UK authors and publishers can now get the full 70% royalty rate from ebooks sold via Amazon’s self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform.
Amazon has introduced a new ebook royalty rate for the UK of 70%. Up until now publishers in the UK were only elligible to a 35% royalty – YES 35% – for sales made on Amazon.co.uk, although sales made in the US via Amazon.com, publishers could get a 70% royalty.
To qualify for the new higher tier books must be priced between £1.49 and £6.99, must be at least a fifth cheaper than the equivalent printed book, be available in multiple countries and be made available as text-to-speech.
The Kindle Digital Text Platform (http://dtp.amazon.co.uk) allows publishers and authors to upload and make their content available in the Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store using the self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform.
Books that are uploaded to the UK Kindle Store are available to UK customers via Kindle devices and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac and Android-based devices.
Additionally Amazon also charge for delivery costs – iPhone publishers will be looking quizzical at this point. Delivery costs are charged at £0.10 per megabyte, so the average 368Kb ebook would include £0.04 of delivery costs which at 35% was quite significant but less so now.
Back in August at the launch of the service Greg Greeley, Amazon Vice President, European Retail, said. “Sales of Kindle books in the US continue to rise and we are now selling more Kindle books than hardcovers. We expect to see a similar pattern in the UK with publishers and authors benefitting from greatly increased sales as a result of adding their titles to the new Kindle Store via the Kindle Digital Text Platform.”
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