How Do You Sell Ebooks on Amazon? KDP Step by Step

How do you sell ebooks on Amazon? Through Kindle Direct Publishing, which is free, takes a manuscript in Word or EPUB, and puts the book in Amazon's stores within about 72 hours of you pressing publish. You pick one of two royalty options, 35% or 70%, and since 7 July 2026 the 70% option covers prices from $2.99 up to $12.99, where it used to stop at $9.99. A $12.99 novel that paid $4.55 a copy in June pays $8.99 now, and both of the guides ranking for this question that I could read still quote the old ceiling.

That's the answer if you wrote the book. If you meant selling ebooks the way people sell used paperbacks, through a seller account, you can't. Ebooks on Amazon are published, not resold, and the seller-account page that ranks for this term is about physical books at 99 cents an item or $39.99 a month.

I self-publish through KDP, so some of what follows is judgment from doing it. Every number comes from KDP's own help pages, loaded 15 September 2026.

The Three Steps, Honestly Described

KDP's home page says three simple steps, and it's not lying, though each step has a page of rules behind it.

Book details first. Title, subtitle, author name, description, keywords, categories, and an ISBN if you have one, which for an ebook you don't need. The detail that catches people is that the title, subtitle, author name and series information in your manuscript file have to match what you type into the form, and formats link to each other automatically only when "the author name and book title of both editions match exactly". A stray "The" costs you a linked paperback, so I'd copy the title out of the manuscript file rather than retype it.

Content second. KDP's recommended format is its own Kindle Package Format, made in the free Kindle Create tool. Word files convert well for plain text. EPUB is accepted if it meets their guidelines. MOBI, the old Kindle format, is no longer accepted for fixed-layout books as of March 2025, and PDF is only accepted in a short list of European languages. Upload the manuscript, upload a cover, run the previewer, and look at the file size it reports, because that number decides part of your royalty, as I'll show below.

Rights and pricing third. Territories, the royalty option, the price in each marketplace, and whether to enrol in KDP Select. Then publish. There's a limit of 10 new titles per format per week, which matters to nobody writing books and everybody uploading a catalogue.

Nothing in those steps costs money. The cost is time, and the price of a cover if you don't make your own.

What Changed On 7 July, And What It Pays Now

Here's the royalty ladder on Amazon.com with the new band, for a 1 MB text-only file. The 70% option deducts a delivery cost of 15 cents per megabyte before the percentage is applied. The 35% option deducts nothing.

The $12.99 row is the news. One of the guides ranking for this search uses $12.99 as its example of a price that "only" earns 35%, or $4.55 a copy, and that was true when it was written in May. It isn't now. The same book at the same price pays $8.99, which is nearly double, and it took Amazon moving one number on a help page.

The row underneath it is the other thing to notice. At $14.99 you're back on 35% and earning $5.25, which is less than the $12.99 book earns. To out-earn $8.99 a copy on the 35% option you'd have to price at $25.69, which is not a price I've seen ebooks sell at. So the practical ceiling for most books is now $12.99, and the practical floor for the 70% option is still $2.99, where you'd keep $1.99.

The 35% option has its own floors that depend on file size, and they're the ones that surprise people with illustrated books. Under 3 MB you can price at 99 cents. From 3 MB to under 10 MB the minimum is $1.99. At 10 MB or more it's $2.99. The maximum on either option is $200, which I mention only because someone always asks.

When 35% Pays More Than 70%

The delivery cost is 15 cents a megabyte, rounded up to the nearest kilobyte, and only charged under the 70% option. KDP says the average across all books is 6 cents a unit, which tells you most ebooks are small. Yours might not be.

Take a $9.99 book. As a 1 MB text file, the 70% option pays $6.89. As a 20 MB file full of photographs, delivery is $3.00 and the 70% option pays 70% of $6.99, which is $4.89. Still ahead of the 35% option's $3.50, but the gap has closed from $3.39 to $1.39 because of the pictures.

Keep going and the lines cross. The 70% option pays more than the 35% option only while the file, in megabytes, is under about three and a third times the price in dollars. That's the whole rule, and it comes straight from the two formulas.

A $2.99 children's picture book at 12 MB earns more on the 35% option than on the 70% one, and the KDP form won't tell you that. It'll let you pick 70% and pay you less. I'd run the file size against that table before choosing, every time, and I'd compress images before giving up the higher rate.

