Amazon Publishing Options Explained

What is the difference between publishing your title through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), KDP Select, or Publish to Kindle (P2K)?


 

KDP

 KDP Select

P2K

Royalty Rate

 70% royalty for domestic sales and international sales; 35% royalty for international sales in India, Japan, and Brazil. 35% royalty on all sales for public domain titles. 
 
 70% royalty for sales to customers in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India. 35% royalty elsewhere.  Domestic 45%, International 40%
 

Price Restrictions

 Your title must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99 to qualify for the 70% royalty. Outside of this range, the royalty rate decreases to 35%.
Free is not an allowed price point.
 Some price restrictions.
Some free pricing allowed (see Amazon promotion below)
 No price restrictions. The above royalty rate applies to any price point you choose.
Free is an allowed price point.

Price Matching and Royalty Calculation

 If you are at 70% royalty, and Amazon price matches your title, you will be paid off of the price Amazon sells your book, not the digital list price. If you are at 35% royalty, you will be paid off the digital list price.
 Your title must be exclusive to KDP Select, so no opportunity to price match. Regardless of Amazon’s price matching, you will be paid off of the digital list price. (ie. if your $9.99 book is discounted to $2.99, you will still receive a percentage of $9.99 for each sale.)

Delivery Cost

 If you are at 70% royalty, delivery costs are deducted from each sale. For large files, in particular, this can add up to several points of lost royalty
 If you are at 70% royalty, delivery costs are deducted from each sale. No delivery deductions

Amazon Promotion

 N/A You are able to promote your book for free for a limited number of days (up to five days of free promotion for each 90-day enrollment period). Eligible for all Amazon promotions including Kindle Daily Deal, Kindle Monthly Deal, Gold Box Daily Deal, etc.
Kindle Lending Library Eligible. Automatically enrolled. If you are earning 35% royalties, you may opt-out. Required. Eligible but the default is unenrolled.
Amazon.com Searchability Minimum of searchability; titles can be found on the website. Titles selling extremely well are added to "Customers Who Bought This..." searches. Kindle Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited added to search options. Search Engine marketing purchased at no cost to you for increased searchability on Google, Amazon, & Bing; Automatically included in all "Customers Who Bought This..." carousels. Pre-orders counted twice when determining first week of sale rankings.
Pre-Orders Limited to 90 days prior to publication.
Cover, metadata and at least a draft file required to make the title available for pre-order. The final draft must be loaded three weeks prior to pub date. (INscribe Policy, to meet Amazon two week deadline).
Limit: 10 titles
 Same as KDP No limit to lead time on pre-orders.
Cover and Metadata only are required (cover may be a place keeper). The content file must be loaded three weeks prior to pub date. (INscribe Policy, to meet Amazon two week deadline).
No limit to a number of titles.
Kindle Unlimited Not eligible unless invited. Follows Select rules. Required. Paid per page read out of pool - averages less than 1/10 a penny per page. Requires 90-day enrollment, re-enrolls 90 days at a time.  Max price 9.99. Can choose the titles individually to enter.  Paid on full book once 10% is read.  Paid 20% of Cost of Goods Sold (approx. 8.5% of Suggested Retail Price.)  Max Price $15.99.  Requires 90-day enrollment, 30-day re-enrollment automatically.