The royalty band your price falls into, and the dollar that halves it
Amazon pays 70% between $2.99 and $12.99 and 35% outside it. Not a taper — a cliff. Pricing a book at $13.99 instead of $12.99 takes about $4 a copy off you, and nothing in the pricing form mentions it.
Inkwharf · · 4 min read
Ask an author why their book costs $9.99 and you will usually get an answer about what the market bears. Ask enough authors and the answer starts to look less like a market and more like everyone standing on the same ledge.
Where the ledges are
Amazon's 70% royalty is available only for books priced from $2.99 to $12.99. Outside that band, at any price above or below, the rate is 35%.
It does not taper. There is no zone where you get 60% or 50%. One cent across the line and half your income is gone.
| List price | Rate | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| $2.98 | 35% | $1.04 |
| $2.99 | 70% | $1.88 |
| $9.99 | 70% | $6.78 |
| $12.99 | 70% | $8.88 |
| $13.99 | 35% | $4.90 |
Read the bottom two rows again. Charging a dollar more takes $3.98 a copy away from you. A reader pays more, and you are paid roughly half. On a thousand copies that is $3,980, and the only visible difference is a digit.
The top two rows of the band are why $9.99 exists as a price at all. It is not that $9.99 is optimal. It is that it is comfortably inside the only zone where a retailer pays a full rate, and nobody wants to find out where the edge is by standing on it.
The verdict: the pricing of independent publishing is not a market outcome. It is a royalty table wearing a market's clothes, and almost every book you have ever seen priced at $9.99 is standing well back from a ledge.
The stores do not agree on where the ledges are
This is the part that makes the band worth understanding rather than just avoiding.
- Amazon KDP — 70% from $2.99 to $12.99; 35% above and below.
- Kobo — 70% from $2.99 upwards, with no ceiling at all; 45% below $2.99.
- Apple Books — 70% at any price, with no bands and no delivery fee.
So the three stores agree at $9.99 and diverge completely at the edges:
| List price | Amazon | Kobo | Apple |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2.49 | $0.87 | $1.12 | $1.74 |
| $9.99 | $6.78 | $6.99 | $6.99 |
| $19.99 | $7.00 | $13.99 | $13.99 |
At $19.99 — an ordinary price for a technical manual or a professional reference — Apple and Kobo pay twice what Amazon does. The book is the same, the reader pays the same, and the store keeps an extra seven dollars for no reason the author was told about.
This is the strongest practical argument for publishing wide that does not rely on anybody's opinion about ecosystems. If your book belongs above $12.99, the largest store in the market is the worst place to sell it, by a factor of two.
What to actually do about it
If your book belongs inside the band, which most fiction does, price it where you like between $2.99 and $12.99 and stop thinking about this. The bands only bite at the edges.
If you are near an edge, back away from it. $12.99 and $13.99 are not adjacent prices, they are different businesses. $2.99 and $2.98 likewise. Any price within a few cents of a boundary is a mistake waiting for someone to round it.
If your book genuinely belongs above $12.99 — a manual, a course companion, a professional reference, a box set — then the retailer band is now the single largest fee in your business, and it is worth knowing what the alternatives pay. Apple and Kobo pay full rate. A direct sale at $19.99 returns about $19.11 after card processing, against Amazon's $7.00. Selling direct does not replace the retailers, and the honest limits on that are in direct sales versus the retailers — but at this price point it stops being a marginal difference and starts being most of the money.
If you sell a series, price the box set with the band in mind. Four novels at $12.99 is inside; the same four at $15.99 is not, and the discount you thought you were giving the reader costs you more than the discount.
Check it rather than trusting me
Rates move, and a post is a snapshot. Every figure here is in what every ebook platform keeps, per sale, which carries the date each rate was last read and links the store's own page for it. The take-rate calculator will run the sum on your price.
One caveat on the figures above the band: Amazon's delivery fee applies to the 70% option, so the 35% rows here are 35% of list with nothing deducted. If you are pricing above $12.99 it is worth confirming that against your own KDP dashboard, because it is the one number in this post that varies by territory.
Open a shop — one price, one rate, no bands, and your book stays on every retailer at the same time.
Sell your book to your own readers
A storefront, a checkout and file delivery, in about five minutes. No listing fee and nothing exclusive.