What KDP is
Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon's self-publishing platform. You upload a manuscript and a cover, set a price, and Amazon lists the book, takes the orders, manufactures the print copies when somebody buys one, ships them, handles returns, and pays you a share.
It is free to use. There is no upload fee and no annual charge — Amazon takes its cut out of each sale instead. You keep the rights to the book, and you can take it down whenever you like.
For most self-published authors in English, it is the single largest channel available. It is also, for an Indian author selling to Indian readers, a stranger thing than it looks.
The thing to know before anything else
KDP does not distribute print books on Amazon.in.
Amazon's own documentation states that amazon.in, along with Amazon's Brazilian and Mexican stores, does not support paperback or hardcover distribution. Ebooks, yes. Print, no.
So if you publish a paperback through KDP, it goes on sale on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.co.jp and the other supported stores — and it does not appear on Amazon.in at all. An Indian reader who wants a physical copy is buying an imported book from a foreign Amazon store, at a foreign price, with international shipping and whatever customs brings.
This single fact changes the plan for most Indian authors. If your readership is in India and you want them holding a paperback, KDP is not the route for that paperback. You need an Indian print and distribution arrangement — a local printer, a domestic print-on-demand service, Flipkart, bookshops, your own website — and KDP sits alongside it for the ebook and for international print.
Ebook royalties: 70% or 35%
KDP offers two ebook royalty rates, and you choose one per book.
At 35%, you get 35% of the list price less any applicable VAT, and Amazon deducts nothing for delivery.
At 70%, you get 70% of the list price less applicable VAT and less a delivery cost based on your file size. The delivery cost is ₹7 per megabyte for sales on Amazon.in, and US $0.15 per megabyte on Amazon.com, with a minimum of ₹1 and $0.01 respectively.
70% is not simply better. It comes with conditions, and if you fail any of them the book drops to 35%.
- The list price has to be within a band. On Amazon.in it is ₹99 to ₹599. On Amazon.com it is $2.99 to $12.99 — Amazon widened the upper end from $9.99 in July 2026, so older guides will tell you $9.99.
- For sales to customers in India, Brazil, Japan and Mexico, the book must also be enrolled in KDP Select. This is the condition Indian authors trip over.
- The ebook's list price must be at least 20% below the list price of any physical edition of the same book on Amazon.
- You must give Amazon distribution rights in each territory you want it sold in.
- Books consisting mainly of public-domain content are only eligible for 35%.
KDP Select, and what you give up
KDP Select is a 90-day exclusivity arrangement for the ebook. In exchange for not selling the ebook anywhere else in digital form — not Google Play Books, not Apple Books, not your own website — you get the 70% rate in India and the other four markets, inclusion in Kindle Unlimited, and some promotional tools.
For an Indian author selling mainly to Indian readers, this is close to compulsory if you want 70%. At ₹299 a copy, the difference between 35% and 70% is around ₹100 a sale, which no other channel is likely to make up.
The cost is real though. Exclusivity is exclusivity, it renews automatically unless you turn that off, and the ebook is the format you would otherwise sell directly from your own site at full margin.
It covers the ebook only. Your paperback is unaffected and can be sold anywhere.
The 35% price tiers by file size
There is a second place file size bites. At the 35% rate there is a minimum list price that depends on how large your file is. On Amazon.in the minimum is ₹49 for a file under 3 MB, ₹69 from 3 to 10 MB, and ₹99 above 10 MB.
In practice this only matters if you are deliberately pricing very low — a short story, a sample, a loss leader. A large file blocks you from the cheapest price points.
Print royalties: 50% or 60%, minus printing
Print royalties work differently from ebooks, and the figure most authors have in their heads is now out of date.
The rate is 50% or 60% of list price, depending on the list price itself, and then the printing cost is subtracted. The formula Amazon uses is: (royalty rate × list price) − printing cost.
On Amazon.com the breakpoint is at $9.99. A list price of $9.98 or below earns 50%. A list price of $9.99 or above earns 60%. Other marketplaces have their own breakpoints — £7.99 on Amazon.co.uk, €9.99 across the European stores, CAD 13.99, AUD 13.99, ¥1000.
Note that this is a cliff, not a slope. Pricing a paperback at $9.98 rather than $9.99 costs you a tenth of the list price on every single copy. One cent of list price, ten percent of the royalty.
Hardcovers work the same way, on the same 50%/60% structure and the same breakpoints, where hardcover distribution is supported.
Expanded Distribution
Expanded Distribution puts your paperback into Amazon's wholesale channels, so bookshops, libraries and other retailers can order it. It operates out of the United States and the United Kingdom, though booksellers elsewhere can buy through those distributors.
The royalty is 40% of the list price in that channel, minus printing costs, taxes and withholding. That is meaningfully less than selling on Amazon directly, which is the trade for reaching shops that would not otherwise stock you.
Hardcovers are not eligible for Expanded Distribution.
Getting paid in India
Amazon pays monthly by electronic transfer to an Indian bank account, roughly sixty days after the end of the month in which the sale happened.
There is no minimum payment threshold for electronic transfer — Amazon's threshold table shows ₹0 for Amazon.in. Any guide quoting you a ₹100 or ₹1,000 minimum is out of date. Cheque and wire payments do still have a $100 threshold.
There is one practical floor to be aware of: Amazon notes that where a payment involves currency conversion or tax withholding, the amount left afterwards still has to meet the minimum a bank will actually send. A very small month can still sit.
The tax interview, and the 30% you do not have to pay
Before Amazon pays you, you complete a short online tax interview. For an Indian author this generates a W-8BEN, declaring that you are not a United States taxpayer.
If you skip it or complete it badly, the default United States withholding on your US-sourced royalties is 30%. Amazon states that plainly: ebook sales on Amazon.com and print sales on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.com.au and Amazon.ca are subject to 30% US withholding.
The thing that reduces it is a tax identification number. Amazon's instructions say that if you do not have a US TIN, you may enter the income tax identification number issued by the tax authority in your country of residence — for an Indian author, your PAN. Amazon also says plainly that any reduction below the 30% statutory rate does not apply until you provide a TIN.
The reduced rate comes from the India–United States tax treaty, and is lower than 30%. Amazon does not publish per-country treaty rates; it shows your actual rate in your own tax profile at the end of the interview. Check the figure there rather than taking any website's word for it, including ours.
The free ISBN, and why to say no
KDP will give you a free ISBN for a paperback. Amazon's own help pages state two consequences.
A free KDP ISBN can only be used on KDP — you cannot use that number to print the same book locally, list it on Flipkart, or supply a distributor. And the imprint on the book will read 'Independently published' rather than your name or your publishing house.
Given that an ISBN from the Indian national agency is currently free and belongs to you, there is very little reason to accept the locked one. Get your own first. Our ISBN guide covers how.
One note: an ISBN is optional for ebooks and low-content books on KDP. It is required for paperbacks and hardcovers.
So what should an Indian author actually do
A reasonable default, and the shape of what we usually recommend:
- Get your own ISBNs from the national agency — one per format. Do not take the KDP one.
- Complete the KDP tax interview with your PAN before you publish anything.
- Publish the ebook on KDP. If your readers are mostly Indian, enrol in KDP Select so the 70% rate applies to Amazon.in sales, and price inside the ₹99–₹599 band.
- Publish the paperback on KDP too, for international readers — priced above the marketplace breakpoint so it earns 60% rather than 50%.
- Arrange the Indian print edition separately: a local printer or Indian print-on-demand service, plus Flipkart, bookshops and your own website. This is the edition most of your readers will actually buy.
- Keep the ebook at least 20% below the print price, or you lose the 70% rate.