How Authors Get Paid with Amazon

This is the question I get most often, right up with: how do you come up with characters? That’s a different subject for a different day, though. Today, I want to focus on how authors get paid with Amazon.

First, authors are paid directly via direct deposit for all the royalties the previous month. It’s the beginning of January, so I should have received a direct deposit for everything sold in December. Pretty easy. There are no checks cut or anything complicated. Royalty numbers can be accessed by the author at any point from a dashboard within the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing- Amazon’s publishing company) website.

Usually when people ask this question, they want to know how MUCH we get paid, not all the details, but I’ll give you both. How much you get paid depends on how much you set the price of your book(s) and how the book is purchased. For example, I am going to make a different amount if a book is purchased on Kindle than a paperback version. This is mostly because there is a price difference between digital products and physical.

Regardless of digital or physical, however, I earn (almost) the same percentage. Author/Publisher splits are 70/30 (Kindle) and 60/40 (Physical) if you price your products between a certain range. The range is completely reasonable and allows Amazon to keep products reasonably priced. Ever wonder why you see books priced around the same price point? That’s why. That and most authors try to stay competitive with each other so there’s some self-regulation that doesn’t have anything to do with Amazon. It’s important to note that for physical books, the royalty split is 60/40 and is applied AFTER the cost of printing and shipping.

What about Kindle Unlimited? This is usually what most people are curious about. To put it simply, authors are paid for each page that someone reads with Kindle Unlimited. More complexly, the rate that authors get paid each month changes based on the total number of Kindle Unlimited pages read (across all of Amazon). While it varies, the average is $.004 – $.005 per page read. That means for every 1000 pages, an author makes between $4-$5. It’s important to keep in mind that a page on Kindle Unlimited, however, is not the same as it would be in a book. Pages are standardized to be about 187 words, which isn’t much considering that it takes about 30,000-40,000 words to be a novel. So, if I have a 40,000 word (typically novel length) novel then it will roughly equate to 213 kindle pages and if we multiply that by .004 (the low end) we will get about 85 cents. It’s important to note that this amount is not subject to the 70/30 royalty cut. The whole 85 cents belong to the author.

Okay, I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but Kindle Unlimited is all about quantity. If you’re making roughly $1 for each person that reads your whole book, that can add up quickly. Some authors make the majority of their profits from Kindle Unlimited page reads!

If you’re interested in learning more details, check out Amazon’s explanation of pricing. To conclude (and this isn’t the same for everyone), but I usually make the most money when people buy books in this order:

Physical (hardcover or paperback) – high royalties

Kindle – second highest royalties

Kindle Unlimited Reads- lowest royalties

All that to say, an author should include a mix of each of these three in their marketing efforts. It’s helpful to have people at each stage of purchasing (even if I’m only making cents on a page). So, no matter how you read, I’m thankful that you ARE reading my work and the work of other authors.

Cheers, Lulie