Ebook Pricing: How to Reason About the Price

Most pricing advice is a list of price points handed down as fact. Nobody publishes a reliable source for what buyers expect to pay for an ebook, so this guide doesn't pretend to. It sticks to what the platforms themselves state, shows you how to do the sums, and leaves the price to you and a test.

Fees change, so each figure here carries the date it was checked. Before you set a price, open the platform's own page and confirm it.

Start with the job the book does

A price only makes sense against a purpose. The same material can do different jobs in different places, and each job points to a different price.

• Grow an email list. The price is free, and the cost is the work of giving a real result away. Keep it short enough to finish.
• Sell to your own audience. You set the price, you keep most of it, and you can change it whenever you like.
• Be found on a marketplace. The marketplace sets rules and takes a share, and the price has to fit its royalty bands.
• Sell a package. A book plus a workbook or templates is a different product from a book alone, and can carry a different price.

Decide the job first. A price chosen without one is a guess about other people's guesses.

Amazon KDP: what a sale actually pays

KDP lets you choose between two royalty options for each ebook. The 35% option pays 35% of the list price (excluding VAT). The 70% option pays 70% of the list price (excluding VAT) minus a delivery cost, and applies to sales in certain countries. On Amazon.com the delivery cost is $0.15 per MB, with a minimum of $0.01.

The 70% price band. Effective July 7, 2026, the 70% option on Amazon.com covers list prices from $2.99 to $12.99. Before that date the top of the band was $9.99, so any guide that still gives $9.99 as the ceiling is out of date. The list price must also be at least 20% below the list price of any physical edition of the book. The 35% option accepts prices up to $200, with a minimum that depends on file size.

• $9.99

  Option that applies

  70%

  Royalty per sale

  $6.68

• $12.99

  Option that applies

  70%

  Royalty per sale

  $8.78

• $13.99

  Option that applies

  35%

  Royalty per sale

  $4.90

The sum at $9.99 is 70% x ($9.99 minus $0.45 delivery) = $6.68. Past $12.99 the sale falls to the 35% option, so a $1 rise in price can lower your royalty: that is the cliff to avoid. Our Kindle royalty calculator runs the same sum for your price and file size.

Two more rules. Public domain works are only eligible for the 35% option. And for sales to customers in Brazil, Japan, Mexico and India, an ebook earns the 70% rate only if it is enrolled in KDP Select.

KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited

KDP Select is a free 90-day program for Kindle ebooks. Enrolled titles are included in Kindle Unlimited automatically and can use Free Book Promotions and Kindle Countdown Deals. Countdown Deals run only on the Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk marketplaces.

Kindle Unlimited pays from a shared fund according to pages read. Pages are counted as Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP), up to 3,000 per title per customer, and a re-read is not paid again. The rate per page changes every month, so there is no fixed figure to plan around. KDP publishes the fund after the month closes; use the KENP calculator with a recent rate.

Enrolling is a decision about distribution and price tests, not a price in itself. Read KDP Select's current terms before you enrol, especially what enrolment limits elsewhere.

Paperbacks: the printing cost comes first

A paperback's royalty on Amazon.com is a rate times the list price, minus the printing cost. The rate is 60% for list prices of $9.99 and above and 50% for $9.98 and below. Expanded Distribution pays 40%.

Printing cost grows with page count. For black-ink paperbacks sold on Amazon.com, KDP's Paperback Printing Cost page (checked 2026-10-12) lists a flat $2.30 for 24 to 110 pages in regular trim (24 to 108 on Amazon.com.au), then $1.00 plus $0.012 per page beyond that. KDP's own example: a 300-page book costs $4.60 to print, so at $9.99 the royalty is 60% x $9.99 minus $4.60 = $1.39. Always check KDP's Printing Cost and Royalty Calculator for your trim, ink and paper, since the table varies.

The lesson is general: price a paperback from its printing cost upward. A long, thin-margin book is a poor use of the shelf; a short one has a lower floor. KDP also requires at least 24 pages for a paperback.

Selling directly: Gumroad, Payhip and Etsy

• Gumroad. The pricing page lists 10% + $0.50 per transaction on sales through your profile or direct links, and 30% when new customers find you through Discover, with no monthly fee. Its fees help article adds that the 10% + $0.50 does not include card processing (2.9% + $0.30) or PayPal fees, while the 30% Discover fee includes all processing. On a $27 direct sale paid by card, that is $3.20 in Gumroad's fee and $1.08 in card processing, leaving $22.72. Check both pages, as fees change.
• Payhip. Its pricing page lists a Free plan with a 5% transaction fee, Plus ($29 a month) with 2%, and Pro ($99 a month) with none. PayPal and Stripe still charge their standard rates on top.
• Etsy. Fees there are a listing fee, a transaction fee and payment processing, and they vary by country. We could not load Etsy's fee page to check, so read it before you list.

Fixed fees weigh more on cheap items and percentage fees on dear ones. Run your own price through each platform's fee line before you compare them.

Bundles, anchors and regional prices

These are things to try, not findings. We have no source for how buyers respond to any of them, and the best test is your own audience.

• Bundles. If a higher price feels hard to justify for a book, add something distinct (a workbook, templates, a call) rather than more pages.
• Showing the full price. If you offer a launch price, say what the normal price will be and mean it. A timer that resets is not honest.
• Regional prices. If you sell worldwide, check whether your platform offers country-based prices, and review any automatic conversion rather than accepting it unseen.
• Pay what you want. Possible on some platforms, but we have no figures on how people use it.

How to test a price

1. Change one thing at a time, so you know which change moved the result.
2. Judge by revenue per visitor (or per impression on a marketplace), not conversion rate alone, since a lower conversion at a higher price can still pay more.
3. Give each price enough visitors to mean something. A handful of sales proves nothing.
4. On KDP, temporary promotions such as Countdown Deals (KDP Select only) let you try a lower price without changing the list price.
5. Write the result down, with the date and the platform's fees at the time.

What the book costs to make

The cost side is easy to forget. With SuperEbook, planning is free (three title options, a brief and an editable chapter outline) and nothing is written until you press Write. A lead magnet costs 25 credits to write and a how-to guide 35 credits. On the Pro plan that works out to about $1.08 and $1.52 per book; with a credit pack it is about $2.00 and $2.80, and pack credits don't expire. Plan figures assume every monthly credit gets used: monthly plan credits expire at the end of each billing period, so a book costs more if some go unused. Every new account starts with 50 free credits.

Downloading the PDF, EPUB and DOCX needs a paid plan or a credit pack bought from the book's page. Files come with full commercial rights. Add up your own costs in the self-publishing cost calculator and see how many sales earn them back at your royalty. The right price is one that covers them at a number of sales you can believe.