What is KENP?
KENP stands for Kindle Edition Normalized Pages. When your ebook is in KDP Select, Amazon pays you for every page that Kindle Unlimited members read, instead of paying per borrow. To make books comparable, Amazon gives each title a standard page count called KENPC (Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count), worked out with fixed font, line spacing and layout. You can see your book’s KENPC on your KDP Bookshelf under “KDP Select info”. It is usually different from the print page count — a typical novel lands somewhere around 250 to 350 KENPC.
Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+
On October 22, 2026 Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+. For authors the payment model stays the same: ebook reading is still paid per KENP page from the KDP Select Global Fund. What is new is audiobooks — in the US, subscribers can now listen to enrolled audiobooks (Virtual Voice audiobooks of KDP Select ebooks join automatically; ACX audiobooks need exclusive Audible distribution, Whispersync for Voice and the Pay for Production model). Listening is also paid per page, a page pays only once per subscriber whether it is read or heard, and your KENP report now shows pages read and pages listened. Amazon says it is adding money to the fund for listening but has not said how much, so the effect on the per-page rate is not known yet. In this calculator, simply add pages listened to pages read.
How Kindle Unlimited pays authors
Every month Amazon sets a pot of money, the KDP Select Global Fund (about $62–68 million a month in 2026), and shares it out by pages read. The per-page rate is roughly the fund divided by all eligible pages read that month, so it moves up and down. Your KU royalty is simply:
KU royalty = KENP pages read × that month’s per-page rate
A few rules decide which pages count:
- A page is paid only the first time each customer reads it — re-reads earn nothing extra.
- Amazon pays at most 3,000 KENP per title per customer, which matters for long box sets.
- Each store has its own rate. Amazon.com is usually the highest; India, Brazil and Japan are much lower.
- Amazon announces the fund, not the per-page rate, so rates you see online are estimates from author trackers. Your KDP Reports page shows the final figure.
Recent KENP rates (Amazon.com)
| Month | Estimated rate per page | Per 1,000 pages |
|---|---|---|
| September 2026 | $0.00531–$0.00537 | about $5.34 |
| August 2026 | $0.00486–$0.00517 | about $5.00 |
| July 2026 | about $0.0048 | $4.80 |
| June 2026 | $0.004615 | $4.62 |
| May 2026 | $0.004888 | $4.89 |
| April 2026 | $0.004820 | $4.82 |
| March 2026 | $0.004692 | $4.69 |
| February 2026 | $0.004689 | $4.69 |
| January 2026 | $0.004202 | $4.20 |
| December 2025 | $0.004800 | $4.80 |
| November 2025 | $0.004749 | $4.75 |
| October 2025 | $0.005007 | $5.01 |
Estimates from Written Word Media, KENPiQ, TrueRoyalties and KDPcalc (checked October 2026). Where the trackers disagree, the range is shown. For July 2026 one tracker lists $0.004221; the others list about $0.0048.
Example: is a KU read worth as much as a sale?
Take a romance novel with a KENPC of 330, priced at $4.99 with a 1.2 MB file. At the September 2026 rate of about $0.00534, one reader who finishes the book earns you 330 × $0.00534 ≈ $1.76. A sale on Amazon.com pays 70% of $4.99 minus $0.18 delivery, about $3.31. So a full read is worth about 53% of a sale, and you need about 620 pages read to match one sale.
The balance changes with length and price. A 720-page fantasy at $5.99 earns about $3.84 per full read — roughly the same as a sale — while a 160-page guide at $9.99 earns only $0.85 per read against $6.09 per sale. That is why long fiction often does well in Kindle Unlimited, and short, higher-priced nonfiction usually earns more from sales.
How a series multiplies KU income
Kindle Unlimited readers can move to the next book at no extra cost, so read-through matters a lot. If 900 readers borrow book 1 of a five-book series each month, read 80% of each 330-page book and 65% move on to each next book, the calculator shows about $3,200 a month at the September 2026 rate — over double what book 1 earns alone. Raising read-through, for example with a strong ending and a link to the next book, often adds more than a higher page count.
KDP Select basics
- Enrolment lasts 90 days and renews automatically unless you untick it.
- While enrolled, the ebook must be exclusive to Amazon. Paperbacks, hardcovers and audiobooks can still be sold anywhere.
- You also get promotion tools for each 90-day term: Kindle Countdown Deals or free book days.
- Ebook sales keep their normal royalty: on Amazon.com, 70% for prices from $2.99 to $12.99 (the upper limit rose from $9.99 on July 7, 2026), minus $0.15 per MB delivery, otherwise 35%.
For paperback, hardcover and ebook royalties together, use the KDP royalty calculator. To price a print edition, see the KDP print cost calculator, and size your cover with the book cover size calculator.