What KDP Charges to Print a Paperback, With Every Table
KDP's printing charge is a small table of fixed fees and per-page rates. This page reproduces it for Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and the euro stores, runs five books through it, and isolates the two choices that move it most.
Published October 17, 2026. Figures are calculated from KDP's published rates when the page is built.
Every paperback KDP sells is printed after the order comes in, and the cost of printing it is taken out of your royalty. You never pay it up front, which makes it easy to ignore until you price the book and find the royalty smaller than expected. The charge depends on four things only: the marketplace the reader buys from, the ink, the page count, and whether the trim is regular or large. KDP's Paperback Printing Cost page says bleed and cover finish don't change it.
A large trim is anything wider than 6.12" or taller than 9". Everything else is regular.
The three tables
These are KDP's published rates for the three marketplace groups this site covers. The euro rates apply to Amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .ie and .com.be. KDP also prints for Canada, Australia, Japan, Poland and Sweden at their own rates, and its printing cost page notes that Amazon.com.br, Amazon.in and Amazon.com.mx don't sell KDP paperbacks at all.
Amazon.com
| Ink and page range | Regular trim | Large trim |
|---|---|---|
| Black ink, 24-110 pages | $2.30 flat | $2.84 flat |
| Black ink, 112-828 pages | $1.00 + $0.012 a page | $1.00 + $0.017 a page |
| Standard color, 72-600 pages | $1.00 + $0.0255 a page | $1.00 + $0.0402 a page |
| Premium color, 24-40 pages | $3.60 flat | $4.20 flat |
| Premium color, 42-828 pages | $1.00 + $0.065 a page | $1.00 + $0.08 a page |
Amazon.co.uk
| Ink and page range | Regular trim | Large trim |
|---|---|---|
| Black ink, 24-110 pages | £1.93 flat | £2.15 flat |
| Black ink, 112-828 pages | £0.85 + £0.01 a page | £0.85 + £0.012 a page |
| Standard color, 72-600 pages | £0.85 + £0.02 a page | £0.85 + £0.027 a page |
| Premium color, 24-40 pages | £2.59 flat | £3.24 flat |
| Premium color, 42-828 pages | £0.85 + £0.0435 a page | £0.85 + £0.0598 a page |
Amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .ie, .com.be
| Ink and page range | Regular trim | Large trim |
|---|---|---|
| Black ink, 24-110 pages | €2.05 flat | €2.48 flat |
| Black ink, 112-828 pages | €0.75 + €0.012 a page | €0.75 + €0.016 a page |
| Standard color, 72-600 pages | €0.75 + €0.024 a page | €0.75 + €0.035 a page |
| Premium color, 24-40 pages | €2.85 flat | €3.61 flat |
| Premium color, 42-828 pages | €0.75 + €0.0525 a page | €0.75 + €0.0715 a page |
Black ink covers cream and white paper at the same price. Groundwood paper has its own, slightly lower table, covered in the groundwood paper guide.
Flat band or per page: which one your book is on
KDP's formula is fixed cost + page count × per-page cost, but short books skip it. A black ink book of 24 to 110 pages pays one flat fee, and so does a premium color book of 24 to 40 pages. Standard color has no flat band because it starts at 72 pages.
The flat fee is close to what the formula would charge at the top of the band. On Amazon.com, a regular-trim black ink book at 110 pages would cost $2.32 by the formula; the flat fee is $2.30. The UK formula gives £1.95 against a £1.93 flat fee, and the euro formula €2.07 against €2.05. For premium color at 40 pages the formula gives exactly the flat fee: $3.60 for a regular trim and $4.20 for a large one.
So the flat band works like a minimum charge. On Amazon.com a 24-page black ink booklet costs $2.30 and a 110-page book costs $2.30. Below the top of the band, extra pages are free, and cutting pages saves nothing. Above it, every page counts:
| Amazon.com book | Pages | Printing cost |
|---|---|---|
| Black ink, 6" x 9" | 110 | $2.30 (flat) |
| Black ink, 6" x 9" | 112 | $2.34 |
| Premium color, 8.5" x 8.5" (large) | 40 | $4.20 (flat) |
| Premium color, 8.5" x 8.5" (large) | 42 | $4.36 |
The step at the edge of the band is small. What it tells you is where to stop worrying: if a planner or picture book sits inside the band, design for the reader and fill the pages. Page count only becomes a cost question once you're past 110 black pages or 40 premium color pages.
