How to Price an Ebook: A Simple Method for Your First Nonfiction Guide

Pricing an ebook can feel harder than writing it. Most advice either says "everything should be $2.99" or "charge what you're worth", and neither tells you what to type into the price box.

This guide is for short, practical nonfiction ebooks: guides, how-tos, playbooks and workbooks that help a specific reader do a specific thing. If you're publishing fiction, store pricing norms matter far more and the big ebook stores' own help pages are the better place to start. This isn't tax or legal advice, and fees change, so check the sources at the bottom before you decide.

The short answer

1. Price the problem, not the page count. A 30-page guide that fixes an expensive problem can cost more than a 200-page general book.
2. Check three to five comparable products your reader could buy instead, and note their prices.
3. Decide where you'll sell it. Kindle pricing and direct-sale pricing work very differently (more on this below).
4. Do the fee math so you know what you keep at each price.
5. Launch at one clear price, keep it for two weeks, then adjust based on what visitors actually do.

If you want a starting number in two minutes, the free digital product price calculator takes your comparables and the value of the problem and shows its working.

Step 1: Price the problem, not the pages

Readers don't buy pages. They buy a result: a finished budget, a first client, a launch that doesn't fall apart. So before you look at any number, write down:

• Who the reader is, in one line ("freelance designers in their first year").
• What the ebook gets them, in one line ("a client onboarding process they can copy this week").
• What the problem costs them now: hours lost, money wasted, stress, a missed opportunity.

The more specific and costly the problem, the more room you have on price. "A guide to productivity" competes with thousands of cheap books. "A step-by-step system for nurses on rotating shifts to plan meals for the week" competes with very few, and the reader can see straight away that it's for them.

Step 2: Check what readers already pay

Look for three to five things your reader could buy instead of your ebook: other ebooks on the topic, template packs, short courses, even a paid newsletter. Write down the price and what's included. Then ask: is mine more specific, more complete, or easier to use?

• If yours is similar, price near the middle.
• If yours is narrower and more practical, you can price at or above the middle.
• If yours is your first product and you have no reviews yet, the middle is a safe place to start.

Don't copy the cheapest listing: very cheap store prices often rely on volume and reviews you don't have yet.

Step 3: Decide where you'll sell it, because it changes the price

This is the part most pricing advice skips. Where you sell an ebook shapes what price makes sense.

Selling on Kindle (KDP)

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing has two royalty options for ebooks, 35% and 70%. According to KDP's own help pages (checked October 27, 2026):

• The 70% option is only available for list prices between $2.99 and $12.99 on Amazon.com. That top of the band changed on July 7, 2026; it used to be $9.99.
• On the 70% option, your royalty is 70% of the list price (without VAT) minus a delivery cost based on file size. KDP gives an average delivery cost of $0.06 per unit, and it varies with file size.
• The 70% rate only applies to sales to customers in KDP's listed 70% territories; other sales earn 35%.
• Outside the band, you're on 35%. So a $19.99 ebook on Kindle earns about the same per sale as one priced at $9.99 on the 70% option.

In practice, that band pushes Kindle ebooks into the $2.99 to $12.99 range. Kindle also brings shoppers who are already searching, which matters a lot if you have no audience.

Selling on your own site

When you sell a PDF directly (through Stripe, or a platform like Gumroad, Payhip or Lemon Squeezy), there's no price band. You set the price, and the fee is usually a percentage plus a fixed amount. That makes direct sales a better fit for practical guides that sit closer to a tool than a book: playbooks with checklists, workbooks with templates, guides bundled with spreadsheets. Our guide to how to sell ebooks online covers the setup.

The tradeoff is that nobody finds you by accident. You bring the traffic yourself, from search, communities and your email list.

Step 4: Do the fee math

Here's what you'd keep per sale, before taxes, in both setups. The figures are simple arithmetic from the published rates, not real sales data.

Own site with Stripe (2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction, from Stripe's pricing page):

International cards and currency conversion cost extra (see Stripe's page). If you sell on a platform instead, add its fee on top; we compare the main ones in Gumroad vs Lemon Squeezy vs Payhip.

Kindle, 70% option (US customer, no VAT, KDP's average $0.06 delivery cost):

Two things fall out of this. First, at the same price you keep more per sale on your own site, but you have to find every buyer yourself. Second, many people do both: a lower-priced Kindle edition for discovery, and a direct "complete edition" with templates or worksheets at a higher price on their own site. Check the store's terms before you sell the exact same file in both places.

Step 5: Pick a price tier and launch

These rough tiers are a reasonable starting point for a first nonfiction ebook sold directly. They're not rules, and your market may differ.

Then:

• Pick one price (ending in 7 or 9 is fine) and don't agonise over it.
• Keep it for two weeks. Changing the price daily makes it impossible to learn anything.
• Watch the right signal. If people reach the checkout and leave, the page or the trust signals may be the problem, not the price. If almost nobody clicks the buy button, the offer or the price may be off.
• Raise the price when you add something real, like a workbook, a template set or a new chapter, rather than at random.

A clear refund policy helps more than a lower price for a first-time buyer from someone they don't know. So do real sample pages. Never invent reviews or numbers to justify a price.

Common ebook pricing mistakes

• Pricing by page count. Readers don't value pages; they value the result.
• Starting at 99¢ "to get sales". It signals low value and leaves almost nothing after fees.
• Ignoring the Kindle band. Pricing above $12.99 on Kindle drops you to 35%, so you keep about the same as a much cheaper book.
• Hiding the price. Show it once, clearly, next to one button. Our sales page examples show where it goes.

Where to go from here

Get a starting range from the free price calculator, write your page title with the sales page headline generator, and turn your launch date into a dated plan with the launch checklist generator. For the wider pricing method (comparables, value math, second tiers), read how to price your first digital product.

If you'd like to test your ebook idea before you price it, our free 6-page guide has the "is it payable?" test and a one-page launch checklist.

For the full process, the 30-Day Revenue Operator Pack ($17 founding price for the first 20 buyers until Nov 1, then $27) is a 42-page playbook plus 16 templates and trackers, including an offer scorecard, a sales page template and a 30-day launch calendar. We make it, and everything in this guide works without it.

Sources (checked October 27, 2026)

• KDP: eBook List Price Requirements (70% band $2.99-$12.99 on Amazon.com, effective July 7, 2026)
• KDP: eBook Royalties (35% and 70% options, delivery costs, 70% territories)
• Stripe pricing (2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction)