Ebook income calculator: what do your channels pay you every month?

Monthly income from an ebook is exactly two numbers multiplied: what you keep per sale, and how many sales happen. A book that keeps $3.28 a copy needs 30 sales to clear $98 and 300 to clear $984 — the arithmetic is trivial, and the planning value is entirely in being honest about both inputs instead of optimistic about one of them.

Per-sale keep is the knowable half. Every major channel publishes its fee schedule, so the widget on this page computes it to the cent from your list price: Amazon's royalty tier and delivery fee, Gumroad's flat cut, Etsy's percentage stack. Run your real price before you fantasize about volume — authors routinely discover their $2.99 book keeps $1.79 on Amazon and $2.46 on Etsy, and that gap compounds across every sale of the year.

Volume is the uncertain half, and this is where most income forecasts die. A debut ebook with no audience, no ads, and no category strategy typically sells in the tens per month, not the hundreds — which at a $3 keep is coffee money, not rent. That is not a verdict on your book; it is the base rate for an asset nobody has found yet, and every plan on this page starts from it rather than from launch-week dreams.

The honest way to use this calculator is therefore backwards: enter the monthly income you want, then read off the sales each mix requires, and ask whether your audience plan credibly produces them. If 200 sales a month is the answer and your newsletter has 40 people, the forecast just told you the real project — build the audience first, and let the pricing recommender hold your price steady meanwhile.

Amazon pays a royalty, not a remainder: at $2.99 or more on Amazon.com you earn 70% of the list price minus a delivery fee of $0.15 per megabyte, and below that line — or outside eligible territories — you earn 35% with no fee. Those are Amazon's published formulas, and the royalty calculator isolates them if you want the single-channel view.

Gumroad takes a straight cut of each direct sale: 10% plus $0.50, with no monthly fee, and it now acts as merchant of record so worldwide sales-tax handling is included rather than extra. Etsy stacks three US charges on digital sales: a 6.5% transaction fee, 3% plus $0.25 payment processing, and a $0.20 listing fee per listing — the widget folds the percentages into the per-sale figure and leaves the flat listing fee out, since it is charged per listing rather than per copy.

The table below runs all three side by side for a $4.99 book with a 2 MB file, so you can see the pecking order before you touch the widget. Then change the price above and watch the order survive: the ranking barely moves, but the dollar gaps do — which is exactly why per-sale math deserves five minutes before any channel debate.

Take a $4.99 how-to guide with a 2 MB file selling 100 copies a month: 70 on Amazon, 20 through Gumroad links, 10 on Etsy. Amazon pays ($4.99 − $0.30) × 0.70 = $3.28 a copy, so 70 sales bring about $230. Gumroad keeps 10% plus $0.50 per sale — $3.99 stays — so 20 sales bring about $80. Etsy keeps roughly 9.5% plus $0.25 — about $4.27 stays — so 10 sales bring about $43.

Add them up: about $352 a month, or about $4,227 across a full year at the same pace. Now read the shape of that total instead of just the size — Amazon contributes nearly two-thirds of the money despite paying the least per sale, because volume is doing the work that margin cannot. That is the whole lesson of multi-channel income in one paragraph.

Then stress-test it the way a plan deserves. Slide Amazon's share to 100 and the same 100 sales pay about $328; slide everything to Etsy and they pay about $427 — a $99 monthly spread between extremes you will never actually occupy. Realistic mix changes move the needle by tens of dollars, while ten extra sales move it by thirty-plus. Volume first, mix second, always.

Because no channel pays you for buyers it never shows your book to. Amazon pays the lowest per-sale keep of the three and still dominates most independents' income, for one reason: it brings its own shoppers. A 70% share at $3.28 beats a 10% share at $4.27 every month, because seventy buyers at a worse margin out-earn ten buyers at a better one — distribution first, percentage second.

Flip the situation and the ranking flips with it. If you hold the audience yourself — a newsletter, a following, a podcast — direct links convert attention you already own, and Gumroad's $3.99 per sale on a $4.99 book beats Amazon's $3.28 with no discoverability penalty, since you were the discovery. Etsy sits between: real search traffic for planners, printables, and workbooks, but shoppers who compare thumbnails rather than follow authors.

