Summary matrix · 9 dimensions
At a glance
- Manuscript upload
- Required
- Cloud storage
- Yes
- Account required
- Yes
- AI features
- Not determined
- AI training on your work
- Terms are silent or ambiguous
- Content licence
- Sublicensable to third parties
- Deletion
- Not available
- Export / portability
- Partial
- Policy transparency
- Mixed
“Not determined” means the documents were read and did not settle it. “Not assessed” means it has not been researched. Neither means “no”.
Editorial interpretation · Mixed
What this means for authors
Some terms protect the author and others do not, or an important question is left unanswered.
The ownership position is clear and favourable — you keep copyright, and the distribution licence is non-exclusive outside KDP Select. Two things pull the other way: the licence is irrevocable and extends to affiliates and contractors, and the agreement says nothing whatever about AI or model training — confirmed by reading all eight pages, not inferred — which leaves the most consequential current question unanswered rather than settled. A third belongs alongside them now that the full terms have been read: withdrawal is the fastest of any platform here at five business days, but Amazon may keep digital copies afterwards, withholds all royalties for three months following any termination, and forfeits them outright if it is the party ending the agreement for a breach of its own Content Guidelines.
Content licence
Sublicensable to third partiesSection 5.5 grants Amazon a non-exclusive, irrevocable right and licence to print and distribute the book directly and through third-party distributors, and Amazon may let its affiliates and independent contractors exercise those rights. Section 6 is explicit that you retain copyright and all other ownership. The licence runs for the term of the agreement, but rights in copies customers have already bought survive termination. KDP Select is the exception to non-exclusivity: while enrolled, the digital edition is exclusive to Amazon. Since 21 October 2026, an ACX audiobook enrolled in Kindle+ also carries Addendum C’s non-exclusive, irrevocable licence to make all or any portion of it available on Amazon properties for listening online and offline, for the term of the agreement, and Amazon may publicly name top audiobooks with their listens and subscription royalties.
AI and model training
Terms are silent or ambiguousThe KDP Terms and Conditions do not address training machine-learning or AI models on uploaded content at all — the subject is neither permitted nor excluded. Silence is not a commitment: it leaves the question to the general licence grant and to policies that can change without amending this agreement.
Deletion
Not availableWithdrawal is quick; deletion is not on offer. Give notice and Amazon stops selling your ebooks and printing your paperbacks within five business days — faster than any other agreement here. But it may keep selling print inventory it already holds, fulfil orders already placed, and, in its own words, “continue to maintain digital copies” of your Digital Books after termination. Customers keep access through Virtual Storage, expressly both during and after the term. Nothing in the agreement offers deletion of the files or the account on request, so this is recorded as not available rather than undetermined — the agreement was read in full and does not provide it.
Export and lock-in
PartialOutside KDP Select the licence is non-exclusive, so the book can be published anywhere else at the same time and withdrawal takes five business days. What is not offered is any documented export of the catalogue — uploaded files, metadata or full sales history — and Amazon may keep digital copies after you leave.
Chronological log
Change history
Kindle Unlimited renamed Kindle+, with audiobooks for US subscribers
Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+. Enrolment still runs through KDP Select. US subscribers can now listen as well as read: Virtual Voice audiobooks join automatically when their ebook is in KDP Select, eligible Pay-for-Production ACX audiobooks can be enrolled, and listening is paid by the page from the same KDP Select Global Fund as reading.
KDP Terms and Conditions revised
The first revision since 27 September 2024. Section 4.2 now lets Amazon disclose your legal name, contact details and sales information — units sold, royalties paid — to third parties who complain about your content or account; the old clause covered only name and contact details, for legal compliance. Section 5.2 drops the Kindle Book Lending clause, under which every ebook could be lent by customers and only books on the 35% option could opt out; whether lending itself has changed was not checked. Section 5.8 widens the ban on exploiting the service to manipulating, abusing, defrauding or otherwise misusing it, and section 5.4 adds bank-account eligibility rules to the payment policies Amazon may set. The KDP Select addendum now names Kindle+, the Kindle Vella terms are removed, and a new Addendum C covers ACX audiobooks in Kindle+.
