KDP royalties and printing cost, explained with a coloring book

If you are thinking about selling a coloring book as a paperback on Amazon, the first useful number is what you keep from each sale. KDP publishes the formula and the printing cost table, so you can work it out before you design a single page. This article walks through it with one example book. Every figure below is calculated by the same code as our royalty calculator, using KDP's numbers as we read them on 11 November 2026.

The formula

For paperbacks sold on Amazon.com, KDP describes the royalty like this: take the royalty rate, multiply it by your list price (before tax), then subtract the printing cost. What is left is your royalty for that sale.

The rate depends on the list price. At $9.99 and above, KDP pays 60%. Below $9.99, it pays 50%. Sales through Expanded Distribution, which reaches bookstores and libraries, pay a different rate and are not part of these examples.

Printing cost

Printing cost depends on three things: ink type (black, standard colour or premium colour), page count, and whether the book counts as "regular" or "large". KDP calls a book large if it is wider than 6.12 in or taller than 9 in. Most coloring books are large; an 8.5 x 11 in book certainly is.

For black ink, short books have a flat printing cost and longer books pay a fixed amount plus a cost per page. Our example 52-page book sits in the flat band; a 120-page version does not:

Why 52 pages? Twenty-four pictures, each with a blank page behind it, plus a few pages of front and back matter, lands around there. Our 24-page planning guide shows the count step by step.

The price threshold matters

Because the rate changes at a single price point, one cent can make a large difference. Here is the same book at two prices:

That gap is not a recommendation to price at the threshold. Readers compare your book with others on the same page, and the right price is the one people will pay. It is simply worth knowing where the step is.

The lowest price KDP accepts

KDP will not let you set a list price so low that the royalty would be negative. For our example book the lowest list price works out at about $5.68. That figure is our derivation from KDP's rule, and KDP's own pricing screen will show the exact minimum when you set up the book.

Working backwards from a target

Sometimes the better question is "what price do I need to earn $2.00 a copy?" With a printing cost of $2.84, the answer is at least $9.68. Our break-even price helper does this for any cost and target, and shows a small table of example prices next to it.

What the numbers leave out

• Sales volume. Any monthly or yearly figure is your own assumption multiplied out, not a forecast.
• Taxes, which depend on where you live and are outside KDP's royalty formula.
• Other marketplaces and currencies, which have their own prices and print costs.
• Your own costs: proof copies, advertising, software and your time.

KDP can change its rates and its printing cost table, so check the linked KDP pages before you rely on any of this. Our calculator shows the same sources and the date we last checked them, and it will flag any number we could not confirm.