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KDP Select

Costs & royalties

An optional 90-day enrolment that makes your ebook exclusive to Amazon in exchange for Kindle Unlimited inclusion and promotional tools. It applies to the ebook only, never the paperback.

Enrolling an ebook in KDP Select means you may not sell or give away that digital edition anywhere else for the duration of the term — not on another retailer, not as a PDF from your own site. The print edition is unaffected and can be sold anywhere.

In return you get inclusion in Kindle Unlimited, where you are paid from a shared fund per page read, plus access to Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions.

The decision is mostly about where your readers are. If your audience is Kindle Unlimited subscribers, exclusivity costs you little and page reads can exceed sales revenue. If you have any traction on other stores, giving it up for 90 days at a time is a real cost.

SmartKDP is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon. Amazon, Kindle, and Kindle Direct Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Related terms

  • Kindle Unlimited

    Amazon's ebook subscription service. Enrolled authors are paid from a monthly shared fund based on pages read, rather than earning a royalty per borrow.

  • KENP

    Amazon's standardised page count for Kindle Unlimited payouts, calculated from the ebook's content rather than its device-dependent screen pages.

  • Royalty rate

    The share of the list price you keep before printing costs are deducted. KDP print books pay 60% at or above a per-marketplace price threshold and 50% below it.