Post 2 of 26 of The Self-Publishing Series
Amazon’s hidden fee can cost you a lot of money
If you choose the 70% royalty option Amazon.com charges you for each megabyte of your document. Here is their explanation from their KDP Pricing Page.
Delivery Costs are equal to the number of megabytes we determine your Digital Book file contains, multiplied by the Delivery Cost rate listed below.
Amazon.com: US $0.15/MB
India: US $0.12/MB
Amazon CA: CAD $0.15/MB
Brazil: BRL R$.30/MB
Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB
Amazon.de: €0,12/MB
Amazon.fr: €0,12/MB
Amazon.es: €0,12/MB
Amazon.it: €0,12/MB
Amazon.co.jp: ¥1/MBWe will round file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte. The minimum Delivery Cost for a Digital Book will be US$0.01 for sales in US Dollars, CAD$0.01 for sales in CAD Dollars, £0.01 for sales in GB Pounds, ¥1 in JPY, R$0.01 for sales in Brazilian Reais, and €0.01 for sales in Euros, regardless of file size.
Again, this only applies to your book if you choose the 70% royalty option which is determined by the price of your book. This is a fee that nine out of ten self-publishing authors don’t know about.(Click to tweet that) If you’re going to self-publish you need to know about this fee because it can really cut into your profits.
How to calculate your royalty – Guy Kawasaki’s Royalty Calculator
Guy Kawasaki wrote a great book about self-publishing called APE: Author, Publisher, Entrerpreneur and one of the bonuses he generously created is a royalty calculator so can find out an estimate of how much your get after the platform takes its percentage and the cost of delivering the book. That’s right, Amazon charges you for delivering the digital file just like they charge you shipping for a physical item. To find out how much the file size effects your profits click on the image below and play with the calculator.
The calculator creates an estimate and gratefully in my experience it overestimates the cost. I make approximately $5.40 on each copy of my $7.99 Kindle book but the calculator estimates it to be a profit of $4.83. The important thing to understand is that the delivery fee is very real and must be considered in the creation and publication of your book. Click on the image below to visit Guy’s calculator
How do you avoid paying too much in digital delivery fees?
1. Use fewer images possible. The text of your document will not add considerably to your file size. Images quickly add to your file size.
2. Price your book appropriately. If you price your book in the 35% royalty range you will avoid the digital delivery fees entirely. That’s my understanding of the KDP Pricing Page.
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