TL;DR: You can make money self-publishing on Amazon KDP in 2026 without paying anything to publish: Amazon prints paperbacks on demand and pays royalties of 35% or 70% on eBooks and 50% or 60%, minus printing, on paperbacks. Since 7 July 2026, eBooks priced from $2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com (1.77 to 12.99 pounds on Amazon.co.uk) can earn the 70% royalty. Royalties arrive about 60 days after the month of the sale, most books sell few copies, and the money builds slowly across several titles rather than from one.
Self-publishing used to mean paying a printer for a garage full of books. With Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) you upload a manuscript and a cover, set a price, and Amazon sells the eBook and prints each paperback when someone orders it. There is no stock, no upfront print bill and no publisher taking the rights. This guide explains how to make money self-publishing on Amazon KDP in 2026: what each format pays, what changed this year, when the money arrives and what it takes for a book to sell.
All figures below are from KDP’s own help pages as they stood in October 2026. Amazon changes its rates and programmes from time to time, so check the current pages before you set a price.
What KDP Costs and What It Pays
Publishing on KDP costs nothing; the money you can lose is what you choose to spend on editing, a cover or advertising. You can publish an eBook, a paperback and a hardcover of the same book, and each format earns a royalty on every copy sold.
eBook royalties: 35% or 70%
For each eBook you choose one of two royalty options. The 35% option pays 35% of the list price (without VAT) and has the widest price range: on Amazon.com from $0.99 for a file under 3 MB up to $200. The 70% option pays 70% of the list price minus a delivery cost based on the file size, but only inside a price band. KDP widened that band on 7 July 2026: on Amazon.com it is now $2.99 to $12.99, up from $2.99 to $9.99, and on Amazon.co.uk it is 1.77 to 12.99 pounds. Two more conditions apply to the 70% option: your eBook must be priced at least 20% below any print edition on Amazon, and sales to customers outside the eligible countries earn 35%.
The delivery cost is $0.15 per MB on Amazon.com and 0.10 pounds per MB on Amazon.co.uk. A text-only novel is usually small; a book full of photographs can lose a real slice of every sale to it.
Worked example: an eBook of 2 MB priced at $4.99 on Amazon.com under the 70% option earns 0.70 × $4.99 = $3.49, minus $0.30 delivery, which is about $3.19 per copy. The same book at $0.99 under the 35% option earns about $0.35.
Paperback royalties: 50% or 60%, minus printing
Paperbacks pay a share of the list price minus the cost of printing that copy. KDP now pays 60% on paperbacks priced at $9.99 or more on Amazon.com (7.99 pounds or more on Amazon.co.uk) and 50% below that. Printing cost depends on the page count, trim size, ink and the marketplace. KDP’s own example: a 333-page black-ink paperback listed at $15 costs $5.00 to print, so the royalty is (0.60 × $15) − $5.00 = $4.00. Through Expanded Distribution, which offers the book to bookshops and libraries outside Amazon, the same copy earns 40% minus printing, which is $1.00.
The lesson in that example: a long paperback at a low price can earn almost nothing per copy, so check the KDP printing cost calculator before you fix a price.
Kindle+ (Formerly Kindle Unlimited) and KDP Select
On 22 October 2026 Amazon renamed its eBook subscription, Kindle Unlimited, to Kindle+. For authors the mechanics are the ones KDP describes for KDP Select: when you enrol an eBook in KDP Select, a free 90-day programme, it is included in Kindle+, and you are paid from the monthly KDP Select Global Fund according to your share of the pages subscribers read. Pages are counted in Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP), and each page is paid the first time a subscriber reads it. The rate per page changes every month with the size of the fund.
The price is exclusivity. While a book is enrolled, Amazon has the exclusive right to sell it in digital form: you cannot sell or give away the eBook anywhere else, including on your own website, apart from a sample of up to 10%. Print and audio editions stay free to sell elsewhere. Enrolment renews automatically every 90 days unless you opt out before renewal. Each 90-day term you can also run one promotion, either a free book promotion or a Kindle Countdown Deal.
Whether Select pays depends on your readers. If they read through a subscription, page reads can earn more than sales; if they do not, selling the eBook on every store may earn more. You can enrol for one term, look at your page reads, and decide.
