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Kindle's 70% Royalty Now Goes Up to $12.99: What to Reprice

Since July 7, 2026, Amazon.com pays the 70% ebook royalty on list prices up to $12.99 instead of $9.99. A $12.99 ebook now earns nearly twice what it did in June, and nothing changes unless you act.

Published October 17, 2026. Figures are calculated from KDP's published rates when the page is built.

KDP's eBook List Price Requirements page now opens with the news: effective July 7, 2026, the 70% royalty option price band on Amazon.com is $2.99 to $12.99, up from $2.99 to $9.99, "with equivalent changes in other KDP marketplaces." The FAQ on the same page adds that the old $9.99 ceiling had been in place since 2007.

The floor did not move. A book still needs a list price of at least $2.99 to choose 70%. What moved is the top of the band, and it moved by three dollars.

Before and after on Amazon.com

Here is one ebook with a 2 MB file (delivery cost $0.30 a copy at $0.15 per MB) sold on Amazon.com with no sales tax deducted. Before July 7, anything above $9.99 could only pay 35%. Now the same prices qualify for 70%.

A $12.99 ebook went from $4.55 to $8.88 per sale. On 100 sales a month the difference is $433.00.

The more useful comparison is with $9.99, the highest price that paid 70% until July. A sale at $12.99 now earns $8.88 against $6.78 at $9.99. Put the other way round, $12.99 matches your $9.99 income as long as you keep 76% of your sales. If raising the price costs you fewer than about 24 sales in every 100, you come out ahead. Only a test on your own book shows whether readers accept the higher price, and the price test calculator gives the copies you need at each price to judge the result.

Run your own file size and price through the Kindle ebook royalty calculator; larger files lose more to delivery at every price.

Who gains the most

Box sets and bundles

A box set is priced at several books' worth, so the old ceiling hit it directly. A set of four $3.99 novels is worth $10.76 in royalties if a reader buys each book on its own, but a box set priced above $9.99 dropped to 35%. With a 4 MB box set file:

• At $9.99, the old maximum for 70%: $6.57 per sale, 61% of what the four separate sales would earn.
• At $12.99, now inside the band: $8.67 per sale, 81% of the separate total, while the reader still saves 19% on buying the books one by one.

The box set calculator runs this for any series, and the guide on pricing a Kindle box set works through the rest of the decision, including the Kindle Unlimited page cap.

Long non-fiction

A long how-to or reference book with charts and images has a bigger file than a novel, and it may justify a higher price. Under the old rules a $11.99 guide paid $4.20 at 35%. With a 6 MB file, 70% now pays $7.76 even after $0.90 of delivery cost. Because delivery is charged per megabyte, compressing images still matters: the delivery cost calculator shows how much each megabyte takes.

Books priced to sit just under the old line

A longer novel held at $9.99 purely to stay on 70% no longer needs to be. Its price is now a question about readers, not about the royalty band.

What KDP says did not change

The FAQ on the list price page is specific about the limits of this change:

• Delivery costs: "No change. Delivery costs still apply to the 70% royalty option." The per-megabyte rates on the Digital Book Pricing Page are the same as before.
• The 35% option: its minimum and maximum list prices and its royalty rate are unchanged. On Amazon.com you can still list an ebook at up to $200.00 on 35%.
• Your current price: KDP says you don't need to update it, and your price and royalty option "stay the same unless you choose to make a change."
• Translated editions linked to the original inherit price and royalty option updates, unless you gave the translation its own royalty option, in which case you update it separately.
• Audiobooks with virtual voice are priced separately and aren't affected.

For a book already on 70%, KDP's FAQ says you can update the list price at any time. Before you save, the Pricing, royalty, and distribution section of the eBook Pricing tab shows the estimated royalty for each option at the price you've typed, which is a quick way to confirm a new price really lands on 70%.

Two older rules now bite at higher prices. First, KDP's pricing page requires a 70% ebook to be priced at least 20% below the Amazon list price of any print edition. An ebook at $12.99 needs every print edition of the book listed at $16.24 or more. Second, prices above the band still pay 35%: at $14.99 the same 2 MB ebook earns $5.25, less than at $9.99. The new ceiling is a ceiling, not a suggestion to keep going.

Check your other stores

KDP describes the change in other marketplaces as "equivalent changes" and does not list the old maximums for each store on the current page, so we don't either. These are the 70% bands each store shows now:

Prices converted from a $12.99 Amazon.com price won't necessarily land inside every band. Australia's band runs to A$15.99, while India, Japan, Brazil and Mexico pay 70% only to books enrolled in KDP Select. In the euro stores the price you type includes VAT, and KDP pays royalty on the price without it. Run the new price through the ebook price checker by marketplace, and wherever a converted price falls outside that store's band, type a price for that store yourself instead of accepting the conversion. A repricing that lifts your Amazon.com royalty can quietly drop another store to 35%.

More guides

• How to Price a Kindle Box Set Without Losing Money
• KDP's Own Royalty Calculator vs Book Math Tools: What Each Covers
• What KDP Charges to Print a Paperback, With Every Table