Amazon KDP UK: What publishing a book from your own expertise actually pays
Amazon widened the price band for its 70% ebook royalty option on 7 July 2026. On Amazon.co.uk it now runs from £1.77 to £12.99, up from £9.99, according to Amazon's eBook List Price Requirements page, checked in September 2026. The royalty arithmetic on Amazon KDP UK is the part most people skip, and it decides whether a book returns £4.75 a copy or 50p.
Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon's self-publishing platform. This post is not about blank journals or volume publishing, a saturated corner of the market. It is about the other version: you know something specific that took years to learn, and a book is the cheapest way to put it in a form a stranger can buy.
Most self-published books sell very little, and Amazon publishes no median for what a KDP title earns. What follows is the arithmetic, the fees, the tax position for a UK author, and the best evidence that does exist.
Before you write anything
Free ebook: The Digital Product Starter Guide
How digital products actually make money, and which way in is right for you.
What is Amazon KDP, and what it is not
Amazon KDP is a retail platform, not a publisher. You upload a manuscript and a cover, you set the price, and Amazon sells it. There is no advance, no editor and no marketing department. Amazon's KDP home page, checked in September 2026, states that publishing is free and that a book can appear in Amazon stores within 72 hours.
Three formats exist: the Kindle ebook, the paperback and the hardback. Both print formats are printed on demand when an order arrives, which is why there is no stock to buy and why a printing cost comes out of every sale. Royalties are paid monthly, approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, according to Amazon's KDP payment page.
The two ebook royalty options on Amazon KDP UK
Kindle ebooks carry two royalty options, chosen per title. The 70% option is not simply the better one: it carries conditions the 35% option does not, and deducts a delivery charge based on file size.
| Rule | 35% option | 70% option |
|---|---|---|
| What you keep | 35% of the list price | 70% of the list price after delivery costs |
| Amazon.co.uk price band | £0.77 to £150.00 under 3MB, £1.25 for 3MB to 10MB, £1.49 above 10MB | £1.77 to £12.99 |
| Delivery cost deducted | None | £0.10 per MB, minimum £0.01 |
| Where it applies | Every marketplace | 34 listed territories, the UK among them |
| If you also sell a print edition | No rule | Ebook must be at least 20% below the print list price on Amazon |
Two conditions catch people out. If Amazon price-matches your ebook below the minimum for the 70% band, you earn 35% on those sales. Books made up mostly of public domain content are restricted to 35%. Both rules sit on Amazon's Digital Book Pricing Page, checked in September 2026.
One quirk favours a UK author. Ebooks have been zero-rated for VAT in the UK since 1 May 2020, per GOV.UK guidance on the zero rate for electronic publications, so the price you set on Amazon.co.uk is the figure the royalty is calculated on.
Worked example: a £6.99 ebook on Amazon.co.uk
List price £6.99, file size 2MB, 70% option. Delivery cost is 2 multiplied by £0.10, which is £0.20. That leaves £6.99 less £0.20, or £6.79. Seventy per cent of £6.79 is £4.753.
Royalty: £4.75 a copy.
On the 35% option the same book returns 35% of £6.99, which is £2.45, with no delivery deduction.
Paperback and hardback: The printing cost comes out first
Print royalties use a different formula, which Amazon publishes plainly: the royalty rate multiplied by the list price, minus the printing cost. Amazon sets both inputs.
The first is the royalty rate. On Amazon.co.uk it is 60% at a list price of £7.99 or above and 50% at £7.98 or below, according to Amazon's Paperback Royalty page, checked in September 2026. The second is the printing cost, which depends on page count, ink and trim.
| Format, black ink, regular trim | Printing cost on Amazon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Paperback, 24 to 110 pages | £1.93 a copy, flat |
| Paperback, 110 to 828 pages | £0.85 plus £0.010 a page |
| Hardback, 75 to 108 pages | £5.23 a copy, flat |
| Hardback, 110 to 550 pages | £4.15 plus £0.010 a page |
Those figures come from Amazon's Paperback and Hardcover Printing Cost pages, checked in September 2026. Colour costs several times more per page. The maximum print price on Amazon.co.uk is £250, and the minimum is set for you: printing cost divided by your royalty rate.
Worked example: a 240-page paperback at three cover prices
Printing cost is £0.85 plus 240 multiplied by £0.010, which is £3.25 a copy. At £9.99 the rate is 60%: £5.994 less £3.25. At £7.99 it is still 60%: £4.794 less £3.25. At £7.50 it drops to 50%: £3.75 less £3.25.
Royalty: £2.74 at £9.99, £1.54 at £7.99, and 50p at £7.50.
Cutting the cover price by 49p removes two thirds of the royalty, because it crosses the 50% threshold. The same book as a hardback at £16.99 costs £6.55 to print and returns £3.64.
"On a print book the cover price is not a marketing decision. It is the switch that decides whether you keep 60% of it or 50%."