The same manuscript as a paperback has a different cost structure entirely, with printing deducted per page rather than delivery per megabyte, and that's worked through in POD book printing.

KDP Select, As The Help Pages Actually Put It

Most guides describe KDP Select as "more royalties". What the pages say is narrower and worth quoting.

Exclusivity means the digital edition and only the digital edition. You can still sell the paperback anywhere. It also auto-renews, so a book you meant to try in Select for one quarter is in Select for a year unless you go and untick the box, and every quarter you're in it, the ebook can't be on Apple Books, Kobo or your own site.

Countdown Deals have rules of their own. The book must have been in Select for at least 30 days, its list price must sit between $2.99 and $24.99 and stay unchanged for 30 days before and 14 days after, and a deal can run for up to 7 days. The useful part is that during a deal you earn 70% of the promotional price even when it's below $2.99, which is the one route I know of to 70% on a 99 cent sale.

My own view is that Select is a good first quarter for a first book with no audience, because Kindle Unlimited readers will try an unknown author for free in a way buyers won't, and a bad quarter for anyone with readers elsewhere. I'd decide per book, and set a reminder for day 85.

When The Money Arrives

KDP pays approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported. A sale in January is paid by the end of March. Direct deposit has no minimum. A wire transfer needs $100 accrued on Amazon.com, and cheques, where they're still offered, use the same thresholds.

Sixty days is the number to plan around, because it's longer than every other digital channel I've priced. A file sold on Etsy or through a Gumroad link pays out on a schedule measured in days. The same PDF, sold as a Kindle book, pays out the quarter after next. That isn't a reason to avoid KDP, since the store brings readers you'd never reach, but it changes what "I made a sale" means in cash terms. The direct-download version of that comparison is in how to sell digital downloads on Etsy.

The $100,000 Question

One of the People Also Ask boxes under this search asks how many books you need to sell to make $100,000, and the honest answer is a division, so here it is at the royalties above.

Eleven thousand copies of one book is a bestseller by any indie measure I know of. The way authors actually reach that kind of total is with many books over years, which is the part of the arithmetic the $2,000-a-month headlines leave out. It also shows why the July change matters more than it looks. At $9.99 you needed 14,514 sales for that number, and at $12.99 you need 11,124, about a quarter fewer readers for the same money, if the higher price doesn't cost you a quarter of them.

Questions

Can you really make money selling ebooks on Amazon? Yes, at $1.99 to $8.99 a copy on the table above, with nothing deducted for printing or stock. Whether it adds up depends on copies, and copies depend on readers finding the book. In my own case the upload took an afternoon and the readers took a great deal longer, and the second part is still where the time goes.

How much does it cost to sell ebooks on Amazon? Nothing to publish. KDP's tools are free, ebooks don't need an ISBN, and the only per-sale deduction is the delivery cost on the 70% option, 15 cents a megabyte. A cover you didn't make yourself is the usual first expense, and it's the one I'd pay for.

What type of ebook sells the most? I don't have category sales data, and neither do the guides ranking here. What I can tell you from the rules is that text-only books at $2.99 to $12.99 on the 70% option pay the most per copy of anything on the platform, and illustrated books pay less per copy the heavier they are.

Is it worth selling books on Amazon? For an ebook, yes, because the alternative is a store nobody visits. For physical books through a seller account, that's a different business with a $39.99 monthly plan or 99 cents an item, and it isn't what this page is about.

What are the most profitable books to sell on Amazon? Per copy, a small file at $12.99 on the 70% option, at $8.99 a sale. Per author, the ones with sequels, since the second book sells the first.

Does Amazon's other royalty program work the same way? No. Merch on Demand, its print-on-demand shirt program, changed to traffic-based tiers in June and pays a fixed sum per item that you don't get to set, which is covered in merch on demand. KDP is the better deal of the two by a distance, because you set the price and the percentage is published.

What I'd Do

Check the file size in the previewer before choosing a royalty option, and pick 70% only if the file is under three and a third times the price in megabytes. For a text book that's always. For a picture book it often isn't.

Price at $12.99 if the book can carry it, because the new ceiling nearly doubles what that price paid three months ago and none of your competitors' guides say so yet. Put it in Select for the first quarter if nobody knows who you are, and turn off the auto-renewal the same day you enrol so the decision to stay is one you make rather than one that's made for you.

Then write the second book. The maths on this page is the same for everyone, and the only variable you control after publish day is how many books there are.