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Kindle Unlimited

Costs & royalties

Also called: KU

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.

Kindle Unlimited subscribers read enrolled ebooks at no additional cost. Authors are not paid per borrow — they are paid per page actually read, from a fund Amazon sizes each month.

Because the fund is fixed and divided across all pages read by everyone, the per-page rate moves month to month. It is announced retrospectively, so you cannot know in advance exactly what a month's reading is worth.

Inclusion requires KDP Select enrolment, which means ebook exclusivity. Print books are never part of Kindle Unlimited.

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

  • KDP Select

    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.

  • 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.