How much should I charge for a self-published ebook?

For most fiction, between $2.99 and $5.99, and the reason is structural rather than psychological. KDP pays 70% only within a price band that starts at $2.99, so pricing below it cuts your rate to 35% — a $0.99 ebook earns about $0.35 while a $2.99 one earns roughly $2.09 before delivery costs. You need six sales at $0.99 to match one at $2.99.

What is the minimum price for a KDP paperback?

Printing cost divided by your royalty rate, which is 60% for most US list prices. A 300-page regular-trim paperback costs $1.00 + (300 × $0.012) = $4.60 to print, so the minimum list price is about $7.67. You cannot price below that, which is why page count is a pricing decision.

How does page count affect my book's price?

Directly, through the printing cost. Past 110 pages KDP charges $0.012 a page on a regular trim, so every 100 pages adds $1.20 to the print cost and about $2.00 to your price floor. A typography change that moves a book from 300 to 340 pages raises the floor by roughly 80 cents, which is real money in a genre where competitors sit at $12.99.

Is $0.99 ever the right price?

For a limited promotion, or for the first book in a series where the margin on that book is not the point. As a standing price it is usually a mistake: you fall to the 35% royalty tier, and cheap pricing signals low quality in most genres outside of romance and a few high-volume categories.

What is the 70% royalty band on Amazon?

As of 7 July 2026 it runs from $2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com, raised from a $9.99 ceiling that had stood since 2007. Inside the band you earn 70% of list price minus a delivery cost based on file size; outside it you earn 35%. Books above $12.99 therefore earn less in absolute terms until the price rises considerably.

Should my ebook and paperback be priced differently?

Yes, and the gap does work. The paperback has a hard cost floor the ebook does not, so it will naturally be higher, and the contrast makes the ebook look like the sensible purchase. Many authors deliberately widen the gap so the ebook, which carries the better margin, is the obvious choice.

How do I price a book in a series?

Price the first book to be tried and the rest to be bought. A lower entry price, sometimes free during a promotion, is a customer-acquisition cost rather than a discount, and it only makes sense when the later books exist and are easy to find from the first one.

How to price a self-published book

Most pricing advice for self-published books is about psychology: charm pricing, perceived value, what the market will bear. That advice is not wrong, and it skips the part you cannot argue with.

A print book has a floor. It is arithmetic, you did not choose it, and it is set by a decision you probably made for aesthetic reasons three months earlier.

The floor

KDP will not let you list a paperback below a minimum, and that minimum is:

printing cost ÷ royalty rate = minimum list price

The royalty rate is 60% for most US list prices. The printing cost is a formula, not a quote. For a US paperback with black ink:

Trim and extent	Fixed	Per page
Regular trim, 24–110 pages	$2.30	—
Regular trim, 110–828 pages	$1.00	$0.012
Large trim, 24–110 pages	$2.84	—
Large trim, 110–828 pages	$1.00	$0.017

Regular trim is anything up to 6.12 × 9 inches. Above that you are in large trim and paying half a cent more per page.

So a 300-page novel at 5.5 × 8.5 costs $1.00 + (300 × $0.012) = $4.60 to print. Divide by 0.6 and the minimum list price is $7.67. Below that, Amazon simply refuses the price.

Where the interior meets the money

Now the part that connects this to the rest of the book.

You set the type a half point larger because the page looked cramped. The book goes from 300 pages to 340. Nothing about the text changed.

Printing cost: $4.60 → $5.08
Price floor: $7.67 → $8.47

Eighty cents. On its own, survivable. But the same decision has also widened your spine, invalidating the cover file, and if it pushed you across a gutter margin band the interior needs checking again too.

Run it the other way and it is a lever. A book at 380 pages that comes down to 340 through tighter line spacing and a slightly larger trim saves about $0.48 a copy and lets you price a dollar lower against competitors — or keep the price and take the dollar.

The instinct is to squeeze. Resist it past a point: a book set at 120% leading on a wide measure is cheaper to print and visibly worse to read, and readers register that without diagnosing it. The honest version of this lever is choosing the trim size that suits the genre and letting the page count follow, which trim sizes covers.

The ebook band

Ebooks have no printing cost and one hard rule instead.

KDP pays 70% of list price, minus a delivery fee based on file size, for books priced between $2.99 and $12.99 on Amazon.com. Outside that band it pays 35%.

That ceiling moved on 7 July 2026, from $9.99, where it had stood since KDP launched in 2007. If you read pricing advice written before that date — which is most of it — the $9.99 figure in it is stale.

