This articles will explain author royalties for BooksOnline vs Amazon. If you’re an author and you want to maximize your profits, you’ve probably done your own research about where to host your book, and the elephant in the room is clearly Amazon. But Amazon has designed their royalty payouts with their corporate best interests in mind, not necessarily for authors like you. You’ll see what I mean below, but the most obvious example is for eBooks you priced above below $2.99 and above $9.99. Within that range Amazon pays you 70%, but outside that range Amazon only pays you a 35% royalty for your eBooks.

As an author, the first time I saw that I was quite annoyed. It seems like a ripoff for authors, and it is. Why does Amazon do that? Amazon’s argument (or excuse for ripping you off by reducing your royalty and keeping all that additional profit for themselves) is that they want all authors to price books near the top of the Bell Curve of books sales, which is $2.99 to $9.99. Their spin on why is so that you as an author will sell more books, and so Amazon will make more profit. Really? What a great way to control and manipulate authors and to confiscate a large portion of the profit for the books you worked so hard to create yourself.

Amazon also limits an author’s royalty to 35% for any public domain book republished, despite the fact that you clean it up, organize it better for readers, and add notes or commentary or additional sections to the book–no matter what the price. In other words, even if that book is priced within $2.99 to $9.99, Amazon only pays you 35%. They have an exception under what they call a “transformative” rule, but I’ve never gotten KDP to agree on what “transformative” means. Obviously, a payout of only 35% discourages authors from republishing classic books that are now in the public domain because their copyright expired. We at BooksOnline object to that philosophy. We want authors to bring back great books from the past. The timeless wisdom of the ages should not be consigned to obscurity simply because it doesn’t align with Amazon’s profit-driven priorities.

What I’ll do in this article is give you a comparison so you can see how much more BooksOnline pays you as an author in this epic battle of BooksOnline vs Amazon. And beyond this simple comparison, what really blows the lid off BooksOnline sales for authors is the built-in 30% affiliate program that automatically recruits and motivates a potentially massive sales force promoting your books 24/7 all over the world, not just in Amazon approved countries. BooksOnline’s affiliate payout of 30% is far better than Amazon’s Associates program that only pays about 5%.

In this model, BooksOnline introduces a hybrid payment structure, offering a base royalty of 30% on all eBook sales and an additional 30% royalty for purchases through the author’s affiliate link. Below is a comparison of how Amazon and BooksOnline compensate authors for the sale of 100 eBooks at two price points, $9.97 and $19.97.

Payout Comparison Table: 1,000 eBook Sales

BooksOnline Kills Amazon

Wow, did you notice the last two rows in that chart? If you priced your own book as an author at $19.97 because that’s where it should be priced for the content, size, and genre, look at how much you earn at BooksOnline vs Amazon. If you sell 1,000 books at Amazon, you earn $6,996, but if you sell the same 1,000 books at BooksOnline through your own affiliate link, you earn $11,994. What a gigantic difference to your bank account! Need I say any more?

Explanation:

1. BooksOnline Calculation:
   • Authors earn a total of 60% royalty (30% base + 30% from affiliate sales).
   • For $9.99: $0.6\times 9.99\times 1000=5,994$
   • For $19.99: $0.6\times 19.99\times 1000=11,994$
2. Amazon KDP Calculation:
   • For books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, authors earn a 70% royalty.
     • $0.7\times 9.99\times 1000=6,993$
   • For books priced above $9.99, authors earn a 35% royalty.
     • $0.35\times 19.99\times 1000=6,996$

Key Insights:

• At the lower price point ($9.99), Amazon offers slightly higher royalties than BooksOnline. But the affiliate marketing program of BooksOnline can increase sales into far greater numbers, thereby actually generating far more income than Amazon. The example here assumes no other affiliates have sold any copies of the book, but if the author will earn an additional 30% for all sales through other affiliates, and that is not represented in the above chart. 
• At the higher price point ($19.99), BooksOnline provides nearly double the royalties compared to Amazon due to its consistent royalty rate of 60%, while Amazon’s rate drops to 35% for books priced above $9.99.