KDP Royalty Calculator
See exactly what Amazon will pay you per paperback sold. Live numbers across 12 marketplaces, 4 paper grades, Amazon retail vs Expanded Distribution.
Inputs
Amazon KDP supports 24 – 828 pages for paperback.
Amazon counts a book as large trim above 6.12 in wide or 9 in high, and charges more per page for it.
Drag to project monthly + 12-month revenue.
Royalty per book
Margin 35.5% on a $9.99 list price
/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.
How Amazon works out your paperback royalty
One line does all of it:
royalty = (royalty rate × list price) − printing cost
Amazon deducts the printing cost from your share, not from its own. Two books at the same price can therefore pay very differently, and a longer book at a low price can pay you almost nothing while still selling well.
The 50% band is where most calculators go wrong
The royalty rate is not a flat 60%. Amazon pays 60% only at or above a per-marketplace price threshold, and 50% at or below it. Expanded Distribution — bookstores, libraries and other online retailers — is a flat 40% in either band.
This single step is worth more than anything else on the page. A $6.99 paperback and a $9.99 paperback are not $3 apart in royalty; they are paid at different rates, so the gap compounds.
| Marketplace | 50% at or below | 60% from |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon.com | 9.98 USD | 9.99 USD |
| Amazon.co.uk | 7.98 GBP | 7.99 GBP |
| Amazon.de / fr / it / es / nl | 9.98 EUR | 9.99 EUR |
| Amazon.ca | 13.98 CAD | 13.99 CAD |
| Amazon.com.au | 13.98 AUD | 13.99 AUD |
| Amazon.co.jp | 999 JPY | 1000 JPY |
| Amazon.pl | 39 PLN | 40 PLN |
| Amazon.se | 109 SEK | 110 SEK |
Thresholds as published on KDP’s paperback royalty help page, read September 2026. Amazon moves them; check before you commit a price.
A worked example: the $3 that pays $2.49
Take a 112-page 8.5 × 11 activity book, black ink on white paper, sold on Amazon.com. That trim is large, so printing costs $1.00 + (112 × $0.017) = $2.90.
| List price | Rate | Your share | Less printing | Royalty per copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $6.99 | 50% | $3.50 | − $2.90 | $0.60 |
| $9.98 | 50% | $4.99 | − $2.90 | $2.09 |
| $9.99 | 60% | $5.99 | − $2.90 | $3.09 |
| $12.99 | 60% | $7.79 | − $2.90 | $4.89 |
Read the middle two rows again. One cent of list price adds a dollar of royalty, because that cent crosses the band. And going from $6.99 to $9.99 — three dollars — multiplies your royalty more than five times. Pricing a low-content book at $6.99 to look competitive is the most expensive habit in this business.
Printing cost: the part that depends on your book
Printing cost is fixed cost + (page count × per-page cost), except in a flat band at the short end where the page count is ignored entirely. Trim class decides which table you are on: Amazon counts a book as large trim above 6.12 in wide or 9 in high, so 8.5 × 11 is large and 6 × 9 is regular. Bleed and cover finish do not change the price; trim and page count do.
| Amazon.com, black ink | 24–110 pages | 111 pages and up |
|---|---|---|
| Regular trim (6 × 9 and smaller) | $2.30 flat | $1.00 + $0.012/page |
| Large trim (8.5 × 11 and similar) | $2.84 flat | $1.00 + $0.017/page |
Two consequences worth designing around. Inside the flat band pages are free: a 40-page book and a 110-page book both print at $2.84 on large trim, so a thin book gives away value it has already paid for. And the meter never dips back below the flat fee — 111 pages costs $2.89, five cents more than 110 — so if you are near the edge, fill the band rather than creep over it.
Minimum and maximum list price
Amazon will not let you price a book below what it costs to print plus its cut. The floor is printing cost ÷ royalty rate, solved inside whichever band the price lands in — which is why the calculator above reports a minimum that sometimes jumps: if the 50% floor would land above the band ceiling, the real floor is the first price in the 60% band.
The ceiling is far away and rarely binds: 250 USD, 250 GBP, 250 EUR, 350 CAD, 350 AUD, 30,000 JPY, 1,200 PLN or 2,500 SEK.
Expanded Distribution is a 40% decision, not a free one
Expanded Distribution puts your paperback in front of bookstores and libraries, and pays 40% of list minus the same printing cost. On the 112-page example at $9.99 that is $4.00 − $2.90 = $1.10 against $3.09 on Amazon. It is worth switching on when the extra reach genuinely adds sales, and worth ignoring for a puzzle book that sells almost entirely through Amazon search.
Four mistakes that make a royalty estimate wrong
- Assuming 60%. Anything at or under $9.98 on Amazon.com pays 50%. Most free calculators skip this entirely.
- Pricing a large-trim book off the regular table. Puzzle, worksheet and activity books are usually 8.5 × 11. That is 54 cents more per copy in the flat band, and more above it.
- Dropping the fixed cost above the flat band. A calculator that multiplies pages by a per-page rate and stops reads a full dollar per copy too high on a US book over 110 pages.
- Counting worksheets instead of printed pages. If each puzzle has a solution page, your 55-puzzle book is a 112-page book. Price the book Amazon prints, not the one you designed.
Where these numbers come from
The rates, thresholds and printing tables behind this calculator were transcribed from Amazon’s own Paperback Royalty and Printing Cost help pages in September 2026, and the implementation is checked against all five worked examples Amazon publishes. Amazon still changes its tables without much notice, so treat any calculator — this one included — as a planning tool and confirm the final figure on your KDP pricing screen before you publish.
