How Much Do Authors Really Make from Amazon Kindle?
Authors either love Amazon Kindle, or they hate it!
The minimum wage for a full-time worker of 40 hours a week in the US is $1,250 a month before tax (that’s around £800 in the UK, but the minimum monthly wage is around £1,000 in the UK). We’ll be using the US figure to work out how many books an author must sell and through KDP, how many pages must be read in order to meet the figure to fit their monthly minimum wage goal.
I’ve compiled a list of 20 figures from friends who self-publish, as well as those with traditional or independent presses with information on their royalty rates and how much money they make a month. Not a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme! Self-Publishing is Serious Business!Click To Tweet
There are several other platforms you can publish to beside Amazon, but most recently, Amazon came out with their pay-per-page method instead of paying per borrows from their Kindle Unlimited subscription service. This was met with two people; the lovers and the haters; those who embraced it, and those who decided to slam Amazon for what they were doing almost like they announced their new abattoir and money from Kindle sales was funding it!
Self-publishing with Amazon gives you two different royalty rates; 35% and 70% – with the 70% royalty your book must be priced above $2.99 and below $9.99, if it’s below $2.99 or above $9.99 then you must use the 35% rate.
Cost
35% Royalty
Cost
70% Royalty
$ 0.99
$ 0.35
$ 2.99
$ 2.09
$ 1.49
$ 0.52
$ 3.99
$ 2.79
$ 1.99
$ 0.70
$ 4.99
$ 3.49
$ 2.49
$ 0.87
$ 5.99
$ 4.19
To make $1,250 min monthly income, you need to sell 3,571 books at $0.99 or 598 at $2.99. Those numbers seem really high, especially if you’re an author who doesn’t sell a lot of book each month, often, sales for a self-published author who are promoting their work will be around 15 eBooks a month. Optomistically = $5.25 (35%) or $31.35 (70%).
Is Kindle Publishing for You?
If you’re wanting to put your book into the Kindle Unlimited bookstore (KDP Select), you need to offer Kindle exclusivity of your book. There are pros and cons of this; pro you’re able to access a wider readership, con you can’t publish anywhere else, pro you’re able to put your book up for a discounted price, while also being able to reap the benefit of a higher royalty rate, pro you can also have the higher royalty rate from Amazon India, which you can’t access unless using KDP Select for your book, con you might feel iffy about the pay-per-page model because $0.0057 doesn’t sound like a lot. You may have more pros and cons of your own; share them in the comments.
Kindle Edition Normalized Pages abbreviated as KENP is what has taken over from the Kindle borrow standard payment, it’s now a pay-per-page method of paying an author; so the ebooks with more pages are clearly the ones that will be earning the most. A small ebook at 50 pages would’ve gained $0.29 in July 2015 when the KENP payout was $0.0057 per page. But if that book is read 100 times, the payout becomes 5,000 pages and $28.5. Likewise, a 400 page mystery would earn $2.28 if each page was read. If that was read 100 times, the payout would be 40,000 with a $228 payout.
KENP
50
100
250
500
1,000
2,500
5,000
10,000
20,000
$0.0056
$0.28
$0.56
$1.40
$2.80
$5.60
$14.00
$28.00
$56.00
$112.00
$0.0057
$0.29
$0.57
$1.43
$2.85
$5.70
$14.25
$28.50
$57.00
$114.00
$0.0058
$0.29
$0.58
$1.45
$2.90
$5.80
$14.50
$29.00
$58.00
$116.00
$0.0059
$0.30
$0.59
$1.48
$2.95
$5.90
$14.75
$29.50
$59.00
$118.00
$0.0060
$0.30
$0.60
$1.50
$3.00
$6.00
$15.00
$30.00
$60.00
$120.00
Here’s how many pages you’d need to be read if you wanted to earn that monthly minimum wage of $1,250. You would need around 220,000 pages read, or for you 400 page book, it woud need to be read 550 times, or 4,400 times for your 50 page book.
Of the people I’d asked to fill out an anonymous online form, I had 20 responses:
1 person had over 6 full-length books out under their own name. They’re earning between $3k – $4k a month. In the comments, this person said the figure was derived from their total yearly income.
7 people were earning between $0 – $250 a month. The amount of books they had out varied between 2 and 6+. 2 people said they were earning over the $1,250 minimum monthly income. 6 people were earning over $250 a month. 4 people were yet to receive any payment from Amazon or their publishers.
Of the 20 people, 12 of them had titles with traditional or independent publishers. In the royalty box, all 11 of them said 50% and 1 said 60%.
9 people said they used Amazon solely, a further 4 responses said their trad/indie publishers solely used Amazon Kindle.
It was an informative finding, and I think it goes to show that publishing isn’t the money-making machine some believe it to be. With the change in payment system from KDP Select with KENP, I do believe that more authors will be earning more. I also think that the bigger books will win out, and the outcry of hate for the change came from the authors who write short fiction, because they were getting around $1.30 per book after 10% was read, and now are getting around $0.29 per 50 pages read. A $1 loss. Don't be Fooled by the Payout! Self-Publishing Requires a lot of Work!Click To Tweet
Leave a comment if you self-publish with where and why!
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