Amazon KDP vs PublishDrive Comparison 2026
Amazon KDP is free to publish and pays up to 70 percent royalty between $2.99 and $12.99 on its own store. PublishDrive charges a subscription instead of a percentage: free for one book, then $13.99 a month for three books and 50-plus retailers including Amazon, with 0 percent revenue share on every tier. The choice comes down to volume. A subscription with no cut only wins once a title earns enough that the fixed fee beats the percentage a store would otherwise keep.
Self-publish to Kindle and keep 70 percent
Ebook distribution with no cut of royalties
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
- PublishDrive bills annually only, so there is no month to try it for.
- PublishDrive takes no share of what you earn. Amazon KDP takes 30%.
Side by side
Amazon KDP | PublishDrive | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | From $13.99 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing (they differ) | Usage-based | Annual only |
| Free trial | Not stated | None |
| API | Not stated |
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.
PublishDrive
Ebook distribution with no cut of royalties
PublishDrive charges a subscription and then takes nothing from sales, which inverts the usual aggregator deal and pays off the moment a book sells steadily. One upload reaches over 50 retailers and a library network most authors never get near. Plans are capped by title count, so a back catalogue costs more than a single book does.
Our note
Draft2Digital takes 10 percent and costs nothing up front, so it wins on a book that barely sells and loses on one that does. Work out your annual royalties before choosing: the crossover for the Starter plan is somewhere around $1,700 a year in sales.
Why people weigh these two
- PublishDrive instead of Amazon KDP
- PublishDrive distributes ebooks widely and takes no cut of royalties, charging a subscription from $13.99 instead.
- Amazon KDP instead of PublishDrive
- Amazon KDP costs nothing and keeps 70 percent of each sale on Kindle alone, the better math for one book that might sell twenty copies rather than a subscription sized for a back catalogue.
Which one should you pick
Stay on Amazon KDP alone for a first book, or for anything selling only to Kindle readers. It costs nothing to publish, and the 30 percent Amazon keeps inside the price band, or 65 percent outside it, is not a bad deal for a title that has not proven it sells yet.
Move to PublishDrive once several titles are selling steadily across more than one store. Zero percent revenue share on every plan means the subscription is the entire cost, and 50-plus retailers plus 240,000 libraries from one upload replace a separate account at each. Free covers one book. Anything past three titles needs the $20.99 Standard tier, so a back catalogue costs more here than a single book does.
Common questions
- Is PublishDrive cheaper than Amazon KDP?
- Not for a single book. PublishDrive's free tier only covers one title and 3 channels, and nothing in KDP's pricing is tied to how many books you publish. PublishDrive gets cheaper as a catalogue grows, because it charges a flat subscription with 0 percent revenue share instead of a percentage of every sale.
- Does PublishDrive reach Amazon too?
- Yes. Its own feature list names Amazon, Apple, Kobo and Google among more than 50 retailers reached from one upload, so a title can appear there without a separate KDP account. It will not carry Select's exclusivity or Kindle Unlimited page reads either way.
- How many books does PublishDrive's free plan cover?
- One book and 3 distribution channels. Starter is $13.99 a month, billed annually, for 3 books and 50 channels with analytics and promotion tools, and Standard at $20.99 covers 6 books with in-store featuring. A back catalogue costs more than a debut does.
- What does Amazon KDP's royalty actually depend on?
- Price. List an ebook between $2.99 and $12.99 on Amazon.com and the royalty is 70 percent. Price it outside that band and the rate drops to 35 percent, so a $19.99 book earns less per copy than a $12.99 one.
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