KDP Author Copies: Cost and How to Order

KDP’s help page on proof and author copies says both differ from copies bought on the Amazon website. Both are printed books: KDP’s ordering steps cover paperbacks and hardcovers only. For ebooks, KDP describes Buying and Gifting, a way to buy copies for giveaways, events and newsletter subscribers.

A proof copy is a test print with a “Not for Resale” watermark and its own barcode, with no ISBN. KDP describes it as a copy to review before you submit the book for publication, and you can order one while the book is still a draft.

An author copy is a print of your live book at the printing cost, without changes you’ve saved but not yet published. KDP says you are welcome to resell author copies or give them away.

Neither earns a royalty, on purchase or on resale, and neither order appears in KDP Reports. You’ll find them in your Amazon order history instead.

Here are the three ways to get printed copies of your own book, side by side. The details come from KDP’s page on ordering proof and author copies and the pages linked below.

You can order proofs for a draft once you have approved it in Print Previewer. The steps from the same KDP ordering page:

1. Open your KDP Bookshelf and find the paperback or hardcover.
2. In the ellipsis (“…”) menu, click Request Printed Proofs.
3. Choose a quantity, up to 5, and the Amazon marketplace that ships to your address.
4. Click Submit Proof Request.
5. Within 4 hours, KDP emails you a link. Click Proceed to Shopping Cart and pay within 24 hours, or the proofs are removed from your cart.

If the email doesn’t arrive, check the address on your KDP account and your cart. At checkout you can add a new address, which KDP mentions for sending proofs to reviewers. After you submit the book, KDP’s proof troubleshooting page says proofs are unavailable while it is In Review or Publishing and return once it is Live.

What to check when the proof arrives

Check the cover, spine, margins, images and page order as a buyer would. KDP’s page on printing errors lists what counts as normal variance, not a defect: blank pages at the end, about 0.13 inch (3.3 mm) of extra inside margin on full-bleed color books, a cover, spine or trim shift under 0.125 inch (3.2 mm), and wavy pages that settle within a month. Problems that are also in your file, like a typo or a blurry image, are yours to fix. If the cover wrap looks wrong, recheck its size and spine width with our KDP cover calculator.

Author copies need a book in Live or Live with unpublished changes status, and the option can take another 24 hours to appear after a book goes Live.

1. Open your KDP Bookshelf and find the paperback or hardcover.
2. Click Order Author Copies. For a book with unpublished changes, and on kdp.amazon.co.jp, it sits in the ellipsis menu.
3. Enter the quantity, up to 999, and the marketplace that ships to your address.
4. Click Proceed to checkout. KDP sends you to that Amazon store’s cart to pay.

If the cart shows the wrong quantity, change it there: KDP’s author copy troubleshooting page says it can’t be changed from the Bookshelf. An empty cart usually means you aren’t signed in to your KDP account or are looking at another store’s cart.

Author copies print the live version, so after an update, wait for the status to return to Live before ordering. Even then, KDP warns, you may get a copy printed earlier, because copies from cancelled orders stay in stock until sold. Check the printing date inside; copies printed from an earlier file can’t be replaced or refunded.

Author copies before launch day

If you schedule the release of a new paperback or hardcover, up to 90 days ahead, its Amazon page stays hidden and you can order author copies once it has passed review. Allow an extra day after the status changes to Release Scheduled; ordering closes in the last five days before release. Ebooks, low-content, public domain and previously published books can’t be scheduled.

KDP calls what you pay the author price: your book’s printing cost in the marketplace you order from, times the number of copies. Its page on proof and author copy prices adds that this is the lowest price it can offer, with no further discounts.

Printing cost is a fixed cost plus a cost per page (short books pay one flat price), set by trim size, ink, paper and page count. KDP’s paperback and hardcover printing cost pages give the rates. For black ink in a regular trim (up to 6.12 by 9 inches) on Amazon.com, they work out like this:

Take KDP’s own example, a 300-page black-ink paperback in a regular trim such as 6 × 9 inches: $1.00 + 300 × $0.012 = $4.60. Twenty author copies for a launch event cost 20 × $4.60 = $92.00, or $185.00 as hardcovers at $9.25.