70% royalty price band widened to $12.99
The upper limit of the 70% royalty band on Amazon.com moved from $9.99 to $12.99, so a title priced between those figures now earns 70% rather than 35%.
Sources
Every factual claim above is drawn from these documents.
Official terms
Digital Pricing Page — eBook royalty optionsAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Official terms
KDP Terms and ConditionsAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026 · Effective 21 October 2026
Source for KDP Select exclusivity and the 90-day auto-renewing term, for the grant of rights (s.5.5) and ownership (s.6), and for the termination, royalty-withholding and forfeiture terms in s.3 and s.5.4.8. Read in full on 2026-09-04 and confirmed to contain no reference to AI, machine learning or model training. Re-read on 2026-10-01 from the public read-only copy for the one-account rule (s.4.2) and the appeal instructions promised on termination (s.3). Re-read on 2026-10-26, when the agreement carried “Last Updated: October 21, 2026”: the termination and withdrawal notice (five business days), the one-account rule, the appeal instructions, royalties net of refunds (s.5.4.1), payment timing (s.5.4.2), the refund offset, three-month withholding and forfeiture terms, and the absence of any reference to AI, machine learning or training were all unchanged. Later that day the full 2026 text was compared sentence by sentence against the archived 2024 version (kdp-terms-2024). The substantive changes match Amazon’s own summary — sections 4.2, 5.2, 5.4, 5.8, 10.3 and Addendum A, Kindle Vella removed, Addendum C added — and are recorded in the changelog; the remaining differences are formatting and renumbering.
Official terms
KDP Terms and Conditions (27 September 2024 version, archived)Amazon KDP (via the Internet Archive)
Accessed 26 October 2026 · Effective 27 September 2024
Wayback Machine capture of 5 August 2025. A capture of 28 January 2026 still shows this version, so the 21 October 2026 revision is the only one since, as its own change summary implies. Used as the baseline for the clause-by-clause comparison.
Official policy
Community GuidelinesAmazon
Accessed 1 October 2026
Source for the advance-reader-copy exception, the ban on compensated or incentivised reviews, and the ban on reviews from people with a personal connection to the author. Read in a browser on 2026-10-01; the page does not require reviewers of advance copies to disclose them.
Official pricing
eBook list price requirements by marketplaceAmazon KDP
Accessed 2 September 2026 · Effective 7 July 2026
Records the 70% band widening to $2.99–$12.99 on Amazon.com.
Official pricing
Paperback and hardcover royaltyAmazon KDP
Accessed 2 September 2026
Official pricing
Payment ThresholdsAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
No threshold for electronic funds transfer; cheque and wire thresholds per marketplace in local currency, applied after tax withholding, with payment 60 days after the end of the month the threshold is reached.
Official help centre
Account security and avoiding scamsAmazon KDP
Accessed 1 October 2026
Source for KDP being a free service that sells no fee-based editing or design, and for KDP never asking for passwords or full bank details by email.
Official help centre
ACX Audiobooks for KDP SelectAmazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026
Source for the four ACX eligibility conditions (ebook live in KDP Select, exclusive Audible distribution, Read & Listen enabled, Pay-for-Production deal), enrolment from the Bookshelf, and the up-to-24-hour wait for the Kindle+ badge.
Official help centre
Author CentralAmazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Source for how an Author Page is claimed, the marketplaces Author Central covers, its features, and which features are US-only. The page carries no last-updated date. Author Central's own help topics require signing in to an Amazon account and were not read.
Official help centre
Complete Tax ProfileAmazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Source for the requirement that Amazon receives and validates your tax identity before you can publish new books or update existing ones.
Official help centre
eBook Distribution RightsAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Worldwide versus individual territories for ebooks; 13 Amazon Kindle stores; customers in uncovered territories buy from Amazon.com.
Official help centre
Expanded DistributionAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Enrolment is free; royalties are paid about 60 days after the end of the month in which distributors report sales; US and UK distribution rights are required for the respective programmes. Says nothing about bookshop returns.
Official help centre
Get an ISBNAmazon KDP
Accessed 2 September 2026
Official help centre
KDP Select Global Fund and KENP payoutAmazon KDP
Accessed 3 September 2026
Source for the KDP Select Global Fund mechanism. The per-page figure is derived monthly from the fund divided by total pages read, so it is a range rather than a posted rate.
