The AKDP opportunity is great for any publisher desiring to leverage Amazon’s growing digital distribution network based on the Kindle reader format.
I wanted to quickly address how to make a decision between the royalty formats.
There are a couple of underlying issues to understand with Amazon.
- You are paying for their bandwidth to “deliver” the digital content. They are getting their money for that one way or the other.
- Amazon favors the Anglo-Saxon / Continental “Sales Territories” of the Northern Hemisphere with the seemingly more favorable 70% royalty rate. This rate applies only to those countries that are using the US Dollar, Euro, or British Pound. Notice how royalties from sales to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, India, other former British Colonies along with the entirety of Asia and the Arab World revert to 35%.
Taking all of that into consideration which royalty rate should you choose?
- The 35% rate is a simple flat rate. It is lower because Amazon incorporates their fees for tax and download bandwidth into their 65% margin. This rate is ideal for those publishers producing large file size e-books AND / OR anticipating large volume.
- The 70% rate is favorable to publishers who anticipate low to moderate volume purchases and small file size products COMBINED with a buying market paying in either dollars, euros or pounds.
For the majority of users I recommended going with the 70% royalty because it will revert to the lower rate (or nothing) based on your buying market and Amazon’s sales channels anyway.
Read about all the specifics here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B