Pricing across marketplaces
Each marketplace prints locally, at its own cost, in its own currency. Automatic conversion will quietly set prices you would never have chosen.
KDP sells your paperback in several marketplaces, each with its own printing costs, its own currency, and its own minimum price. It offers to convert your US price automatically. Take a minute to check what it converts to.
The minimum is not a suggestion
Every marketplace enforces:
list price >= printing cost / 0.60
Below that, 60% of your price does not cover printing, and KDP simply will not accept the price. This is what stops a long colour book from ever being cheap — you are not being talked out of it, you are being blocked.
Automatic conversion has no taste
Convert $12.99 and you get prices like £10.37 or €12.11. Nobody prices a book that way. Set them by hand to the shape buyers expect in each market — £10.99, €12.99 — and you generally earn more per copy for doing nothing but rounding.
VAT changes what you keep
In the UK and the EU, the displayed price includes VAT, and royalty is calculated on the price excluding it. Printed books are zero-rated for VAT in the UK, so the two match — but in several EU countries they do not, and your euro royalty will be lower than the same number of dollars would suggest.
Check the actual royalty figure KDP shows for each marketplace rather than assuming it scales.
Expanded Distribution: 40%, not 60%
Expanded Distribution reaches bookshops, libraries and other online retailers, and pays 40% minus printing cost instead of 60%.
On a $12.99 book with $2.44 printing:
| Channel | Royalty |
|---|---|
| Amazon | $5.35 |
| Expanded Distribution | $2.76 |
Roughly half. It is still worth switching on for most books — those are sales you would not otherwise have — but do not price your book on the assumption that every sale pays $5.35.
Choosing the number
Look at what the ten books currently ranking for your main search term charge. You do not have to match them, but you do have to be able to explain the difference to a buyer who is looking at both.
Then check your royalty at that price. If it is under about $2 a copy, you have no room to advertise, and that shapes everything in the last two lessons.
Before the next lesson
Set every marketplace price by hand and note your royalty in each. You will need the US figure in the ads course — break-even ACOS is derived from it.