How much of the book's price actually reaches you

On a digital book at Amazon you get either 35 percent of the price or 70 percent, and the choice between them is not free — it depends on conditions. The higher rate is limited to a price range, to a list of countries, and has a deduction based on the size of your file.

That is the whole calculation. Everything else is detail, and it is worth knowing before you set a price.

The two options, one line each

Amazon defines two options for a digital book.

On the 35 percent option you receive roughly a third of the price, from any country where the book sells, with no practical price limit and no deduction for file size.

On the 70 percent option you receive double that, but only if the price is inside the permitted range, only in the countries on Amazon's list, and after the file delivery charge is taken out.

The range that decides which option you are on

According to Amazon's table, the higher option requires a price between $2.99 and $12.99 on the US store, and between €2.69 and €12.99 in Europe.

The lower option starts at $0.99 and runs up to $200.

What this means in practice: if you priced a book at $1.99 because it sounded approachable, you chose, without noticing, the option that pays you half. A book at $3.99 on the higher option brings in more than a book at $2.49, even if it sells somewhat fewer copies.

The $12.99 ceiling is fairly new; it rose in July 2026 from $9.99. We wrote about what that change opened up in the price ceiling change and translated editions.

What gets deducted along the way

Two things.

The first is the file delivery charge, which exists only on the higher option. On the US store it is $0.15 per megabyte of your file. A text-only book weighs very little, so the deduction is negligible. An illustrated children's book can weigh dozens of times more, and there the deduction is noticeable.

The second is a condition that is easy to miss: to get 70 percent, the digital price has to be at least a fifth below the price of your print edition at Amazon. An author who prices print too cheaply can knock the digital version down to the lower option without meaning to.

Why this matters most on a translated book

In a version in another language you start from zero: no reviews, no reputation, no readers waiting. The temptation to price very low is strong.

But a price that is too low does not only shrink the amount per copy — it can push you out of the higher option altogether, so your first sale in a new language brings in less than it could have.

And more important: the price you set in one language has nothing to do with the price you set in another. Each market has its own pricing habits.

What to do before you set a price

Look at comparable books in the language you are entering, not at your own book in its original language. See what range they sit in and where that falls relative to the higher option's range.

Consider the print edition at the same time, because it limits your digital price. And if you have not yet decided which format to start with, we wrote about that in digital, print or audio: where to start. The rest of the questions are collected in our frequently asked questions.