KENP royalty calculator
Kindle Unlimited pays you per page read, at a rate Amazon doesn't publish until after the month closes. Until then every figure — including the one in your own KDP dashboard — is an estimate. Here's what your reads are probably worth.
From your KDP reports, the "KENP Read" figure.
Typically lands between $0.0040 and $0.0050.
The normalised page count Amazon assigns your title.
For comparing a borrow against a sale.
Why nobody can give you the exact number yet
Amazon funds Kindle Unlimited payouts from a monthly pot called the KDP Select Global Fund. Your share depends on how many pages everyone in the programme read that month, so the per-page rate can't be known until the month is over. It has hovered in the region of half a cent per page for years, drifting a little each month.
This isn't a limitation of third-party tools — it's Amazon's own accounting. Look at a finalised KDP royalty statement for the current month and the earnings column for page reads reads "N/A" until the rate is set. Any tool showing you a confident KU figure mid-month is estimating, whether or not it admits it.
What page reads are worth at different rates
| Pages read | At $0.0040 | At $0.0045 | At $0.0050 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $40.00 | $45.00 | $50.00 |
| 50,000 | $200.00 | $225.00 | $250.00 |
| 250,000 | $1,000.00 | $1,125.00 | $1,250.00 |
| 1,000,000 | $4,000.00 | $4,500.00 | $5,000.00 |
The spread between the low and high rate is about 25%. At small volumes that's pocket change; at a million pages it's a thousand dollars. Worth remembering before you make a decision on a mid-month estimate.
Why this matters for your ads
Here's the part that costs authors real money. Kindle Unlimited borrows generated by your ads earn you page-read income, but that income appears in a completely different report from your advertising. The ads console counts a borrow as zero revenue while happily charging you for the click.
So if your book is in KU, the ads console understates your returns — sometimes dramatically. Judging campaigns on ACOS alone means killing ads that were actually working. The number that tells the truth is TACOS: total ad spend against all income, page reads included.
Check your campaigns freeRelated
- Break-even ACOS calculator — the ACOS you actually need, based on your royalty rather than your list price.
- Why your Amazon Ads ACOS is lying to you — the full explanation of the gap between retail sales and what reaches you.
- The full ledger — joins your KDP and ads reports so page reads land in the same view as ad spend, per book.