Kindle Unlimited or wide: how to decide with numbers

By Daniel Rahl Jackson · Updated 20 October 2026

The choice comes down to one comparison: is the money you earn from Kindle Unlimited page reads bigger than what you would earn by also selling on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble and library services? The calculator does the arithmetic for you.

How Kindle Unlimited pays

Each month Amazon sets a KDP Select Global Fund and divides it among authors by share of pages read. The fund was about $66 million in August 2026. The resulting rate per page in the US has recently ranged from about $0.0042 to $0.0050, and Amazon only announces it after the month ends. A reader can generate at most 3,000 pages per title. In exchange, the ebook must be sold only on Amazon for each 90-day enrolment period.

What going wide gives you

Outside Amazon, ebook stores pay about 70% of the list price, and libraries pay through distributors such as Draft2Digital or Kobo. Wide sales tend to grow slowly: many authors report that it takes several books and a year or more for other stores to reach a meaningful share of their Amazon income.

A simple rule of thumb

Divide your monthly page-read income by what one sale on another store pays you. That's how many non-Amazon sales a month you need to replace Kindle Unlimited. If you earn $90 a month from page reads on a $4.99 book, you need about 26 sales a month across other stores to break even, because each pays about $3.49.

Genre matters

Kindle Unlimited readers are concentrated in genres where people read fast and a lot: romance, thrillers, fantasy and science fiction. Literary fiction, non-fiction and books bought as gifts tend to do relatively better wide. The World Book Index can show you which genres are charting outside Amazon in different countries.

You don't have to choose once

Enrolment lasts 90 days at a time and can be ended by turning off auto-renewal, and it applies only to ebooks. Paperbacks, hardcovers and audiobooks can be sold everywhere either way. Some authors keep a new series in Kindle Unlimited for the launch and go wide later.