Want to earn $4 a paperback? The list price each platform needs
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R. S. Breed Founder
Most royalty calculators work one way: you put in a price and see what you earn. Pricing usually starts the other way round. You know what you want to make on each copy, and you need the price that gets you there.
The print royalty calculator now does both: https://bervet.com/tools/print-royalty-calculator
Choose "The price I need to earn a set amount", put in your target per copy, your marketplace, trim, paper and page count, and you get the lowest list price that earns it on KDP, IngramSpark (at the wholesale discount you choose) and Draft2Digital Print.
Two things worth knowing:
- KDP's royalty jumps at a price threshold. On Amazon.com you get 50% of the list price (minus printing) below $9.99 and 60% from $9.99. So sometimes the cheapest price that hits your target earns a bit more than you asked for, because the next cent up crosses into the higher rate.
- IngramSpark usually needs a higher price for the same money, because of the bookshop discount. That's the trade: it reaches bookshops and libraries.
For a 300-page 6 x 9 cream paperback, earning $4 a copy on Amazon.com needs a list price of $14.33 on KDP.
Every answer stays in the page address, so you can bookmark it or send it to a co-author. It works in your browser, from each platform's own published price list, and each card says when we last checked it. No account needed.