Kindle Unlimited per-page rate: September 2026 paid about half a cent a page

On 15 October 2026 Amazon announced on the KDP Community forum that KDP authors earned $69.3 million from Kindle Unlimited in September 2026. The KDP Select Global Fund was $65.9 million and the All Stars bonus was $3.4 million. Amazon does not publish a per-page rate, so the figure authors care about has to be worked out. