Book publishing cost calculator: what your book costs, earns and needs to sell

How it works

Tell it the book's length, its language, the languages you want it in, the formats, the Amazon marketplaces for each language and how the AI should translate. Each question has a default, so the answer appears at once and sharpens as you go.

Pages come from the studio's own typesetting for the trim you choose, and set the printing cost. Each store starts with a suggested price: inside KDP's 70% band for ebooks, and comfortably above KDP's lowest price for print. Change any of them in the table.

Each row shows what readers pay (VAT included where the store adds it), the printing cost, your royalty per sale and the copies that repay that language's translation, or the plan for the original.

Ebooks are counted at Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play too, and at the stores of the language's own country where we know their terms, such as Empik and Legimi in Poland.

It also says what to know before you sell: fixed book price laws, which other stores sell the language, and where KDP doesn't sell a format. Amounts in your currency use the European Central Bank's rates of the day.

A worked example

A Spanish novel of 70,000 words, published in Spanish, Italian and French as an ebook and a 5.5 × 8.5 in paperback, prints at about 236 pages. To start: the Author plan at $59 a year and two production translations at $70 each, $199 in all, with KDP's free ISBNs for print.

The Spanish paperback at €15.99 on Amazon.es (readers pay €16.63 with VAT) costs €3.58 to print and earns €6.01 a copy, so about 9 copies repay the plan at mid-October's rates. The Italian ebook at €4.99 earns €2.70: without an ISBN of its own, an ebook pays 22% VAT in Italy.

Spain, Italy and France each have a fixed book price law, which the plan explains, and the ebooks are counted at Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play too.

Questions authors ask

Are the suggested prices what I should charge?

They're a starting point that earns KDP's better royalty rate. Look at what books like yours sell for in each store, and change the price in the table: the royalty and the copies follow.

Does it include marketing costs?

No. Ads and review copies vary too much from book to book, and a guess would make every other number less trustworthy.

What does a translation cost?

A production translation, with a style bible, voice chapters, an editor's pass and checks, is $1.00 per 1,000 words of the original. A draft is $0.30, and with your own AI key the studio's fee is $0.25, with your provider billing you for the AI.

Which stores does it count?

Amazon's marketplaces for every format, and for ebooks also Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble in the US, and Empik and Legimi in Poland, at the shares their terms give. Distributors such as Draft2Digital, and print outside Amazon, are named for each language without figures.

Are these the exact figures KDP will show?

They follow KDP's published rules on the date shown. KDP's own calculator has the final word before you publish.

Sources

Checked on 19 October 2026 against KDP: Paperback royalty, KDP: Printing cost, KDP: eBook pricing, delivery costs and KDP Select, European Central Bank: euro reference exchange rates. Stores change their rules: their own pages have the final word.