Kindle Direct Publishing

Amazon self-publishing platform that is free to use, earning Amazon a royalty cut instead of a fee, with a hard price band and per-megabyte delivery cost governing the 70% rate

As of 1 September 2026, Kindle Direct Publishing is free to use. The dominant self-publishing platform by volume, free to sign up and free to publish. Softwr lists it under Publishing. Kindle Direct Publishing is made by Amazon, available on Web.

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Overview

What Kindle Direct Publishing does

Kindle Direct Publishing lets authors and publishers upload ebook and print-on-demand books directly to the Amazon Kindle store and Amazon print catalogue, with no signup or listing fee. Amazon earns nothing from KDP as a subscription; instead it takes a share of every sale through the royalty structure, which makes the royalty terms themselves the actual commercial product rather than a footnote. The mechanics matter precisely because Amazon changed them in July 2026: the 70% royalty price band, previously $2.99 to $9.99, now runs $2.99 to $12.99, the first change to the ceiling since 2007. Outside that band, or for public domain works, or for sales into ineligible territories, royalty drops to 35%. On top of the 70% royalty, Amazon deducts a delivery fee of roughly $0.15 per megabyte of file size, calculated per unit sold, which means an ebook heavy with images can lose a meaningfully larger share of revenue to delivery cost than a plain-text one at the identical list price. Buyers, in the sense of who actually chooses KDP, are self-published authors and small presses who accept giving Amazon a large volume-driven distribution channel in exchange for a royalty cut rather than a licence fee. The trade-off against wide-distribution tools like Draft2Digital or PublishDrive is concentration: Amazon dominates ebook sales in most English-language markets, so KDP-exclusive enrollment (KDP Select) trades reach on other platforms for benefits like Kindle Unlimited page-read royalties, and an author has to decide deliberately whether that exclusivity is worth it.

What people use it for

A self-published author wanting free, no-fee distribution to the largest single ebook and print-on-demand market
An author pricing a book between $2.99 and $12.99 to qualify for the 70% royalty tier rather than 35%
A publisher considering KDP Select exclusivity to earn Kindle Unlimited page-read royalties, trading away distribution on other retailers for the enrollment period
An author with a large, image-heavy ebook file who needs to understand the per-megabyte delivery fee before setting a price

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Kindle Direct Publishing.

The 70% royalty band has hard edges: pricing even one cent outside $2.99-$12.99 drops the royalty to 35%, which is a cliff, not a gradual scale, and easy to trigger by accident when adjusting price for a promotion.
The delivery fee, roughly $0.15 per megabyte, is deducted on every sale under the 70% tier, so image-heavy or long ebooks lose meaningfully more revenue per sale than a plain-text book at the same list price.
KDP Select exclusivity, while optional, is the only route to Kindle Unlimited page-read royalties, so authors face a real trade-off between Amazon-only reach with page-read income and wider distribution without it.
Public domain or primarily public-domain content is capped at the 35% royalty regardless of price, so that category of publisher cannot access the higher rate at all.
As a single-retailer platform, an author relying solely on KDP is concentrated in one sales channel controlled entirely by Amazon policy, which has changed royalty terms before (the July 2026 price band expansion is itself an example) and can do so again.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Kindle Direct Publishing

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Kindle Direct Publishingvs
Draft2Digital
Draft2Digital: A wide-distribution alternative covering multiple retailers including Kindle, useful if avoiding single-retailer concentration matters
Kindle Direct Publishingvs
Kobo Writing Life
Kobo Writing Life: A direct comparison for royalty terms, since Kobo pays 70% with no delivery fee deduction and no price ceiling
Kindle Direct Publishingvs
IngramSpark
IngramSpark: For print distribution beyond Amazon print-on-demand, including into bookstores and libraries

Pricing

What Kindle Direct Publishing costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

70% royalty tier

Free

Applies to ebooks priced $2.99-$12.99 (expanded from $9.99 ceiling in July 2026)
In-copyright works only
Delivery fee of roughly $0.15/MB deducted per sale
Territory restrictions apply

35% royalty tier

Free

Applies below $2.99, above $12.99, or for public domain content
No delivery fee deducted
Applies automatically outside eligible territories for the 70% tier

Capabilities

Features

Free publishing
No listing or signup fee to publish ebooks or print-on-demand books
70%/35% royalty tiers
Royalty rate determined by list price band, territory and content eligibility
Print-on-demand
Paperback and hardcover printing with no upfront print run cost
KDP Select
Optional 90-day Amazon exclusivity in exchange for Kindle Unlimited page-read royalties and promotional tools
Delivery fee deduction
Roughly $0.15 per megabyte deducted per sale on the 70% royalty tier
Pre-order and release tools
Scheduled release dates and pre-order listings ahead of publication

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does KDP cost anything to use?

No signup or listing fee. Amazon earns revenue through the royalty share (65% or 30% of the list price after territory and delivery-fee adjustments) rather than a subscription or fee.

What is the current 70% royalty price band?

As of July 2026, $2.99 to $12.99, expanded from the previous $2.99 to $9.99 ceiling that had been unchanged since 2007.

What is the delivery fee?

Roughly $0.15 per megabyte of file size, deducted per sale only on the 70% royalty tier, calculated from the delivered file size.

Keep looking

Where to go from Kindle Direct Publishing

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Kindle Direct Publishing, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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