Royalty Pricing Structure Changes on KDP Ebooks
My take on the updates and what I'm chosing to do in my publishing business.
KDP has rolled out another update, and while other respected experts have covered it in articles, I want to weigh in on what this means for authors.
Before I do that, though, I wanted to share something I’ve noted.
KDP has a massive mailing list, so whenever an update is sent to the whole list, it takes weeks before everyone receives the same message. I’m somewhere in the ones who get emails two weeks after some other authors get them. Why?
Phased Server Rollouts: Emails go out to geographical servers over the span of 7 to 14 days.
Staggered Email Queues: To avoid getting flagged as spam when contacting millions of customers, KDP spaces out messages about major policy or feature announcement emails over several weeks.
If you want to hear about changes as soon as KDP makes a change in the dashboard, I highly recommend following Dale L. Roberts (Self-Publishing with Dale) here on Substack. Dale offers excellent advice that’s ahead of what I receive.
Ok. Back to the update. KDP has updated its pricing structure for Kindle books. And if you qualify for the new royalty structure, it won’t be automatically applied to your books.
Who This Doesn’t Pertain To
If your ebooks are already priced below $2.99 or above $12.99, then the changes will not affect you. You are likely receiving 35 percent royalties with no delivery fee for your Kindle books.
If your book is priced between $3.00 and $9.99 currently, you are likely receiving 70 percent royalties with a delivery fee calculated on your book file’s size (determined by length and photos). If you are happy with the amount you receive and would not consider raising the price of your book above $9.99, then you don’t necessarily need to do anything.
Let’s look at who might need to make adjustments.
Who This DOES Pertain To
You may have wished you could earn higher royalties.
If you have a lot of images, for example. Or your book is long, carrying a higher delivery fee.
Or, if your print book is considerably higher priced than the Kindle and you’d love to bump up the price a little.
You can now price your book as high as $12.99 to receive 70 percent royalties. If you have always wanted to charge a few dollars more and still keep that 70 percent rate, you can change the price and do that.
Secondly, if your book is currently $10.00 to $12.99 and you’re receiving 35 percent, you may want to log into your KDP account and opt in to the 70 percent royalty. If you do nothing, KDP will keep you at the 35 percent royalty rate, despite the changes to its structure. You do have to opt in.
There are other eligibility requirements, so be sure to check them all out. For example, your digital book has to be priced at least 20 percent lower than the print book price in order to receive the 70 percent royalty.
Check out the specifics on pricing digital books on Amazon KDP.
How Do You Know if This Would Benefit You?
You can preview your estimated royalty payout on the pricing, royalty, and distribution section of the ebook pricing tab to see estimated royalties for each royalty option at your chosen list price. Just log into your dashboard and check your settings. Hit publish when you’re done selecting your options, and that change will be live after KDP approves.
Remember, there are some regions where the 70 percent royalty does not apply, so if you price your books that way but see some sales outside of the US that result in lower royalties, this is why. Learn more here.
What Do I Plan to Do?
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll see my plan below.
You aren’t seeing my plan here, but it’s only about the cost of one trip to the coffee shop per month to become a paid subscriber and have access to all of my content.
Whatever you decide, I’m sure this isn’t the last of the KDP updates. Changes have been slowly rolling out, so we always need to be on our toes to ensure maximum profitability for our writing businesses.
Will you be changing your pricing? I’d love to know!