Official help centre
Kindle+Amazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026
Source for what Kindle+ is, how enrolled titles earn from the KDP Select Global Fund on pages read or listened to, Virtual Voice audiobooks enrolling automatically with their ebook, ACX audiobooks being unenrollable separately, and audiobooks in Kindle+ being distributed in the US marketplace only. The page does not mention Kindle Unlimited or the rename date, and states no subscriber price.
Official help centre
Old Sales DashboardAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Source for print royalties being reported only when a copy ships, and for no new royalty on copies returned in new condition and resold by Amazon. The page is titled for the retired dashboard and carries no date; no newer page states the rule.
Official help centre
Paperback and Hardcover Distribution RightsAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
The 14 paperback marketplaces, hardcover exclusions, the marketplaces with no print, the EU-and-UK all-or-none rule and the US/Canada/Mexico rule.
Official help centre
Prepare Comic and Kids' eBooks with Kindle CreateAmazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Source for Kindle Create converting PDF, PNG or JPEG files into illustrated or kids' ebooks, and for it having no text-formatting features. The page does not mention Kindle Kids' Book Creator.
Official help centre
Pricing, royalties, and reports for audiobooksAmazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026
Source for the 40% Virtual Voice royalty, the $3.99–$14.99 list price range, Audible exclusivity for enrolled audiobooks, exclusivity running to the end of the 90-day term after an unpublish, and audiobooks not yet being eligible for Free Book Promotions or Countdown Deals.
Official help centre
Print OptionsAmazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Source for ink and paper options by binding and for minimum and maximum page counts by trim size. The minimums recorded here held at every US trim size listed.
Official help centre
Royalties EstimatorAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
States royalties are paid monthly about 60 days after the end of the month in which the sale was reported, and 90 days for Expanded Distribution — which conflicts with the Expanded Distribution page.
Official help centre
Royalties for ACX audiobooks in Kindle+Amazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026
Source for Kindle+ listening being paid from the KDP Select Global Fund and reported in KDP, while Audible, ALC and Audible Plus royalties stay separate and reported in ACX. Says nothing about how a royalty-share split with a narrator would work.
Official help centre
Royalties in Kindle+Amazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026
Previously titled Royalties in Kindle Unlimited. Source for earnings being measured in KENP across reading and listening, payment for the first read or listen of each page only, the higher rate applying when a page is read and listened to together, and the fund being set monthly.
Official help centre
Sales and Royalties ReportAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Defines Net Units Sold as units sold minus units refunded, “the basis of your royalty calculation”.
Official help centre
Self Publishing and KDP SelectAmazon KDP
Accessed 1 October 2026
Source for KDP Select exclusivity extending to the author’s own website and blog.
Official help centre
Start publishing with KDPAmazon KDP
Accessed 26 October 2026
Source for publishing on KDP costing nothing: “KDP allows you to self-publish eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcover books for free.”
Official help centre
TimelinesAmazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Source for how long a new or updated book takes to go live. The six-day figure for accounts without a previously published book sits in the paperback and hardcover section.
Official help centre
What file formats are supported for eBook manuscripts?Amazon KDP
Accessed 15 October 2026
Lists DOC/DOCX, KPF, EPUB and MOBI as the most common formats, with HTML, RTF, TXT and PDF (some languages only) also accepted. MOBI has not been accepted for fixed-layout ebooks since March 2025.
Official announcement
Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+, KDP audiobooks now includedAmazon KDP
Accessed 24 October 2026 · Effective 22 October 2026
Amazon's announcement of the rename, dated 22 October 2026. The page would not render outside a browser session on 2026-10-24, so its wording was read through press coverage quoting it; the facts recorded from it are limited to the date and the rename, and every term is cited to a KDP help page instead. Coverage also reports Amazon saying it is adding money to the fund for listening and is exploring eligibility for Royalty Share titles. Neither is recorded as a fact until it can be read at source.
Related
Publishing Database
Author Answer
Caveats
This is an informational reading of published documents, not legal advice, and it describes what Amazon KDP’s terms permit and require rather than what the company does in practice. Terms change without announcement. How this is assessed.