Kindle Delivery Costs
A unique aspect of Amazon KDP is a “delivery” fee applied each time a reader purchases your book. This fee is deducated from your royalty when you choose the 70% Royalty Option, and is based on the size of the file that is delivered to the reader.
This page describes how you can determine the delivery fee for your ebook, the factors that can increase this fee, and ways you can reduce it.
- Determining the Delivery Fee
- Factors Affecting Delivery Cost
- Reducing Image Cost
- Factors That Don’t Affect Delivery Cost
Determining the Delivery Fee
KDP’s delivery fee is not based on the size of the file you upload. Rather, it’s calculated using a smaller, converted file created by Amazon. To determine the file size and delivery fee, you need to:
- Upload your Kindle.epub and cover files to KDP
- Navigate to the Kindle eBook Pricing tab
- Scroll down to Pricing, royalty, and distribution
There, you should see information that looks like the following:
In this case, we’ve uploaded an 80,000-word book with these results:
EPUB Size | 0.58 MB |
KDP Size | 0.39 MB |
Delivery | $.06 |
Notes:
- In tables like these, we’ll use KDP Size to refer to KDP’s File size after conversion
- In these examples, we’ll use the $0.15/MB rate charged for sales in the US
Factors Affecting Delivery Cost
Specifics of file size and delivery fees will depend on the content of your book, and can be affected by factors including:
More detail about each these factors can be found below:
Word Count
Every book’s delivery fee is affected by word count. The longer your book, the larger the file will be, and that can increase your delivery fee, as demonstrated by these examples:
KDP Size | Delivery | Change | |
---|---|---|---|
80k words | 0.39 MB | $.06 | — |
120k words | 0.52 MB | $.08 | + $.02 |
160k words | 0.65 MB | $.10 | + $.04 |
This doesn’t mean you need to edit out every word you can, but it is something to consider if you’re publishing a very long book, such as an anthology or a box set.
Images
Including images is a great way to add visual interest to your book. Unfortunately, it is also the fastest way to increase the file size — and delivery fee.
As an example, here are numbers for an 80k-word book with:
- No additional images
- An author photo in About the Author
- Author photo and cover images for later books in Also By
KDP Size | Delivery | Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Text only | 0.39 MB | $.06 | — |
+ Author Photo | 0.49 MB | $.07 | + $.01 |
+ Author Photo, 3 Covers | 0.79 MB | $.12 | + $.06 |
In this example, adding just four images has doubled the delivery fee for the book. You’ll want to keep this in mind as you add images, though there are ways you can reduce their size in your ebook.
Emojis
For Kindle, Vellum converts emojis to small images so that they can be seen on any device. Because these images are so small, using just a few emojis will not typically affect delivery your delivery fee. But using a large number of different emojis can.
This example demonstrates the change to KDP size and delivery fee when adding emojis to an 80k word book:
# | KDP Size | Delivery | Change | |
---|---|---|---|---|
(no emojis) | 0 | 0.39 MB | $.06 | — |
❤️😊 | 2 | 0.39 MB | $.06 | $.00 |
❤️😊💀🔥👋 | 5 | 0.40 MB | $.06 | $.00 |
❤️😊💀🔥👋🤩🎉👀🍒💅 | 10 | 0.41 MB | $.06 | $.00 |
❤️😊💀🔥👋🤩🎉👀🍒💅 🍔🌈🤯☕️👍🍷⛄️💋✌️🤖 |
20 | 0.44 MB | $.07 | + $.01 |
Images created for emojis are reused, so if you add a ❤️ in one chapter, you can use it again in others without affecting file size.
Reducing Image Cost
Vellum automatically optimizes your images based on KDP’s guidelines and how each image is used in your ebook. Nevertheless, images can be the biggest contributor to delivery costs, and large, detailed ones can take up a lot of space (even when optimized).
Here, then, are some options for reducing the cost of images.
Visible Size
Vellum will resize each image according to how large it appears in your ebook. Reducing the visible size of an Inline Image will also reduce the file size, and can reduce delivery fees.
Kindle Image Sizing
If you have a large number of images in your book, you can adjust how these are optimized using the Kindle Image Sizing control in Generation Settings.
The following shows the result of adjusting Kindle Image Sizing for the example from above with four added images:
KDP Size | Delivery | Change | |
---|---|---|---|
Higher Quality | 0.79 MB | $.12 | — |
Smaller Size | 0.62 MB | $.09 | - $.03 |
Note: results will vary and greatly depend upon the specific images used in your ebook.
Excluding Images from Ebooks
The most effective way to reduce the cost of images is to simply exclude them from your book. If your book contains images that aren’t necessary in your ebook edition, you can choose to only include them in print.
To do this, you can make use of Include In controls, available for both Inline Images and Full Page Image elements:
Factors That Don’t Affect Delivery Cost
Not every addition to your book affects the delivery fee. Here are a few aspects that do not:
CSS Styling
Features like Text Conversations and Drop Caps are styled using a system called CSS. CSS is inherently lightweight, but is also excluded from KDP size calculations, so using these features will not affect your delivery fee.
Fonts
Fonts, used for features like Chapter Headings and Written Notes, are also excluded from KDP size calculations. Formatting text as a Written Note, or choosing a Style that uses custom fonts won’t increase your delivery fee at all.