Hello SErs. Harmony here.  As promised, here is  part seventeen in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links at the end of this post.

So, here’s Part Seventeen: How to set your prices, royalty options, and distribution range.

Today’s post focusses on the third and final page of your KDP book-publishing dashboard–The Kindle eBook (or Paperback) Pricing area. Below is a screenshot of the eBook page.

 

And now I show you the paperback page:

 

 

Now for a little competition time: Can you spot the differences?

On the paperback page, you will find an extra little section between the ‘worldwide territories’ and the ‘pricing’ sections.

NOTE: for such a tiny little tick-box, this ‘expanded distribution’ option will have a massive impact on where your book gets sold and promoted.

And for those of you who are particularly sharp-eyed, you will also have noticed that the eBook version has an ‘enroll in KDP select’ that isn’t there on your paperback page.

Below, I will go through each of the options for you, along with the differences between the settings and options for eBooks and print books.

Setting the Price:

A) eBook Pricing

The eBook prices have certain parameters, depending upon whether or not you enroll in KDP select. So, first up, what is KDP select? According to Amazon:

‘KDP Select is a free Kindle book program that gives you the opportunity to reach more readers and earn more money at no additional cost. All authors and publishers, regardless of where they live, are eligible to enroll their Kindle books in KDP Select.’

Benefits of KDP Select

Reach more readers and earn more money at no cost Ability to enroll a single Kindle book, or your whole Kindle catalog Make your Kindle book eligible for 70% royalty earnings on sales to customers in Brazil, Japan, India, and Mexico Inclusion in the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program with possibility to earn a share of the KDP Select Global Fund Access to promotional tools: Kindle Countdown Deal and Free Book Promotion

Requirements to enroll in KDP Select

Have exclusive rights for the primary content of the Kindle book (i.e., the content is not public domain) Make your Kindle book exclusive to the Kindle Store for the KDP Select enrollment period (90-days). You can continue to distribute your paperback (or any other format you may have).

Once you’ve chosen your royalty setting, you can now move on to setting your book price.

NOTE: On the 70% royalty setting, your minimum price must be 2.99 or more. On the 35% royalty option, your book has to be 0.99 or more.

These minimum prices alter, depending on how large your digital file is:

I’ve shown a screenshot of prices for Amazon.com. This LINK takes you to Amazon’s pricing page.

Please check and double-check your delivery cost for the eBook. If the book file is large, then Amazon may well charge you more than the book price if you’re not careful. This will result in you owing them money for selling your book! So, check and make sure that the sales prices allows for any hefty delivery fees. The best way is to ensure that your digital file is not a large one.

B) Paperback Pricing

For your paperback, you don’t have the KDP select option, but you do have the ‘expanded distribution’ option.

What is expanded distribution? According to Amazon:

“Booksellers and libraries purchase paperbacks from large distributors. If you enroll your paperback in Expanded Distribution, we’ll make your book available to distributors so booksellers and libraries can find your book and order it.” … And “… it allows your book to be made broadly available outside of Amazon.”

You can find out more about expanded distribution HERE.

Now you’re ready for setting your prices.

NOTE: Amazon will set the minimum price to cover print and distribution costs. To make any profit, you will need to set the price higher than this.

The royalty on your paperback is 60% via Amazon, and 40% via the expanded distribution network, after print costs.

You have two options in how you set your prices for all the world-wide marketplaces.

1. Allow Amazon to base every marketplace price on the US marketplace price.
2. Set your own price for each individual marketplace.

Once you’ve input a price, the right-hand column will show you the royalty you can expect to recieve.

NOTE: Amazon reserves the right to lower your prices at any time without your knowledge or consent. They also have a rule that an eBook cannot be sold at a higher cost than the paperback. Recently, I noticed that I only received a fraction of the expected royalty for one of my eBooks. I queried this with Amazon, and they told me that they’d lowered the paperback price significantly, and to keep the eBook cheaper, they also lowered that price. I had no control over any of this. This discount did, however, result in two eBook sales that I’m not sure I would have seen otherwise.

A note on ‘territories’. This basically means that you hold the copyright for every territory (country) in which you intend to sell the book. For the purposes of this post, I will assume that you’re publishing a book you’ve written and  thus own the copyright to. Therefore, you will want to select the ‘worldwide’ rights. If this is not the case, and you do not own the copyright in all countries, then you will need to tick the ‘individual’ option, which will then open a list of territories for you to select from. You can only sell your book in countries that you hold the copyright for. As I said, if you wrote the book, then you have world-wide copyright rights.

Further Amazon pricing information can be found HERE.

That’s it from me for today. I hope you’ve found this post useful. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, and I’ll see you all again on Wednesday, November 4th, where we’ll be taking a look at checking your ALL of your final sales pages once the book is live.

Past posts in this series:

Outline: https://wp.me/p7OGru-29c

Part 1 (Software for Writing) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29t

Part 2 (General Formatting Necessities) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29J

Part 3 (Ebook Conversion) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2ah

Part 4 (Paperback Formatting) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2eS

Part 5 (Image Software for Making Book Covers) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gi

Part 6 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gQ

Part 6 B (Making your own ebook cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2hQ

Part 7 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for Paperback) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2jY

Part 7 B (Making your own PDF book cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kf

Part 8 (Setting up your KDP account) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2kF

Part 9 (An overview of your KDP Dashboard) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2lq

Part 10 (Uploading your eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2pL

Part 11 (Previewing your eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2qc

Part 12 (Editing your eBook): https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Aa

Part 13 (Uploading your Paperback book): https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Dz

Part 14 (Previewing your Paperback book): https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Kf

Part 15 (Your Book Descriptions and HTML): https://wp.me/p7OGru-2P2

Part 16 (Your Book Categories and Keywords): https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Pm

To make it easy to browse back and forth, I’ve set all links to open in new tabs. As this series progresses, I will update the links for you so that each post includes links to all past posts in the series.

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©Harmony Kent 2020

 

(If you’re reading this post on or after November 4th, 2020, then here’s the link for Part 18 in the How to Publish with KDP series: https://wp.me/p7OGru-2Yk. Please note, the link won’t work until November 4th, 2020.)