Amazon's 70 percent option comes with a price floor

The writer's problem

An author uploading an ebook to Kindle Direct Publishing must choose a royalty option before the book goes on sale, and the choice is not simply about which percentage looks bigger. Amazon's royalty help page sets out two structures: a 35 percent rate available worldwide, and a 70 percent rate limited to specific territories and calculated after a per-megabyte delivery cost is subtracted.

What the documents show

The help page states the 35 percent royalty is list price minus applicable VAT, with no delivery-cost deduction, on sales anywhere the program operates. The 70 percent royalty is list price minus applicable VAT minus delivery costs, restricted to a listed set of territories, where delivery cost equals the file's size in megabytes multiplied by a per-country rate, for example $0.15 per megabyte in the United States with a minimum charge of one cent. Three conditions gate the 70 percent rate: the list price must sit at least 20 percent below Amazon's price for any physical edition of the same book, a book that consists primarily of public-domain content is confined to 35 percent, and falling out of compliance reverts royalties to 35 percent, which Amazon states it can apply retroactively. Amazon's own publishing overview page compresses this into a single marketing line about earning up to 70 percent, without stating the delivery-cost subtraction or the price-floor condition, a reminder that a platform's summary is not the formula it summarizes.

The editorial choice

Choosing 70 percent is not automatically the better outcome. For a large file priced near the bottom of its eligible range, the delivery-cost deduction can erode enough of the 70 percent royalty that the net payout approaches what the uncapped 35 percent option would pay. An author pricing a heavily illustrated ebook has reason to run both formulas against file size before setting a list price, a comparison the royalty page supplies numbers for but does not make.

What stays with the author

Confirming which territories a title is actually eligible to sell into, keeping the list price above the required floor, and watching whether a promotional or price-matched sale drops a book out of 70 percent eligibility remain the author's ongoing responsibility. The rules described here reflect the help page as retrieved on 16 September 2026; Amazon states it can adjust previously reported royalties if a title stops meeting the 70 percent terms.

• Does the delivery-cost deduction change which royalty option actually pays more for this file's size and price.
• Is the list price still at least 20 percent below any physical edition Amazon lists for the same book.
• Has a promotional or price-matched sale moved the book outside the territory or price floor the 70 percent rate requires.

Two royalty numbers on a pricing page look like a simple menu choice, but the calculation behind the higher one carries conditions that a low list price or a large file can quietly undercut. Reading the formula, not only the headline percentage, is the only way to know which option actually pays more for a given book.