This article looks at the financial implications of including images in your ebook, and I show you how to calculate the breakeven point between using the 70% and 35% royalty rates to compensate for KDP file size charges. It also helps you to decide whether you should include images in your book, and if so, how many.

Amazon File Delivery Charges

Travel guides (an many other nonfiction ebooks) scream out for images, but when you distribute via Amazon you should balance your desire for a image-ladened book against the delivery cost of a large file size.

The more images you include the bigger your file size.

The larger your file size, the higher delivery fee Amazon will charge you each time a reader purchases and downloads your book (if you choose the 70% royalty rate).

When you list your book between the sweet spot of $2.99 to $9.99 you have the option of choosing between a 35% and a 70% royalty fee. Outside of that range you will only have the option of choosing the 35% royalty. The other caveat is that you can’t select 70% for sales to customers in Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico, unless you enroll in the KDP Select Program.

On the surface, the logical selection is to choose the higher royalty fee, but then Amazon will charge you a per megabyte delivery fee, and they round file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte. 

Amazon File Delivery Charges by Market

Here’s a summary of the per megabyte delivery charges in all of the Amazon markets:

• Amazon.com USD $0.15/MB
• Amazon.ca: CAD $0.15/MB
• Amazon.com.br: R$0.30/MB
• Amazon.co.uk: UK £0.10/MB 
• Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.nl: €0.12/MB 
• Amazon.in: INR ₹7/MB
• Amazon.co.jp: ¥1/MB 
• Amazon.com.mx: MXN $1/MB
• Amazon.com.au: AUD $0.15/MB

If your book ends up being a large file, these delivery charges will eat into your royalty fee.

There’s a royalty break-even point where it would make sense to opt for the 35% royalty fee based on the file size and list price, so you can avoid the delivery charge and receive higher royalties by choosing the lower royalty rate.

Royalty Case Study

Here’s a short case study of the royalty break-even point I encountered with my first travel guide:

• I included lots of images throughout my first travel guide to create a 20MB file size, which resulted in a $3 delivery fee (20MBx0.15c=$3). 
• When I selected the 70% royalty rate on a $5.99 list price, the royalty calculated to $2.09, after the delivery fee.
• When I selected the 35% royalty rate, the royalty calculated to $2.09, and there was no charges for delivery.

So based on my $5.99 list price and 20MB file size, I would have received the same royalty amount, no matter which percentage royalty rate I chose. By reducing my file size just a little it made the 70% royalty rate the best option.

Rather than settling for this low return on my writing investment, I wanted to get my delivery charges below a dollar per book.

• I removed a majority of images from my source file and ended up with a 5.25MB file size and a $0.79 delivery fee (5.25×0.15).

• When I selected the 70% royalty rate on a $5.99 list price, the royalty calculated to $3.64.

Note: For the 70% calculation Amazon takes your list price and deducts the delivery charge, and then calculates 70% of this adjusted net amount. So in my example I’m actually getting 70% of $5.20. ($5.99 list price – $0.79 delivery fee = $5.20. Then 70% of $5.20)

How to view your delivery charge and optimal royalty rate

The best way to view your optimal royalty rate is to upload your ebook file to Amazon KDP and go to the Kindle eBook Pricing Tab.

KDP will display your file size and when you enter your List Price, it will calculate your delivery charge and royalty rate.

If you see your book has a high delivery charge and you want to increase your royalties, then you should remove or condense your images to decrease your file size.

But I want to share images with my readers!

To make up for the loss of images in my book, I added links in my ebook to the destination Image Galleries on my website, which resulted in a double-win.

1. It reduced my delivery costs and increased my royalties.
2. It drove traffic to my website.

I set up these Image links using a bit.ly short link, so I could get visibility to how many people were using these ebooks links to visit my website, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my ebooks was actually driving traffic. So this approach is a viable option, and still provides your readers with the visual experience they crave. If you don’t have image galleries, another option would be to direct your readers to your Pinterest boards.

FYI: No other aggregator or retailer charges a file delivery charge for your ebooks.

This article appears as a Featured Post in the January 2019 Carnival of Indies compiled by The Book Designer Joel Friedlander.

Make sure to visit this post to read all the other content Joel featured this month. There’s such a broad scope of tips and advice shared each month, you’re bound to find an article that will enlighten your indie author journey.

Read more articles in my How to Write a Travel Guide Series

I’m putting the finishing touches on my How to Write and Self-Publish a Travel Guide Series, which details a step by step approach for writing and producing your own travel guide. It’s part of a four-part series aimed at helping travel bloggers achieve passive income based on their passions and existing content.

Each month I host a monthly free prize draw and give away a travel writing e-book to the lucky winner. Sign up to join my mailing list to participate.