So set the widget's shares from your actual distribution, not your aspirations. No audience yet: weight Amazon heavily and treat the other channels as experiments. A working list or show: push direct share up and measure whether conversion survives outside the marketplace. A visual, giftable product: give Etsy a real slice. Revisit the mix quarterly — the channel comparison walks through the same choice from the strategy side.

Four things, stated plainly so none of them surprise you. Etsy's $0.20 listing fee is excluded — trivial per sale at volume, noticeable on a shop with many listings and few sales. Sales tax and VAT are excluded: Gumroad collects and remits as merchant of record, while Amazon deducts buyer-country VAT before your royalty — your payout already reflects it, but the headline price is not all yours to split.

Gumroad Discover sales are excluded too, and this one cuts the other way: customers who find you through Gumroad's marketplace cost 30%, not the 10%-plus-$0.50 direct rate the widget uses. If Discover ever drives a real share of your sales, your Gumroad line here reads high — check the split in your Gumroad dashboard before trusting the total.

Finally, the widget assumes one price everywhere, and real authors rarely do that. Amazon's $2.99 royalty cliff may pin your Kindle price while your direct page sells at $9.99 with bonuses, or Etsy carries a printed companion at a higher ticket. Treat the single-price total as the baseline, then re-run each channel at its real price with the royalty calculator when your prices diverge.

Compare the annual line against what the book cost to make. Total your production spend with the self-publishing cost calculator — say $750 for editing, cover, formatting, and launch — and divide by your monthly take-home: $352 a month repays it in just over two months, while $90 a month takes eight. That payback window is the single most clarifying number in this whole exercise, because it converts vibes into a calendar date.

If the window is short, the plan is volume protection: keep the price inside Amazon's 70% band, feed the channel that contributes most, and start book two — nothing raises monthly income like a second product the same audience buys. If the window is long, the plan is diagnosis, not despair: too few buyers means distribution work, while a decent trickle at a low keep means repricing before more marketing.

And keep the forecast's job description modest. It exists to grant permission — permission to spend on the next book when the base case clears costs, and permission to stop polishing this one when even the ceiling doesn't. A rough estimate you act on beats a precise one you file away, which is all any calculator, including this one, can honestly offer.

Usually yes, eventually — but not necessarily on day one. Every additional channel is a second product page to build, a second dashboard to check, and a second set of rules to respect, and for a book selling twenty copies a month that overhead buys you single dollars. Launch where your buyers already are, prove the book converts, then widen the mix the widget models once there is real volume to split.

The one hard constraint runs through Amazon: enrolling the ebook in KDP Select — the program behind Kindle Unlimited page-read pay and promotional tools — requires digital exclusivity, which forbids selling the same ebook on Gumroad or Etsy for the enrollment term. Exclusivity is therefore a bet that Amazon's inside perks beat the combined margin and reach of everywhere else, and it is only a good bet while the numbers say so.

Run both versions of the bet in the widget. Model your wide mix first, then model 100% Amazon plus a rough page-read bonus from the KENP estimator — if exclusivity cannot beat wide on paper, it will not beat it in practice either. Most nonfiction guides land wide: their buyers arrive via search and recommendation, not subscription browsing, and direct plus Etsy margins reward the authors who meet them there.

Whatever you choose, keep the decision dated, not permanent. A channel mix is a quarterly hypothesis: re-run it when the audience grows, when a book earns also-bought placement, or when any platform changes its fees. The authors who revisit the mix beat the authors who set it once — the widget stays here for exactly that rerun.

It converts hobbies into verdicts. $90 a month sounds like a slow start; $1,080 a year next to a $750 production bill sounds like a book that paid for itself with room to spare — same money, different decision. Annualizing forces the comparison that matters: total keep versus total cost, where monthly figures invite endless benefit-of-the-doubt.

It also exposes seasonality before it ambushes you. Planners and workbooks spike in January, business guides move with budget cycles, giftable topics jump in December — a flat monthly estimate is really an average hiding peaks worth preparing inventory, promos, and ad spend around. When your first year of dashboard data exists, replace the flat input with seasonal months and watch which quarters carry the year.

Then aim the annual number at its two real jobs: the tax set-aside and the catalog decision. Royalties are income wherever you live, and platforms may withhold a slice before payout — holding back a fixed share of every deposit from day one turns April from a crisis into paperwork. And once one book's annual line is known, book two stops being a gamble and becomes arithmetic: the same audience, a second product, and a combined yearly total that finally looks like a business.