8 Self-Publishing Platforms Compared

What each platform publishes, where it sells and whether it asks for exclusivity, from its own pages, checked on 28 October 2026.

What each platform charges and pays in US dollars, read on the same date. Print royalties subtract each platform’s printing cost.

The rates differ most outside Amazon’s 70% band. On Amazon.com, a $0.99 or $19.99 ebook earns 35% through KDP. Apple and B&N Press pay 70% at both prices, as does Google in 60+ countries; Kobo pays 45% at $0.99 and 70% at $19.99, as it has no price cap. Check a KDP edition with the KDP royalty calculator.

KDP is Amazon’s own platform, and its getting-started page says you can publish ebooks, paperbacks and hardcovers for free. Ebooks can sell in all 13 Kindle Stores. Print sells on Amazon itself, in 14 marketplaces for paperbacks and 12 for hardcovers; Brazil, India and Mexico have none. Our guide to publishing a book on Amazon with KDP walks through the setup step by step.

The 70% ebook plan pays 70% only on sales to buyers in KDP’s 70% territories, and 35% elsewhere. Print uses the paperback and hardcover royalty formulas in the table above.

Expanded Distribution offers your paperback to distributors in the US and UK, so bookstores and libraries can order it. It is free, but KDP says distributors may not accept the book, hardcovers are not eligible and it can take up to eight weeks to reach booksellers.

Under KDP’s terms, you keep the copyright and Amazon’s license is nonexclusive, so you can sell the book elsewhere too, except an ebook enrolled in KDP Select. KDP pays monthly, about 60 days after the month of sale, or 90 days for Expanded Distribution.

IngramSpark pairs print-on-demand with Ingram’s wholesale distribution. Its user guide says that network reaches more than 40,000 bookstores, online stores, libraries, schools and ebook retailers, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon in the US.

You set the list price and the wholesale discount, and IngramSpark pays the wholesale price minus printing. Its own example: a $20.00 book at a 53% discount with a $3.66 print cost pays $5.74. The guide says a 53% to 55% discount with returns allowed generally gives the widest availability; allow returns, and you are charged for the copies stores send back.

Setup is free; the pricing guide adds a 1% market access fee per sale. Ebooks earn 85% of what IngramSpark receives, and IngramSpark pays about 90 days after the month of sale. Its FAQ says IngramSpark is not exclusive and, if you also publish the print book with KDP, advises against KDP’s Expanded Distribution.

Draft2Digital is an aggregator: you upload once and choose the stores. Its FAQ lists Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Kobo Plus, Tolino, OverDrive, Everand and more. Amazon is open by invitation only, for ebooks. D2D Print sends print books to Amazon and the channels Ingram serves.

Its main income is a commission of about 10% of the retail price, and its royalty chart shows authors receiving about 60% at Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. It also charges account fees: $20 once for new accounts and, from May 14, 2026, $12 a year for accounts with books in distribution that earned under $100 in the past 12 months.

It acquires no rights and requires no exclusivity, you can unpublish books yourself, and it pays around the 15th of each month.

Kobo Writing Life handles ebooks and audiobooks only, with no print, and Kobo charges nothing to distribute an ebook or convert it to EPUB. Books reach Kobo’s stores, partner retailers such as FNAC, Bol and Rakuten, and libraries through OverDrive, where a library purchase pays you 50% of your library price.

Kobo Plus, the subscription, pays by minutes read, needs no exclusivity and can be switched on country by country. Kobo pays 45 days after each month ends, once you reach CAD $50.

Apple Books for Authors is free to sign up for. You need an Apple Account and an iTunes Connect account, plus tax and banking details to sell. You upload an EPUB through Apple’s web portal, and it must pass EPUBCheck.

Apple’s author pages list 70% royalties on every ebook regardless of price, no file delivery fees and no limits on free books. You choose from 51 countries and regions, and Apple offers digital narration to turn a book into an audiobook.

B&N Press publishes ebooks, paperbacks and hardcovers. Ebooks sell on bn.com, the Barnes & Noble app and NOOK; print books on bn.com and the app. Authors in 12 countries can use it.

Since April 22, 2026, a print book for sale must be priced at $14.99 or more. B&N Press is non-exclusive, but each print edition needs an ISBN never used at another retailer; its free ISBN works only on B&N Press.

Publishing here does not put a book in Barnes & Noble stores. B&N pays on the last Wednesday of the month after the sale, once you have $25 in royalties.

Google says there is no cost to sell books on Google Play. You join the Google Books Partner Program, pick the countries and can sell through other retailers too. The 70% revenue split starts once you accept Google’s updated terms in Partner Center, and Google pays it on the list price you set. Audiobooks are open only to select partners.

Lulu says you can publish for free, with print books in thousands of sizes, papers and bindings, plus ebooks. You can sell on the Lulu Bookstore, through your own Shopify, Wix or WooCommerce shop with Lulu Direct, or through retailers including Amazon and Ingram’s network.

Through retailers, half the retail price goes to the channel before Lulu’s split, so the list price must be at least twice the printing cost. Retail distribution also needs a $4.99 review fee and, for print, a proof copy, and listings can take 12 weeks or longer. Lulu’s terms give it a non-exclusive license, and you can remove a book at any time.

Five of the eight charge nothing to publish: KDP, Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Press and Google Play Books. IngramSpark, Lulu and Draft2Digital charge the small fees in the table above.

Free to publish is not free to make a book. Printing comes out of every paperback and hardcover sale, proof copies cost money, and editing, a cover and ads are yours to pay for. Our guide to what it costs to self-publish a book breaks those costs down.

Free ISBNs have limits too. A free KDP ISBN can only be used on KDP, IngramSpark’s free ISBN is owned by IngramSpark and can’t be transferred, and Draft2Digital’s and B&N Press’s work only on their own services. To choose your book’s imprint of record, buy your own.

There is no best self-publishing company for every book. The biggest choice is whether your ebook goes exclusive to Amazon or wide.

Exclusive means KDP Select, a free 90-day program. Your ebook joins Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited), where reading is paid from the KDP Select Global Fund, and can run Kindle Countdown Deals and free promotions. During each term it can only be distributed through KDP and public libraries, and enrollment renews unless you turn that off. Print can still be sold anywhere.

Wide means selling the ebook everywhere else too: Kobo and Kobo Plus, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, libraries and subscriptions such as Everand. Which pays more depends on your readers:

• Current sales: if nearly all your ebook income is Amazon sales and Kindle+ reads, Select is worth testing; if readers find you in other stores or libraries, wide keeps them.
• Price: outside $2.99–$12.99, KDP pays 35% on Amazon.com; Apple and B&N Press pay 70%, as does Google in 60+ countries.
• Series: Kindle+ pays for pages read, so a long series can earn from reads as well as sales; our KENP guide explains how.

Nothing is permanent: try one 90-day term with auto-renewal off and compare. If you go wide, send each edition to each store once. Kobo asks direct authors not to send the same book through a distributor as well, and IngramSpark won’t deliver an ebook to Kindle if you have supplied ebooks to Amazon in the past 12 months.

Some companies sell self-publishing as a package: editing, design and distribution for a fee paid up front. What you get depends on the contract, so compare it with the platforms above. On KDP, for example, you keep the copyright, Amazon’s license is nonexclusive and you can leave at any time, with sales stopping within five business days.

Before you sign, check:

• Rights: which ones you grant (print, ebook, audio, translation, film), for how long, and whether exclusively.
• Fees: what the fee covers, what costs extra, whether anything recurs, and whether your share of each sale is based on the list price or on the company’s receipts.
• Files: whether you get the final print PDF, EPUB and cover files, with the right to use them elsewhere.
• ISBN and account: whose ISBN and imprint go on the book, and whose platform account publishes it; that account controls the listing and receives the royalties.
• Exit: how you end the contract and what happens to the listings.

Be careful with unsolicited offers that use a retailer’s name. Barnes & Noble says it never contacts authors offering in-store placement for money, and that neither it nor B&N Press asks for money for services such as editing. Traditional and hybrid contracts are compared in self-publishing vs traditional publishing.

Once a book is live, the work turns to finding readers, covered in our guide on how to market a self-published book, and to tracking what each book earns. Each platform reports sales in its own dashboard. For KDP, our guide to KDP reports explains which report shows what. If you advertise on Amazon, ad spend sits in a separate account, so profit per book means putting the two side by side.

SelfPub Go’s royalty analytics does that for KDP books: it reads the KDP report you already download and puts it next to your Amazon Ads campaigns. It works with KDP and Amazon Ads, not with the other platforms here.

Rates and rules here come from each platform’s own pages as of the date at the top; the linked pages are the source to trust.