The floor is where the money is lost. Compare:

List price	Rate	Approximate royalty
$0.99	35%	$0.35
$2.99	70%	$2.09
$4.99	70%	$3.49
$9.99	70%	$6.99

A $0.99 ebook needs six sales to match one at $2.99. It is a promotional price, not a business, and that is the reason to be careful with it rather than any argument about perceived value.

Delivery cost is small but real: $0.15 per megabyte in the US, deducted before the 70% is calculated. It matters for illustrated books. A text novel is well under a megabyte; a book with fifty photographs might be twenty, which is $3.00 off every sale. If your file is heavy, image sizing is a pricing decision too.

What the price says

Inside those constraints, the number still communicates.

Readers use price as a quality signal, and in most genres a novel priced at $0.99 permanently reads as one nobody was confident about. The exceptions are real — romance and a few high-volume categories have readers who buy in quantity at low prices — but they are exceptions rather than the rule.

Look at what the books directly beside yours charge. Not bestsellers, whose publishers price on different logic, but the books a reader would consider instead of yours: same genre, same length, same kind of cover. Sitting well below that range does not usually read as a bargain. It reads as a different tier of book.

For a paperback the floor often does this work for you. If your novel cannot be listed below $7.67 and the genre sits at $12.99 to $15.99, the sensible price is in the genre’s range and the floor was never the binding constraint. Pricing at the floor is what happens when someone treats the minimum as a target.

The ebook-to-paperback gap

Publish both and you have a comparison the reader will make.

The paperback carries a cost floor the ebook does not, so it will be higher. That is fine, and many authors widen the gap deliberately: a $14.99 paperback beside a $4.99 ebook makes the ebook look like the obvious choice, and the ebook is the one with the 70% margin.

The paperback still earns its place. It is the format that makes a book feel real, it is what people give as gifts, and its price is what makes the ebook look cheap.

Series pricing

For a series, the first book has a different job from the rest. It is not a product so much as a sample: its price is what a reader risks to find out whether they want four more.

Hence the standard structure — a lower price on book one, sometimes free during a promotion, and full price after. It only works if the rest of the series exists and is findable from book one, which is a back matter problem before it is a pricing one. A discounted first book leading to nothing is a discount.

Set the interior first, look at the page count, work out your floor, and then decide what the book is worth. Doing it in the other order means discovering in the pricing screen that a typographic decision you made in June has priced you out of your own genre.

Sources

KDP, Paperback printing cost — the fixed and per-page costs, and the minimum list price formula
KDP, eBook list price requirements — the $2.99–$12.99 band for 70%, effective 7 July 2026, and the file-size tiers for 35%
KDP, eBook royalties — delivery costs deducted before the 70% calculation

Common questions

How much should I charge for a self-published ebook?: For most fiction, between $2.99 and $5.99, and the reason is structural rather than psychological. KDP pays 70% only within a price band that starts at $2.99, so pricing below it cuts your rate to 35% — a $0.99 ebook earns about $0.35 while a $2.99 one earns roughly $2.09 before delivery costs. You need six sales at $0.99 to match one at $2.99.
What is the minimum price for a KDP paperback?: Printing cost divided by your royalty rate, which is 60% for most US list prices. A 300-page regular-trim paperback costs $1.00 + (300 × $0.012) = $4.60 to print, so the minimum list price is about $7.67. You cannot price below that, which is why page count is a pricing decision.
How does page count affect my book's price?: Directly, through the printing cost. Past 110 pages KDP charges $0.012 a page on a regular trim, so every 100 pages adds $1.20 to the print cost and about $2.00 to your price floor. A typography change that moves a book from 300 to 340 pages raises the floor by roughly 80 cents, which is real money in a genre where competitors sit at $12.99.
Is $0.99 ever the right price?: For a limited promotion, or for the first book in a series where the margin on that book is not the point. As a standing price it is usually a mistake: you fall to the 35% royalty tier, and cheap pricing signals low quality in most genres outside of romance and a few high-volume categories.
What is the 70% royalty band on Amazon?: As of 7 July 2026 it runs from $2.99 to $12.99 on Amazon.com, raised from a $9.99 ceiling that had stood since 2007. Inside the band you earn 70% of list price minus a delivery cost based on file size; outside it you earn 35%. Books above $12.99 therefore earn less in absolute terms until the price rises considerably.
Should my ebook and paperback be priced differently?: Yes, and the gap does work. The paperback has a hard cost floor the ebook does not, so it will naturally be higher, and the contrast makes the ebook look like the sensible purchase. Many authors deliberately widen the gap so the ebook, which carries the better margin, is the obvious choice.
How do I price a book in a series?: Price the first book to be tried and the rest to be bought. A lower entry price, sometimes free during a promotion, is a customer-acquisition cost rather than a discount, and it only makes sense when the later books exist and are easy to find from the first one.