Is a digital product your path? Start with the free guide
The Digital Product Starter Guide covers how digital products actually make money, the ways in, and how to choose what to package first. Nothing to buy.
Get the free guide →Do you need an ISBN, and does KDP give you one free?
A Kindle ebook needs no ISBN. Amazon's ISBN page, checked in September 2026, states that ebooks and low-content books are the only formats where one is optional. Print formats need one.
Amazon will supply it free, with a condition. In Amazon's words, free ISBNs "can only be used on KDP" and "cannot be used to publish outside of KDP". The imprint recorded against the book is Amazon's, and the number does not travel to another printer.
Buying your own is the alternative. Nielsen runs the ISBN agency for the UK and Ireland, and its store listed these prices in September 2026: £93.00 for a single ISBN, £174.00 for a block of 10 and £387.00 for a block of 100, all inclusive of UK VAT. A single number is poor value, because paperback, hardback and ebook are three ISBNs for one book.
For a first book sold only on Amazon, take the free one. If you expect to sell through bookshops or another printer, buy a block of 10.
US withholding tax for a UK author
Amazon pays KDP royalties from the United States, so US withholding rules apply first. Amazon's Tax Withholding page, checked in September 2026, states that 30% US tax withholding applies to royalty payments unless a lower treaty rate is established through the tax interview.
Under the double taxation convention between the United Kingdom and the United States, royalties arising in one country and beneficially owned by a resident of the other are taxable only in the country of residence, which supports a nil rate of US withholding for a UK resident who claims the treaty benefit. Amazon's page confirms that without a US taxpayer identification number you may enter the one issued where you live.
Complete the tax interview when you open the account, not after the first payment. The alternative is reclaiming money that should never have been withheld.
How the income is taxed in the UK
Book royalties are taxable income, and a self-assessment tax calculator will show what a few thousand pounds costs at your marginal rate. Which box the income belongs in is less obvious.
HMRC's Business Income Manual draws the line at whether writing is a profession. BIM100205, last updated on 4 August 2026, says an author who "organises their life so as to regularly spend time on their writing to produce work which has a commercial value", combined with "persistent and systematic marketing", is carrying on a profession, and the profits are charged as trading income. Someone who writes a book without carrying on a profession is taxed instead "under the sweep-up charge as miscellaneous income".
The distinction affects National Insurance, how losses are used and which pages of the return you complete. It is genuinely arguable for an employed professional who writes one book about their own field, so ask an accountant.
The £1,000 trading allowance is measured on gross income rather than profit, so £1,200 of royalties with £400 of costs is over the line. If you cross it for the first time in a tax year, you must tell HMRC by 5 October after that tax year ends, and the return and payment are due the following 31 January.
The honest numbers on Amazon KDP publishing
Amazon publishes no median, mean or distribution for what KDP titles earn, so any figure offered as the average KDP author's income is a guess, a small sample, or a pitch for a course. No reliable figure exists, and saying so beats inventing one.
The closest credible UK evidence is one step away. The survey of 60,000 writers funded by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and carried out by the CREATe centre at the University of Glasgow, published in December 2022, found median earnings from writing of £7,000 among authors whose main occupation is writing, down 38.2% in real terms from £11,329 in 2018. Those are professional authors, mostly traditionally published, so it flatters the comparison.
Bowker's figures, reported by Publishers Weekly on 17 March 2026, put US self-published print and ebook titles registered with ISBNs at more than 3.5 million in 2025, up 38.7% from 2.5 million in 2024.
What the evidence actually shows
Set the royalty arithmetic against that. A £6.99 ebook on the 70% option returns £4.75 a copy, so 1,000 copies in a year is £4,750. That is about 19 sales every week, without a break, on one title.
When a book is still worth writing
A book written from real professional expertise does two jobs the royalty line never captures. It is the most credible calling card a specialist can hand someone, and it is a cheap test of whether anyone will pay for what you know. The version that fails is the one written as an income plan on its own.
Publishing a book is a reasonable second income experiment, on one condition: go in with the real numbers rather than the ones in the advertising. A £6.99 ebook pays £4.75 and a £9.99 paperback pays £2.74. What a book does reliably is turn scattered expertise into something finished and citable with your name on it, and that is the larger half of the return.
This article is general information and not legal, financial or tax advice. Royalty rates and printing costs are set by Amazon and change without notice, so check the current figures on the KDP help pages before pricing anything. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances: check GOV.UK or take independent advice from a qualified accountant.
Related reading
- →Which digital product should you build? A guide for professionals
- →Notion templates, printable planners and Canva kits: What digital products actually sell in 2026, and the fee maths on Gumroad, Etsy and your own site
- →How to create and sell a digital product: A guide for professionals with expertise
- →The 90-day rule: testing a side income without burning out
- →UK print on demand suppliers compared: The margin maths that decides whether it is worth doing
Free calculators
Build first. Leave second. Choose third. Start with the assessment →