10.99 | 10 MB | 35% | none | $3.85 |
| $1.99 | 1 MB | 35% | none | $0.70 |
Note the $0.99 row people expect to see and do not: below $2.99 you are on 35% with no delivery fee, so a 99-cent book pays about 35 cents. That is a marketing price, not an income price.
India, Brazil and Mexico work differently
Amazon discounts the delivery fee heavily in these stores to keep eBook publishing viable at local price points — ₹0.07 per MB in India against $0.15 in the US. The price window that unlocks 70% is also local, not a converted dollar figure. If a market matters to you, set it in the calculator rather than converting from the US number.
This is only half your Kindle income
If the book is enrolled in KDP Select, borrows in Kindle Unlimited pay per page read instead of per sale, from a separate monthly fund. Many low-priced titles earn more from KU than from sales. Work that side out in the KENP royalty calculator, then add the two together.
Rates and fees here follow KDP’s published help pages as of September 2026. Amazon adjusts them; confirm on your KDP pricing screen before you commit.