The page count that matters is the one in your formatted interior file. Before that exists, the page count guide estimates it from word count and trim.
What real books cost to print
Five hypothetical books, each run through the same tables. The last column is the lowest list price KDP would accept on Amazon.com, which is the printing cost divided by the royalty rate, as KDP's printing cost page explains.
| Book | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Euro stores | Lowest US price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lined journal 100 pages, 6" x 9", black, white paper | $2.30 | £1.93 | €2.05 | $4.60 |
| Literary novel 320 pages, 5.5" x 8.5", black, cream paper | $4.84 | £4.05 | €4.59 | $9.68 |
| Epic fantasy 600 pages, 6" x 9", black, cream paper | $8.20 | £6.85 | €7.95 | $13.67 |
| Picture book 36 pages, 8.5" x 8.5", premium color | $4.20 | £3.24 | €3.61 | $8.40 |
| Cookbook 150 pages, 8" x 10", standard color | $7.03 | £4.90 | €6.00 | $11.72 |
The journal and the picture book are both on flat fees, so their costs are fixed whatever happens to the page count inside the band. The novel and the fantasy book share an ink and are both regular trims, so the only difference between them is 280 pages at $0.012 each. The cookbook is the expensive one even on the cheaper color ink, because color is charged per page from the first page and its 8" x 10" trim is large.
The lowest-price column matters more than it looks. Any book whose minimum is above $9.99 can never sit in the 50% royalty band on Amazon.com, so the $9.99 decision is already made for it. To see the royalty at a given price, use the paperback royalty calculator; for any other page count or trim, the printing cost calculator gives the figure for one marketplace at a time.
Two levers that change the bill
A trim that crosses 6.12" x 9"
The regular and large tables share the same fixed cost above the flat band; only the per-page rate changes. On Amazon.com that rate goes from $0.012 to $0.017, so the penalty grows with every page.
The trap is a trim that looks almost identical. Take the 320-page novel at 6" x 9": it costs $4.84 to print. At 6.14" x 9.21" it costs $6.44, because 6.14" is wider than 6.12". For 0.14" of extra width, $1.60 comes off the royalty on every copy (on Amazon.co.uk, £4.05 against £4.69). At a hypothetical 40 copies a month, it adds up to $768.00 a year.
A workbook that needs writing room, or a photo book, can justify the large-trim rate. A novel set at 6.14" x 9.21" or 7" x 10" out of habit can't, and moving it to 6" x 9" is the cheapest royalty increase available. A different trim needs a reformatted interior and a resized cover, so it is a decision to make before you lay the book out.
Ink choice
Ink is the bigger lever, and it is locked once the book is published: KDP's Print Options page says you can't switch between black, standard color and premium color after publication, because of ISBN requirements. Changing ink means a new edition.
Cookbook, 150 pages, 8" x 10", Amazon.com at $24.99
Premium color: printing $13.00, royalty $1.99
Standard color: printing $7.03, royalty $7.96
Switching the cookbook from premium to standard color cuts $5.97 off the printing cost and raises the royalty at the same price by the same amount, to 4.0 times what premium color earns. Standard color needs at least 72 pages, and KDP's Print Options page recommends ordering a proof to check that the ink suits your book; for photo-heavy interiors, order one of each before deciding.
The other ink question is whether you need color at all. A 200-page 8.5" x 11" workbook with a few colored diagrams costs $9.04 in standard color and $4.40 in black ink. If the color is decoration rather than information, black ink keeps $4.64 a copy. At the short end of standard color, a 72-page 6" x 9" book costs $2.84 against $5.68 in premium color.
Before you set a price
Work out the printing cost in each marketplace you plan to sell in, not just your home one. The tables above are in local currency and are not conversions of each other: the 600-page fantasy costs $8.20 in the US and £6.85 in the UK. When KDP sets your other marketplace prices from the US one, check each converted price against that marketplace's minimum and against its royalty threshold; a conversion can land a few cents below the line.