Kobo's royalty rate depends on crossing a price line

The writer's problem

An author pricing an ebook on Kobo needs a rate structure that is more detailed than a single percentage. Kobo's own earnings help article ties the royalty rate to a price threshold rather than to the retailer alone, which changes the arithmetic depending on where a book is priced, separately from the platform's own AI-content boundary statement.

What the documents show

The help article, most recently updated in November 2025, states original ebooks earn 70 percent of the list price provided that price meets or exceeds a threshold that varies by currency, such as $2.99 in the United States or £1.99 in the United Kingdom; below that threshold the rate drops to 45 percent, and books consisting of public-domain content earn 20 percent. Audiobooks pay 32 percent on subscription-token purchases and 45 percent on a-la-carte sales above a comparable threshold, or 35 percent below it. Library sales through Overdrive pay 50 percent of the library price, with a separate option letting a library pay 10 percent of that price to allow a single checkout instead of an unlimited-lending purchase. Kobo's own Kobo Writing Life landing page summarizes this as earning up to 70 percent in royalties and states the platform will never ask for exclusivity, both framings of terms the help article spells out in more granular form.

The editorial choice

Pricing just above or just below the threshold has a larger effect on per-copy earnings than a small price change elsewhere in the range would suggest, because crossing the line changes the royalty percentage itself rather than only the base the percentage applies to. An author weighing a lower list price to compete on visibility has to weigh that against the jump to the lower royalty tier, a calculation the help page enables but does not perform for a specific book.

What stays with the author

Deciding where to set the list price relative to the threshold, tracking how library and subscription sales count toward the same payment threshold as direct retail sales, and confirming the figure for a specific currency remain the author's task. These figures reflect the help article as retrieved on 16 September 2026, a page whose own November 2025 revision date shows Kobo has updated it before.

• Does this book's planned list price sit above or below the threshold separating the 70 percent and 45 percent tiers.
• How do library and subscription sales factor into the same payment threshold as direct sales.
• Has the rate structure changed since the help article was last retrieved.

A royalty rate tied to a price threshold rewards a specific pricing choice rather than a specific retailer relationship, which makes reading the threshold, not only the top-line percentage, the useful step before a list price is set.