How Much Does It Cost to Self-Publish a Book?

The table lists the costs that come up when you publish through Kindle Direct Publishing, whether you pay each one and who sets the amount. The sections below explain each line.

KDP’s help page on starting to publish says it in one line: KDP lets you self-publish ebooks, paperbacks and hardcovers for free. Our step-by-step guide to self-publishing a book on Amazon walks through the whole setup.

A paperback or hardcover can use a free KDP ISBN. KDP registers it with Bowker, the US ISBN agency, under the imprint “Independently published”, and the number works only on KDP; low-content books, such as journals, aren’t eligible for it. Ebooks don’t need an ISBN. If your cover has no barcode, KDP adds one to the back cover at no additional cost.

KDP also has free tools for jobs you might otherwise pay for. Cover Creator builds ebook, paperback and hardcover covers from ready layouts and fonts, Kindle Create is what KDP calls its free formatting tool, and the Kindle Previewer desktop app shows how an ebook will look before you publish it.

Two optional programs cost nothing to join. KDP Select is a 90-day program that asks for exclusivity: the ebook’s digital format must be available only through KDP, though print editions can be sold anywhere. Enrolled ebooks are part of Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited) and earn from pages read. Expanded Distribution, for paperbacks only, makes a book available to distributors so booksellers and libraries can order it.

Amazon earns its share when a book sells, and for print books and 70% ebooks it also subtracts a printing or delivery cost. None of this arrives as a bill; it shows up as a smaller royalty.

Ebooks: 35% or 70%

KDP’s eBook Royalties page offers two plans: 35% of the list price without VAT, or 70% of the list price without VAT minus a delivery cost, which the Digital Book Pricing Page sets at $0.15 per MB of your file on Amazon.com. The 35% plan has no delivery cost.

On Amazon.com, the 70% plan needs a list price between $2.99 and $12.99 (the top was $9.99 until July 7, 2026), and it applies only to buyers in the countries listed on KDP’s pricing page. Other sales pay 35%.

Paperbacks and hardcovers: 60% or 50%, minus printing

KDP’s Paperback Royalty page gives the formula: royalty rate times list price, minus printing cost. On Amazon.com the rate is 60% at a list price of $9.99 or more and 50% at $9.98 or less.

The printing cost depends on ink, trim size and page count. For a black-ink paperback in a regular trim on Amazon.com, it is a flat $2.30 for 24 to 110 pages, then $1.00 plus $0.012 a page up to 828 pages. Color costs more per page in the same trim: $0.0255 for standard color and $0.065 for premium color, so a 120-page paperback costs $4.06 or $8.80 to print instead of $2.44 in black ink. Our KDP printing cost calculator works it out for any ink, trim size and store. Hardcovers use the same royalty rates with a higher printing cost: $5.65 plus $0.012 a page for 110 to 550 black-ink pages in a regular trim. Through Expanded Distribution, a paperback earns 40% of the list price, minus printing.

Here is one ebook and one paperback on Amazon.com, worked out the way the KDP royalty calculator on this site does it: a $4.99 ebook with a 2 MB file on the 70% plan, and a $14.99 paperback with 300 black-ink pages in a regular trim.

The last line is Amazon’s share plus the delivery or printing cost. The paperback earns more per copy, but $4.60 of every sale goes to printing.

Price changes the result as well. The same 300-page paperback at $9.98 drops to the 50% rate and earns $0.39; at $9.99 it earns $1.39. Sold through Expanded Distribution at $14.99, it earns $1.40. The $4.99 ebook on the 35% plan earns $1.75 instead of $3.28. Every other cost has to come out of these per-copy royalties.

Everything here is optional and priced by whoever you hire, so no single number fits every book.

Editing

Self-publishing prices for editing are quoted by the word, the hour or the page. The Editorial Freelancers Association publishes a rate chart built from a survey of its members, run from November 2025 to mid-January 2026 with over 1,100 respondents. For fiction, its 2026 chart gives these median ranges per word:

• Developmental editing (structure and content): 3.0–3.5¢
• Line editing (sentences and paragraphs): 2.7–3.5¢
• Copyediting (spelling, grammar, usage and punctuation): 2.0–2.7¢
• Proofreading (one of the last steps before publication): 1.2–2.0¢

The EFA says it doesn’t set rates and that individual rates vary with the work, turnaround and experience; its service definitions explain each kind of edit. With budget for one pass, decide what the draft needs most: structure, sentences or correctness.

Cover design

A designer’s quote depends on the brief. An ebook cover is one image for the Amazon detail page; a paperback cover is a single file with back cover, spine and front cover, sized by trim size, page count and paper, which the KDP cover size calculator works out. Custom illustration or licensed stock art, the number of revision rounds and a matching look for a series all change the price.