Ordered from another store, the same paperback costs £3.85 on Amazon.co.uk, €4.35 on Amazon.de, .fr, .es and .it, C$6.06 on Amazon.ca and A$9.02 on Amazon.com.au. Color books cost more per copy: in KDP’s own color ink example, a 120-page paperback in a regular trim costs $4.06 in standard color and $8.80 in premium color on Amazon.com. Our KDP printing cost calculator gives the printing cost for your ink, page count, trim and store and multiplies it by the number of copies: that is your author price before shipping and tax. If you only know your word count, the word count to page count tool estimates the pages, and the KDP royalty calculator shows what a retail sale of the same book earns you.

Shipping, sales tax and VAT

KDP’s Holiday Season FAQ says the author price excludes shipping and taxes: on Amazon.com, shipping and any sales tax are added at checkout, and European orders add local VAT. Proof and author copy orders don’t qualify for free or Prime shipping.

There is no shipping formula: KDP’s page on shipping costs says it depends on the number of books, the speed, the destination, the store and the books’ weight and size. To see it, go to the last checkout page. The shipping total appears before you click Place your order, and you don’t have to place it.

You order from the Amazon store that delivers to your address and pay its printing cost. KDP’s table of which country to order from:

Author copies can’t be shipped to the Swiss Customs Union: Switzerland (except postal codes 7563 and 7559), Liechtenstein and the German postal code 78266. KDP suggests retail copies from EU stores such as Amazon.de instead. A shipment from outside the EU to an EU address may carry customs fees, which KDP includes in the shipping fee at checkout. If a store can’t deliver to your postal code, it denies a proof request and won’t add author copies to the cart; change the postal code and order again.

KDP gives no fixed delivery time. Its page on when copies arrive says estimates depend on the quantity and shipping speed, and manufacturing time varies with total order volume. The date on the last checkout page includes printing and can still change with demand; if no estimate appears, KDP emails one later. You may be able to pick faster shipping, but not faster manufacturing. The KDP Help Center also warns that high demand in the holiday season can extend delivery times and asks authors to order proof and author copies early for time-sensitive events.

Track the order in Your Orders on the store where you placed it. If something goes wrong:

• Late or lost: KDP counts a copy as late 3 days after the delivery estimate passes. Ask about a refund within 30 days of the estimated date.
• Damaged: contact KDP about a refund within 30 days of receiving a damaged copy.
• Printing errors: KDP needs photos of the defect for a refund, plus the Product ID, the number under the barcode on the last interior page.

For an event with a fixed date, order early, and after changing your files, order one copy first. It can save you a box of the old version.

No. KDP pays no royalty when you buy a proof or author copy or resell one, and these orders don’t appear in KDP Reports. Our guide to KDP reports explains what those reports do count.

Buying your own book on Amazon is different. KDP pays a royalty whenever someone buys your paperback or hardcover through Amazon and a new copy is printed for the order, and the sale shows up in your reports. At list price it is still the expensive route: 20 copies of the 300-page paperback at $14.99 cost $299.80 before shipping and tax, and the $4.39 royalty on each brings back $87.80. That leaves $212.00, against $92.00 for author copies.

KDP’s page on promoting your book also warns that purchases from accounts trying to manipulate its services can end your account and cost you royalties. For copies in hand, order author copies.

Because you can resell or give away author copies, they cover most reasons to have books in hand:

• Launch events, signings and fairs. Sell copies in person; with a scheduled release, order them before launch.
• Giveaways. Give copies to readers or to the people who helped with the book.
• Review copies. KDP’s customer reviews page allows free or discounted copies if you don’t require a review or try to influence it. Offering anything else, gift cards included, invalidates the review.
• A quality check. One author copy before a bulk order shows what buyers will get.

Proofs suit people who need the book before publication, such as an editor or beta readers, since KDP lets you ship them to reviewers; their watermark says “Not for Resale”. Our guide to marketing a self-published book covers early reviews in more depth.

Author copies are a cost your KDP reports never show: the orders aren’t in them, so neither is the money. In a spreadsheet, add a line for them next to royalty and ad spend; our guide to what it costs to self-publish a book lists other costs worth recording.

In SelfPub Go, you can enter them as a book expense on the Profit by book screen, where royalty analytics puts the royalty from your KDP report next to your Amazon Ads spend. Switch on net profit after taxes, fees and book expenses, and the copies come off that book’s profit.

Rules, limits and prices here come from KDP Help as of the date at the top, with printing costs for black-ink books unless color is named. If something no longer matches, the linked help pages are the source to trust.