Amazon's royalties estimates can be devilishly difficult to properly assess or calculate. Many people find it challenging and Amazon themselves do not make it any easier. Even their Royalty Estimator does not provide accurate estimates. (I believe it is obscure for a reason, but that's another story).

 

For example, using their Royalty Estimator will give an estimate of $186.62 in the below example, BUT actual payout is $130.63. (In this example, there is $55.99 in taxes withheld). The point being, their Royalty Estimator does NOT calculate withheld taxes.

 

 

 

 

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Specific author's information has

been blurred out for privacy.

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This is the basic rundown:

Base sales – Amazon Distribution/Royalty rate (typically 40%***) - Printing Cost* - withheld taxes (varies by tax treaties between your country and the US, but typically 30%, or confusingly, 18% of your post-Amazon Distribution rate (30% of 60% is 18%***) = final paid royalty.

 

This is the basic equation BKP uses:

S – AM – PC – WT = royalties/2

 

S = sales

AM = Amazon Distribution/royalties Rate (generally 40%)

PC = Printing costs (varies with paper, page-count, book size, type of cover, etc).

WT = Amazon withholds taxes. (Varies with country, but Canada-USA typically is 30%, or 18% of sales-Amazon Distribution (30% of 60% = 18%). Yes, it IS confusing)***.

 

 

This final Paid Royalty, as per our Contract (page 1, paragraph 10, section c**), is split 50%/50% between the author and BKP.

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* Printing cost will vary from title to title depending on size of finished book, page-count, choice of stock (paper). As per our author's signed contracts (generally page 1, paragraph 6**), BKP will act as your elusive printer and/or print broker. Please note, the per-unit-printing costs you might have paid for your books will not necessarily be the same as your per-unit-cost of your printed books via Amazon as we use traditional printing, digital printing, and Amazon's POD. Generally speaking our POD printing cost per-unit is discounted by between 16.5% to 20% in these calculations.

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**Please note, all references to Contracts are an approximation. Not all authors' contracts are the same, especially Contracts involving an illustrator or illustrations. References to specific locations (i.e. page, paragraph, section) are approximations and might be in different locations depending on the nature of one's specific and specialized Contract.

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*** Some exceptions apply. For example, with some of Amazon's Expanded Distribution Channels this 60% drops to 40% and thus so too could the withheld taxes.