Selling Ebooks at 90% Royalty: How Authors Keep More Without Leaving Amazon
KDP pays 35–70% and charges delivery fees. Lex pays 90% with no exclusivity — so you can stay on Amazon and still make more per sale everywhere else.
The standard indie ebook deal has been frozen for a decade: 70% royalties on Amazon KDP if your price sits between $2.99 and $9.99, 35% outside that window, minus a delivery fee on every sale. Everyone accepted it because the alternative was nothing. The alternative is no longer nothing.
Key numbers: on a $4.99 ebook, KDP pays ~$3.44 after delivery fees; Lex pays $4.49 (90% flat, no fees, no exclusivity). Per thousand sales that's a $1,050 difference for listing the same file in one more store.
What KDP actually pays
The 70% headline rate comes with conditions. Price under $2.99 or over $9.99 — where plenty of novellas, box sets, and technical books belong — and you drop to 35%. Delivery fees ($0.15/MB) quietly tax image-heavy books. And KDP Select's ongoing carrot (Kindle Unlimited inclusion, promo tools) requires digital exclusivity in 90-day renewing terms, cutting you off from every other store to earn page-read payouts that Amazon reprices at will.
The 90% model
Lex's author program flips the split: you set the price, you keep 90% of every sale, and there is no exclusivity, no lockup, and no delivery fee. Your book stays on Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and wherever else it already sells. Lex is an additional channel with better unit economics, not a replacement demanding a bet.
The math per $4.99 sale: KDP pays you ~$3.44 after delivery fees. Lex pays $4.49. Per thousand sales, that's a $1,050 difference for listing the same file in one more store.
Why a reading platform can pay 90%
Fair question. Lex is a reading app first — 6M+ books, 30,000+ audiobooks, native apps on every platform — and the catalog is the product. Indie titles make the catalog better, so the store's job is to attract authors, not to extract maximum margin from them. Ten percent covers payment processing and infrastructure. The audience grows because the app is good; your book rides that growth.
What to actually do
Nothing dramatic. Keep KDP (drop Select at your next renewal unless KU page reads are genuinely paying you), keep your other stores, and add channels that pay better where they exist. Wide distribution stopped being a philosophical stance years ago; now it's just arithmetic.
Listing takes a few minutes: upload your EPUB, set your price, done. Details at lex-books.com/authors. Pair it with an audiobook and the same no-exclusivity terms apply — see Lex Studio.
