We have earlier seen how to add HQ images within our eBooks, in this video we'll learn
the link between images and the royalties we earn.
File size is one of the important factors when you publish an ebook. That's important
also for how the royalties are also calculated.
You may already be aware that Amazon KDP offers two types of royalty plans: the 35% royalty
plan and the 70% royalty plan.
Anyone who publishes on Amazon KDP can choose the default 35% royalty plan. In case you
want to earn more and reach more readers, you could opt in for the 70% royalty plan,
except that for some marketplaces you must also optin to KDP Select if you want to go
for the 70% royalty plan - such as Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico.
So, when you choose this 70% royalty plan, there is one more factor that gets included
into the royalty calculation. And that is - delivery fees. The 70% royalty plan has
delivery fees based on the file size of the Kindle eBook. The 35% royalty plan does not
charge delivery fees.
So, let's now see how do they calculate the delivery fees?
This is where the ebook's file size is taken into account. So, in case your ebook file
size is high and heavy like say 100MB, or 50MB, then it also means your delivery fees
will also be high. On the other hand, if your ebook's file size is say 10kb, or 100kb, or
1Mb, then your delivery fees will also be comparatively lesser. That's why it's a good
practice to keep your ebook's file size lower to the extent possible.
If you think why does the ebook's file size increase, then images seem to be most known
culprit. As you know, there are 4 main formats when it comes to images - jpeg, gif, bmp,
png. KDP supports bmp and png, while the kindle book format accepts only jpg and gif formats.
This could confuse us a little, so which format is best to use in our ebooks?
If you had used bmp or png within your word document draft book while uploading to KDP,
these tend to be usually on the heavier image formats because of the clarity it offers at
pixel levels. That's why we convert those into jpeg files and thus get lesser image
file size. We'll see how to convert bmp to jpeg in a few minutes but before that let's
first understand that to reduce your ebook file size, you would need to first convert
all your existing bmp and png images to either jpeg or gif format, then re-insert them into
your ebook before re-uploading the ebook to KDP.
This way, you could potentially reduce the delivery fees and ultimately increase your
royalties too.
Let's now see how KDP calculates royalties:
with the 35% royalty plan, the applicable VAT is first deducted from your ebook's list
price - the resultant amount is then multiplied by the 35% royalty rate. This is the amount
you will receive under the 35% plan.
Now, the 70% royalty plan is also calculated in a similar way except that the delivery
fees gets included in the equation now. The vat and the delivery fees, both are deducted
from your list price and then that resultant amount is multiplied by 70% to obtain your
royalty amount.
When calculating delivery costs, KDP will round the cost up to 2 decimal places for
all currencies except JPY.
All said and done, it's really hard to perfectly calculate the royalty we receive this way
because these differ for every country and marketplace, and also because these are ebooks
and they could be sold anywhere around the globe and every country has their own VAT
calculations. That's why all of these calculations are programmatically automated in the KDP
system. You could see some reports on the KDP account's reports page to get an estimate
of all your royalty earnings and calculations. Once you start earning more, then you may
get closer to estimating your royalty earning patterns.
Moreover, if you choose to go for the paperback options, or have already published few paperbacks
through KDP, although, it's not available for the Indian marketplace, KDP provides you
with a royalty calculator to get at your own estimates based on the sales you make. I will
provide a link to that calculator in the description below.
Let's now see how this image conversion is done.
You could convert the bmp to jpeg using Microsoft Paint itself. Just open the bmp file using
MS Paint, then go to the File - menu and choose save as - then change the file type to JPEG
and save the file. You could then insert this jpeg file into your Word document manuscript
file or the epub html file. You can now see the difference in file sizes. The bitmap file
will be larger when compared with the jpeg file size.
In case you don't use MS Paint software or don't use Windows computer altogether, you
could also get these conversions done online using some free web services. There are even
some free mobile apps that does this job for you. I will provide all the download links
in the description below.
To conclude, when a lot of images are inserted into your ebook, the ebook's file size could
drastically increase too - because that's directly proportionate. So, by including jpeg
files instead of bmp, you could definitely reduce your overall ebook's file size - which
means more royalties for you. But there is a side effect to this, which is losing out
on the clarity of your images for all the inserted images. For that, just watch my earlier
video on how to effectively replace your older jpeg files with uncompressed jpeg files - this
will not only improve the image clarity but also let you keep the lighter ebook file in
terms of it's overall size.
i hope this video helped you in some way. if so, please support my work by either downloading
my book, and by leaving a positive review for my work on amazon. You could also become
a patreon and support me that way, which will surely help me create more free videos and
tutorials like the one you are watching now.
i will see you again in another video, until then please take care.