Updated September 1, 2026
What every ebook platform keeps, per sale
Nobody publishes this with the stores and the tools in the same column, because doing it honestly means printing the rows where the store wins. Two of them do.
Every figure below is read from the platform’s own pricing or help pages, dated, and linked at the foot of this page. The table is sorted by what reaches the author, which is not an order we chose. Reuse it anywhere, with attribution.
One sale of a $9.99 ebook
| Platform | Headline | They keep | Author keeps | Card fees | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inkwharf· direct | $19/month, 0% of any sale | — | $9.99 | Paid separately | — |
| Before card processing, which the author pays Stripe directly at roughly 2.9% + 30¢ in the US — about $9.40 of this $9.99 actually lands. Every other row already has processing inside its cut. | |||||
| BookFunnel· tool | $16.67/month | — | $9.99 | Paid separately | 2026-08-28 |
| BookFunnel is delivery rather than a checkout: it takes no share because it does not process the sale. Selling with it means paying a store or payment page as well, and that one takes a cut. | |||||
| Shopify· tool | $19.00/month | — | $9.99 | Paid separately | 2026-09-01 |
| Shopify is delivery rather than a checkout: it takes no share because it does not process the sale. Selling with it means paying a store or payment page as well, and that one takes a cut. | |||||
| WooCommerce· tool | $0.00/month | — | $9.99 | Paid separately | 2026-09-01 |
| WooCommerce is delivery rather than a checkout: it takes no share because it does not process the sale. Selling with it means paying a store or payment page as well, and that one takes a cut. | |||||
| Payhip· tool | 5% | 5% | $9.49 | Included | 2026-08-28 |
| Gumroad· tool | 10% + 50¢ | 15% | $8.49 | Included | 2026-08-26 |
| Leanpub· tool | 20% | 20% | $7.99 | Included | 2026-08-26 |
| Apple Books· store | 70% royalty | 30% | $6.99 | Included | 2026-08-29 |
| Kobo· store | 70% royalty | 30% | $6.99 | Included | 2026-08-29 |
| Amazon KDP· store | 70% royalty | 32.1% | $6.78 | Included | 2026-08-29 |
| Includes a delivery fee of $0.15 per megabyte, charged on a 2 MB file. An illustrated book of ten megabytes pays five times as much. | |||||
The monthly fees are not in this table because they are not per-sale charges and averaging them into one would misstate both: Inkwharf $19.00/mo, BookFunnel $16.67/mo, Shopify $19.00/mo. The take-rate calculator puts them against a percentage at a volume you choose.
How these were worked out
- 1All figures are for a single sale of a $9.99 ebook. The choice of price is not neutral — a fixed per-sale fee looks worse the cheaper the book — and $9.99 is where the market clusters as well as the most flattering common price for a fixed fee.
- 2Amazon deducts a delivery fee of $0.15 per megabyte from the royalty before paying it, so every figure for it assumes a 2 MB file: a plain novel with a cover. Illustrated non-fiction runs to ten megabytes and pays five times as much.
- 3Card processing is included in a retailer's cut and in the cut of any tool that is the merchant of record. It is not included in the direct row, which pays Stripe separately at roughly 2.9% + 30¢ in the US. The two columns are therefore not the same kind of number, and the table says which is which rather than quietly netting them out.
- 4Royalty bands are quoted at this price only. Amazon pays 35% rather than 70% below $2.99 and above $12.99, and Kobo pays 45% below $2.99 — a book priced a dollar either side of a boundary earns a different rate.
- 5A retailer's cut buys reach, which a direct sale does not. These figures say what each option costs, not which one earns more: an author with no list of their own makes more money on Amazon than on their own domain.
Google Play Books is left out on purpose: its published terms and the third-party summaries of them disagree by a third of an author’s money, and a figure we cannot source to the store’s own page has no business on a page that exists to be checked.
Use this
The table is published under CC BY 4.0. Quote it, chart it, or take the whole thing as a file — a link back to this page is the only condition, and it is the condition because a fee table without its date and its sources is worse than useless six months from now.
Sources
Every figure quoted above, and the page it was read from. Each platform carries the date it was last checked. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted — if one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it is updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.
Leanpub · checked August 26, 2026
- 80% royalty, less 50¢ below $7.99 help.leanpub.com
- Author memberships $12.99–$99/mo, publishing free without one leanpub.com
- No exclusivity help.leanpub.com
BookFunnel · checked August 28, 2026
- $30/$200/$300 a year; 500/5,000/unlimited downloads; 1/4/6 pen names bookfunnel.com
Payhip · checked August 28, 2026
- Free 5%, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0% help.payhip.com
- Payhip collects and remits EU/UK VAT on digital sales help.payhip.com
Gumroad · checked August 26, 2026
- 10% + 50¢ per sale, 30% via Discover, no monthly fee gumroad.com
Shopify · checked September 1, 2026
- Basic $19/mo billed annually, $25 monthly; 2% charged only where the sale is taken through a payment provider other than Shopify Payments shopify.com
- Shopify's own Digital Downloads app is free apps.shopify.com
WooCommerce · checked September 1, 2026
- core plugin is free; 7+ million active installs wordpress.org
- WooPayments is 2.9% + $0.30 on US domestic cards, with no monthly fee woocommerce.com
Amazon KDP · checked August 29, 2026
- 70% royalty band and the 35% fallback kdp.amazon.com
Apple Books · checked August 29, 2026
- 70% of list at any price, no delivery fee authors.apple.com
Kobo · checked August 29, 2026
- 70% at $2.99 and up, 45% below kobowritinglife.zendesk.com