What is your platform’s cut costing you?
A percentage grows with you forever. A subscription doesn’t. Put in what you sell in a month and the difference stops being an argument and becomes a number. Then scroll for what the same book pays through a store, and where that rate falls off a cliff.
At $2,000 a month, Inkwharf costs you $228 a year — a flat subscription, and still 0% of every sale.
| Where you sell | They advertise | You actually pay | A year of it | You would keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leanpub | 20% | 20% | $4,800 | +$4,572 |
| Gumroad | 10% + 50¢ | 15% | $3,601 | +$3,373 |
| Payhip | 5% | 5% | $1,200 | +$972 |
| Books.by | flat fee | — | $299 | +$71 |
| Shopify | flat fee | — | $228 | — |
| BookFunnel | flat fee | — | $200 | — |
| Curios | flat fee | — | $108 | — |
| Inkwharf | 0% | 0% | $228 | — |
- Where the two rate columns disagree, the platform charges a fixed amount per sale on top of its percentage. That gap is the reason this calculator asks what your book costs. At $9.99 it’s worth Gumroad 15%.
- WooCommerce is left out of the table: the software is free and takes no cut, so the bill is hosting and your own hours, neither of which this can compute honestly.
- Card processing is excluded throughout, at roughly 2.9% + 30¢ either way. It’s billed to your own Stripe account here rather than marked up on the way through someone else’s.
- Leanpub also sells author memberships from $9.99 to $99 a month for the writing toolchain, which aren’t counted above. The royalty is charged whether or not you subscribe.
Selling the same book through a store
These aren’t alternatives. Almost every author who sells direct also sells on Amazon, and should. What a store pays, though, isn’t one number. It’s a rate that changes with the price you typed, and the edges have moved recently enough that most published advice is wrong about where they are.
Rate by list price
Amazon KDP
The store most indie ebooks are sold in
70%$6.78 a copy
after $0.30 delivery on a 2 MB file
$13.00 is where this drops to 35%. You’re $3.01 from that edge.
None on the 70% option in the US, UK and EU — KDP Select is required for it only in Brazil, Japan, Mexico and India. Select itself is exclusive everywhere.
Apple Books
Apple's own store, on every iPhone and iPad
70%$6.99 a copy
One rate at every price. No band to fall off, and no delivery fee taken out of it.
None.
Kobo
Rakuten's store, strongest outside the US
70%$6.99 a copy
$2.98 is where this drops to 45%. You’re $7.01 from that edge.
None.
Sold from your own shop
0%$9.40 a copy
after card processing, billed to your own Stripe account
And the reader has to already be yours. That’s the trade the rows above are making: their share buys an audience you did not have to find. An author with no mailing list makes more money on Amazon than on their own domain, and the arithmetic only turns once there are people to send a link to.
- Amazon’s 70% band ran to $9.99 for over a decade and moved to $12.99 on 7 July 2026. A book priced at $11.99 on last year’s advice was earning half of what it earns today.
- Delivery is charged per megabyte on the 70% option only, so an illustrated book pays it several times over. Everything here assumes 2 MB.
- Google Play Books is missing on purpose: the published figures disagree by a third of an author’s money, and a number we can’t source to their own page doesn’t belong on a page that exists to be checked.
Questions
- Why does the book's price change the answer?
- Because two of these platforms charge a fixed amount per sale on top of, or instead of, a percentage. Gumroad takes 10% + 50¢, and Leanpub's royalty drops to 80% minus 50¢ below $7.99. A fixed fee is a bigger share of a cheap book than an expensive one, so 'Gumroad takes 10%' is 15% on a $9.99 title and 20% on a $4.99 one. Move the price and watch which platforms move with it.
- Why is payment processing left out?
- Because including it would compare two different things. Stripe's rate — about 2.9% + 30¢ — is charged on every platform in this table, but some of them fold it into a headline percentage and some bill it separately to your own account. Excluding it everywhere keeps the columns honest, and it's roughly the same money either way.
- Is a percentage ever the better deal?
- Yes, and the calculator says so when it is. It prints a line naming any platform that beats us at the volume and price you entered. On a $9.99 book that's below about $127 a month in sales for Gumroad and about $380 for Payhip's free plan. That window is exactly why the free tier here runs to $500 a month at 0% with no subscription, so the answer for a new author isn't 'pay us' either.
- What counts as a sale?
- Gross, before anyone takes anything: the sum of what your readers paid. Plans here are capped on that same figure, so the number you type is the number your ceiling is measured against.
- Should I stop selling on Amazon, then?
- No, and a page that implied it would be selling you something. Amazon is a channel, not a competitor — its cut buys an audience you didn't have to find, and an author with no mailing list makes more money there than on their own domain. Almost everyone who sells direct also sells on Amazon. What the second section is for is the part Amazon doesn't show you while you type a price: the royalty is banded, and the edges are worth more than most of the advice written about them.
- Is Amazon's 70% band really $12.99 now?
- Yes, since 7 July 2026. It was $2.99–$9.99 for over a decade, which is why almost every guide, forum post and calculator still says $9.99. A book priced at $11.99 on that advice was on 35% and is now on 70%. The figure here is checked against Amazon's own royalty page, with the date it was checked in the source.
- Why is Google Play Books not in the list?
- Because the published figures disagree — some sources say 70% of list, others 52% — and the gap is a third of your money. Everything else on this page can be traced to the seller's own page, and adding one number we can't source would make the rest of them worth less. It goes in when we can cite it.
- Where do the competitor rates come from?
- Their own published pricing, with the date each one was last checked printed on its comparison page. Prices move — if one of these is out of date, it's a bug and worth telling us about.
The full comparisons
- Inkwharf vs Leanpub
- Inkwharf vs BookFunnel
- Inkwharf vs Books.by
- Inkwharf vs Curios
- Inkwharf vs Payhip
- Inkwharf vs Gumroad
- Inkwharf vs Shopify
- Inkwharf vs WooCommerce
Every rate this calculator uses, dated and sourced to the platform’s own page — with Amazon, Apple and Kobo in the same table — is at what every platform keeps, per sale.