Amazon KDP vs Lulu Comparison 2026
Amazon KDP prints and sells inside the Kindle store, for free, with a 70 percent royalty between $2.99 and $12.99. Lulu prints one copy at a time and drop-ships it in your own branding to a buyer on your own site, with no subscription and no minimum order, so you keep the print margin and the customer's email address instead of Amazon's. Pick KDP to be found by people already shopping for books, and Lulu to sell direct and keep the relationship. Plenty of creators use the same file on both.
Self-publish to Kindle and keep 70 percent
Print and sell a book with no minimum order
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Amazon KDP | Lulu | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export |
Amazon KDP
Self-publish to Kindle and keep 70 percent
Kindle Direct Publishing is the shortest route from a finished manuscript to a book somebody can buy, and the audience on the other side of it is the reason most self-published authors start here. Publishing costs nothing. The royalty band is the thing to read before setting a price, because it changes what you earn by half.
Our note
The price band is the decision, not the cover. Pricing at $14.99 instead of $12.99 cuts the royalty rate in half, and a lot of first books are priced into the wrong side of it by accident.
Only on this side
- Covers digital products & storefronts
Lulu
Print and sell a book with no minimum order
Lulu prints one copy at a time and will drop-ship it under your own branding, so a creator can sell a workbook from their own site without holding stock or handing Amazon the customer. An API connects it to Shopify or a custom checkout. Print costs come out of your margin, and a colour interior turns a cheap book into an expensive one.
Why people weigh these two
- Lulu instead of Amazon KDP
- Lulu covers the print side, letting you print and sell a book with no minimum order and nothing up front.
- Amazon KDP instead of Lulu
- Amazon KDP reaches Kindle readers directly and pays 70 percent in royalties, the pick for anybody chasing an ebook audience rather than a printed one.
Which one should you pick
Choose Amazon KDP when discovery is the problem. A reader searching Kindle for something to read is worth more than owning the sale, and the price band still pays 70 percent inside $2.99 to $12.99.
Choose Lulu when the sale needs to happen on your own site: a workbook, a zine or a manual sold to an audience you already have, where white-label drop shipping keeps your branding on the package and the buyer's email in your own list instead of Amazon's order history. There is no subscription, only the print cost per copy, and a Print API connects it to Shopify or a custom checkout. Most creators who do both are not choosing between them. They are running the same file through each for a different job.
Common questions
- Can I sell the same book on both Amazon KDP and Lulu?
- Yes, and it is common. KDP puts the book in front of Amazon's own readers. Lulu drop-ships the same file from your own site under your own branding, so the two do different jobs rather than competing for the same sale.
- Does Lulu take a cut of each sale?
- No revenue share at all. The account is free and there is no subscription. You pay the print cost of each copy plus shipping, calculated from trim size, page count, binding and paper, and keep whatever is left against your retail price. A colour interior costs far more to print than black and white, and that choice alone decides the margin.
- Why use Lulu instead of just printing through KDP?
- To keep the customer. Lulu drop-ships in your own branding with no minimum order, and connects through a Print API to Shopify or a custom checkout, so the buyer's email address and the relationship stay with you instead of showing up as an Amazon order.
- Does Lulu sell into bookshops as well as direct?
- Optionally. Retail distribution through Lulu's partners is available if you want it, but nothing about the platform requires it, and plenty of sellers keep everything direct through their own site instead.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.