Amazon royalties

You may have already read how much you will earn by distributing your books worldwide with StreetLib. But, when it comes to royalties, Amazon requires its own special FAQ.

Here are your royalties for sales on the Amazon Kindle Store.

INDIE PUBLISHERS

The books of “indie publishers” (Amazon’s definition below) will be managed through Amazon’s Kindle Enterprise Publishing platform.

By “indie publisher” Amazon means:

• "Authors", meant as physical individual persons, not companies who publish ebooks/books.
• Non-professional publishers, i.e. companies whose final products may be identified as not professional enough (content or formatting quality). This categorization is made from time to time by Amazon and we’ll explicitly and separately inform them if a company falls into this category.
• Aggregators of self-published books (identified by Amazon) using our distribution tools.

Furthermore, this only concerns books uploaded by the above-described indie publishers

• Since August 1, 2017 or

• with sales of under 25 units in the 12 months from August 1, 2016 to July 31, 2017.

Books uploaded outside of these timeframes will keep the existing conditions for their royalties, for now.

To “indie publishers” and books that are included in the above categories, Amazon will apply the following conditions:

Standard Option: with royalties of 25% of your list price (excluding VAT where applicable)

Enhanced Option: with royalties of 60 % of your list price (excluding VAT where applicable), minus delivery costs. Delivery costs are as follows:

The model applied to each book is based on its price:

• Price under $2.99 -> Standard
• Price between $2.99 and $9.99 -> Enhanced
• Price over $9.99 -> Standard
• Public Domain -> Standard.

Enhanced conditions are different and based on the country of the final customer:

• 70% in Europe (excluding Andorra, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland), USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand
• 60% in Andorra, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland
• 35% (no delivery costs) everywhere else e.g. Latin America.

PRICE CONDITIONS

Books published by indie publishers can’t be priced at zero, meaning books priced under $0.99 on StreetLib will actually be priced at $0.99 on Amazon. eBook prices on Amazon must comply with the following pricing conditions:

Similar restrictions are applied in other currencies.

Only the standard option is available for the following currencies: JPY, BRL, INR and MXN.

PUBLISHING HOUSES

Anyone not considered an indie publisher will use the Dynamic Price Model.

Here is how the Dynamic Price model works:

• You, the publisher, set a price for your ebook — as usual.
• Based on that price, Amazon may create an “Optimal Price” that will vary from time to time.
• When your ebook is sold, you will receive 60% of the Optimal Price, regardless of where the buyer is located (except the few exceptions below).

In India, Australia, and the Netherlands, the standard reseller terms (40% of list price) will be applied until further notice because of how the Kindle Store currently works in those countries. In countries with fixed-price laws (such as Germany), publisher’s prices will stay as they are, in accordance with these laws.

This price model is intended to increase publishers’ overall revenue. It chooses the best price on any given day for every title. It lowers the price of books that are selling very few copies to due to high pricing, and also increases the price of books that could be earning more (without losing sales as a result).