2026-07-13 · all guides

KDP 70% vs 35% Royalty: Which One Actually Pays You More

The two royalty plans in one paragraph each

The 70 percent plan pays 70 percent of your list price, but with two conditions and one deduction. Conditions: the list price must be between 2.99 and 9.99 dollars, and the book must be enrolled at that rate in eligible territories. Deduction: a delivery fee of 0.15 dollars per megabyte of your final converted file size, subtracted before the percentage is applied in most territories, effectively reducing your payout on every sale.

The 35 percent plan pays 35 percent of list price, full stop. No delivery fee, and a much wider price range: from a floor of 0.99 dollars up to 200 dollars for most file sizes. Every book on KDP is eligible for 35 percent; the 70 percent rate is the one you qualify for. You pick the plan per marketplace when setting the price, and you can change it at any time without republishing.

The delivery fee: small number, real money

The 0.15-dollar-per-megabyte fee sounds trivial and often is not. A text-only novel converts to under 1 megabyte, so the fee is a few cents and irrelevant. A nonfiction book with 40 screenshots, or a cookbook with photos, can easily convert to 8 to 15 megabytes. At 10 megabytes, the fee is 1.50 dollars per sale. On a 4.99 book, 70 percent of the price is 3.49, minus 1.50 leaves 1.99. The 35 percent plan on the same book pays 1.75 with no fee. Suddenly the gap is 24 cents, not the 1.74 you assumed.

The file size that matters is the converted delivered size, which KDP shows you on the pricing page after you upload, not your source file size. Before accepting a big delivery fee, compress: resize images to the width Kindle actually renders, around 1,600 pixels for full-width, use JPEG rather than PNG for photos, and strip embedded fonts you do not need. Halving file size on an image-heavy book is usually easy and permanently raises every future royalty payment.

Worked examples at real price points

At 2.99 dollars with a 1-megabyte file: 70 percent pays 2.09 minus 0.15, netting about 1.94. The 35 percent plan pays 1.05. The 70 percent plan wins by nearly double, which is why almost all text-only books in the window should take it. At 6.99 with 1 megabyte: 70 percent nets about 4.74 versus 2.45, an even bigger gap. Inside the window with a small file, 70 percent always wins.

Now the edges. At 1.99 dollars, you are below the window, so 70 percent is unavailable; 35 percent pays 0.70. At 14.99, above the window, 35 percent pays 5.25, which beats capping yourself at 9.99 for a 70 percent payout of about 6.84 only if you believe the higher price costs you more than a quarter of your sales; for niche professional content it often does not, and 35 percent at a premium price is the right call. And a 12-megabyte textbook at 9.99: 70 percent nets 6.99 minus 1.80, about 5.19, versus 3.50 at 35 percent, so 70 percent still wins there, but the fee ate 1.80 per sale.

When 35 percent is genuinely the right choice

Three real cases. First, promotional pricing below 2.99: if you want a 0.99 or 1.99 launch price, 35 percent is the only option at that price, and many authors run the launch at 35 percent then move to 4.99 at 70 percent. Second, premium-priced niche nonfiction above 9.99: a 19.99 technical manual pays 7.00 at 35 percent, more than the 6.84 maximum achievable inside the 70 percent window, with room to go higher. Third, extremely heavy files where the delivery fee erodes most of the 70 percent advantage and you cannot compress further.

Everything else, meaning a normal book priced 2.99 to 9.99 with a file under a couple of megabytes, belongs on 70 percent. If you want to see your exact numbers instead of estimating, the free calculator at /tools/kindle-royalty-calculator on ebookdone takes price and file size and shows both plans side by side, including the crossover price where the plans pay the same.

Details that change the math

A few rules worth knowing before you commit. The price window is checked against your list price in each marketplace, and some territories pay 35 percent regardless of your plan unless the book is enrolled in KDP Select. Kindle Unlimited page reads are a separate payment system entirely, paid from the KENP fund per page read, and are unaffected by which royalty plan you chose. Price matching also matters: if Amazon finds your ebook cheaper elsewhere, it can match the price, and your royalty is calculated on the matched price.

Finally, the plan is not a marriage. You can switch between 70 and 35 percent from the KDP pricing page whenever strategy changes: launch cheap at 35, settle at 5.99 on 70, raise a back-catalog niche title to 14.99 at 35 once organic sales stabilize. Revisit the choice whenever you change the price or meaningfully change the file size, because those are the only two variables in the equation.

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