Formatting

Formatting prepares the ebook file and the print interior. KDP says Kindle Create suits text-heavy books with simple layouts and doesn’t support paperbacks with tables, footnotes or endnotes, or images that bleed to the edge of the page. A book like that may need a paid formatter or a different tool.

Your own ISBN

Buy your own ISBN if you want your imprint name instead of “Independently published”, or plan to publish the same edition outside KDP, where the free KDP number can’t go. KDP’s ISBN page points to Bowker or your local ISBN agency and notes that Bowker offers discounted rates for KDP authors.

Copyright registration

In the US, a work is protected from the moment it is created and fixed; registration is voluntary, but you need it before suing over infringement of a US work. The Copyright Office’s fee list gives $45 to file online for one work by a single author who is also the claimant, not made for hire, and $65 for the online Standard Application. A copyright page inside the book costs nothing; our copyright page generator drafts one.

Proof and author copies

A proof copyis a test print, marked “Not for Resale”, to check before you publish; author copies are prints of the live book. Both cost the printing cost per copy, with no further discount, plus shipping, which doesn’t qualify for free or Prime delivery, and sales tax or VAT at checkout. You earn no royalty on these copies, even if you resell them. For the 300-page paperback above, that is $4.60 a copy before shipping and tax. Our guide to KDP author copies covers ordering limits, delivery and which store to order from.

Ads keep running after launch, and you can change or pause them at any time. KDP Help recommends starting with Sponsored Products, which have no monthly or upfront fees: you set a maximum bid and pay only when a shopper clicks. The minimum daily budget is $1.00; Amazon’s budget guide recommends at least $10 a day per campaign for many advertisers, and a budget you are able to pay. Budgets average out over the calendar month: in Amazon’s example, $10 a day can spend $12.50 on a busy day and $300 over the month.

Adding or updating a payment method triggers a temporary $50 hold to check the card, which your bank releases within 3 to 7 business days; the amount can vary by marketplace and payment method. Each marketplace you advertise in bills separately.

The useful limit is the royalty. If the clicks behind a $4.99 ebook sale cost more than its $3.28 royalty, the ad loses money on that sale. The Amazon Ads cost calculator shows what a sale costs from your cost per click and conversion rate, our guide to ACOS for KDP books turns a royalty into a break-even line, and Sponsored Products for authors walks through a first campaign. Ads are one part of the plan in our guide to marketing a self-published book.

Publishing a novel on KDP costs nothing, like any other book. Its length shows up twice: in editing, which editors can price per word, and in printing, which KDP prices per page.

Take an 80,000-word manuscript as an example. At the EFA’s fiction ranges, a copyedit works out to $1,600–$2,160 and a proofread to $960–$1,600. A developmental edit would come to $2,400–$2,800 and a line edit to $2,160–$2,800. A real quote may differ, but the bill grows with every word.

The printing cost grows with every page. For a black-ink paperback in a regular trim, 100 more pages add $1.20 to the printing cost on Amazon.com. At the 60% rate, the list price has to rise by $2.00 to keep the same royalty: a 400-page novel at $16.99 earns $4.39, exactly what the 300-page one earns at $14.99. If you know your word count but not your page count, the word count to page count tool estimates it for your trim size and font.

Then turn the bill into sales. A $1,600 copyedit takes 365 paperback sales at $4.39, or 488 ebook sales at $3.28, to earn back from royalty alone, before any ad spend. That won’t tell you whether to hire an editor, but it shows how long the money takes to come back.

A few habits keep spending in proportion to what a book can earn:

• Use what KDP gives you first. The ISBN, barcode, Cover Creator and Kindle Create cost nothing; pay for an alternative when it does something they can’t.
• Prefer costs you pay once. Editing and a cover are paid for once and are part of every copy you sell; ads cost money for as long as they run.
• Price print books with the threshold in mind. On Amazon.com, $9.99 instead of $9.98 moves a paperback from the 50% to the 60% rate.
• Order a proof before a print launch. You pay the printing cost plus shipping and tax, and see the book as a reader will get it.
• Expect the money back slowly. KDP pays 60 days after the end of the month in which your royalties reach the payment threshold, and electronic funds transfer (EFT) has no threshold.

All of this adds up per book. A spreadsheet works: one column for royalty from the KDP report, one for ad spend from Amazon Ads, one for what you paid up front. Our guide to KDP reports explains which report to take the royalty from.

If you would rather not rebuild that every month, SelfPub Go’s royalty analytics reads the KDP report you already download and puts it next to your Amazon Ads spend on the Profit by book screen. You can add book expenses such as a cover, editing or illustrations, and switch on net profit after taxes, fees and book expenses.

Figures in this guide come from the linked KDP, Amazon Ads, Copyright Office and EFA pages as of the date at the top, using Amazon.com prices. Rates and costs differ by marketplace and change over time; if something here no longer matches, the linked pages are the source to trust.