When You Get Paid
Royalties are paid about 60 days after the end of the month in which a sale is reported, so even a book that sells in its first week pays out two months later. Sales from November, for example, arrive in January. Direct deposit to a bank account has no minimum payout; payment by cheque or wire waits until your balance passes a threshold.
Using AI to Write a Book
KDP allows books made with AI tools, but it asks you to say so. When you publish or republish a book, you must tell Amazon about AI-generated content: text, images or translations created by an AI tool, even if you edited them heavily afterwards. You do not need to disclose AI-assisted work, where you wrote the content yourself and used AI to edit, refine or check it. Either way you remain responsible for the book meeting KDP’s content guidelines, including not copying anyone else’s work. A book a reader can tell was churned out rarely earns reviews, and without reviews it rarely sells.
What Sells, and How to Find Readers
Publishing is the easy half. Amazon lists millions of books, and a new title with no reviews and no readers is invisible. What helps:
- Write for a reader who is already searching. Practical non-fiction that solves a specific problem, and fiction in a popular genre, tend to find readers more easily than a memoir or a general essay. Type your idea into Amazon’s search bar and look at the suggestions and at what the top results do.
- Invest in a cover and an edit. Readers judge the thumbnail first. If you pay for anything, pay for a professional cover and a careful edit.
- Choose keywords and categories with care. KDP lets you add keywords and pick categories when you set up the book; they decide which searches and browse pages it appears in.
- Write more than one book. A series or a set of related guides lets every reader of one find the next, which is why many self-published authors build a catalogue rather than rely on a single title.
- Build your own audience. An email list or a following outside Amazon gives you readers on launch day. Our guide to selling digital products online covers building that audience and selling to it directly.
Before you publish, keep a dated copy of your finished manuscript. If you want an independent record that the file existed on a given day, our sister site XSeal can seal it with a timestamped certificate.
How Much Can You Make?
There is no typical figure, and anyone who promises one is selling something. Per copy, the numbers above are modest: about $3 for an eBook at $4.99 and about $4 for a $15 paperback. A book that sells a handful of copies a month earns pocket money; one that finds its readers can pay every month for years, because the work is done once. The most reliable route is the slow one: several good books in one niche, each sending readers to the others.
Tax on KDP Royalties
KDP asks every author to complete a tax interview before it pays. Amazon withholds US tax at 30% on royalties from US sales by default; if your country has a tax treaty with the US, you can claim a reduced rate in the interview, but only once you provide a tax identification number. In the UK, royalties from your own writing are usually taxed as self-employed income: the first 1,000 pounds of trading income in a tax year (6 April to 5 April) is covered by the trading allowance; above that, you need to tell HMRC.
Your Checklist
- Pick a book a reader is already searching for, and check what sells in that category.
- Write it well, and pay for a cover and an edit if you can.
- Price for the royalty band: $2.99 to $12.99 for 70% on an eBook, $9.99 or more for 60% on a paperback, after checking the printing cost.
- Decide on KDP Select for one 90-day term, and judge it by your page reads.
- Disclose AI-generated content, complete the tax interview and keep records of your royalties.
- Start the next book.
Self-publishing pays slowly, but it is one of the few ways on this blog where work done once can keep earning. To see how it compares with faster ways to earn, use our comparison of ways to earn.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does it cost money to publish a book on Amazon KDP?
No. Publishing an eBook, paperback or hardcover on KDP is free, and Amazon prints each paperback when it is ordered. The only costs are the ones you choose, such as editing, a cover designer or advertising.
How much does KDP pay per eBook?
Either 35% of the list price, or 70% minus a delivery cost of $0.15 per MB on Amazon.com if the eBook is priced between $2.99 and $12.99. A 2 MB eBook at $4.99 earns about $3.19 per sale at 70%.
What happened to Kindle Unlimited?
Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+ on 22 October 2026. eBooks enrolled in KDP Select are included in Kindle+, and authors are paid from the KDP Select Global Fund for pages read, in exchange for selling the eBook only through Amazon while enrolled.
When does KDP pay royalties?
About 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, so November sales are paid in January. Direct deposit has no minimum payout.
Can I publish a book written with AI on KDP?
Yes, but you must tell Amazon about AI-generated text, images or translations when you publish. Content you wrote yourself and only edited or checked with AI tools does not need to be disclosed.
