KDP guides · written from the rate tables
KDP guides for authors who publish on Amazon
Four long answers to the questions the calculators cannot explain on their own: what Amazon actually pays, how long a book should be, and the file settings that decide whether a paperback looks professional.
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The four guides
9 min read · kdp royalties explained
KDP royalties explained — what Amazon actually pays
How Amazon KDP calculates paperback and ebook royalties, why one cent of price can cost a dollar, and the printing-cost formula behind every number.
Read the guide10 min read · how many words in a novel
How many words in a novel? Word counts by genre
Word count ranges for novels, novellas, middle grade and young adult, plus what those words become as paperback pages at KDP’s most common trim sizes.
Read the guide11 min read · kdp formatting
KDP formatting guide — trim, margins and bleed
The four settings that decide whether a KDP paperback looks professional: trim size, margins and gutter, bleed, and the cover wrap measured from the spine.
Read the guide10 min read · how to make a coloring book
How to make a coloring book for Amazon KDP
A practical path from 30 line-art designs to a print-ready KDP coloring book: page order, paper choice, pricing and the file setup that passes review.
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Who these are for
Written for first-time and second-time publishers
These guides are for authors who are publishing their own paperback through Amazon KDP and want to understand the numbers before they upload a file. That includes first-time authors working out whether a book is worth making, and second-time authors whose first book looked amateurish in print but who cannot say exactly why.
They are not a course in writing and they do not promise sales. The aim is narrower: explain how Amazon calculates what it pays, how long a book in your category usually is, and which file settings decide whether a paperback looks professional. Those three questions cover most of the expensive mistakes.
Each guide links to the calculator or the help page that answers its numbers, so you can check the arithmetic with your own page count instead of trusting an example. Where a number is a convention rather than a rule, the guide says so; where it is a KDP limit, it links to Amazon’s own page.
How these are written
Numbers first, opinions labelled
Rates, with a date
Every royalty and printing number is computed from Amazon KDP’s published tables, checked on 2026-11-10. The calculators use the same code.
Conventions, labelled
Genre word counts are industry conventions, not rules. Where a number is a convention it says so; where it is a KDP limit it links to the help page.
No promise of results
Nothing here promises sales, rankings or approval. The guides explain how the maths and the file requirements work so you can make a decision.
Use the numbers
Put a guide to work
Start with the question you actually have. If you are deciding whether a book is worth making, the royalty guide answers that first; if you are still writing, the word-count guide sets the target; if the manuscript is finished, the formatting guide prevents a rejected file. The coloring book guide covers the category where page count is a design decision rather than a word-count consequence.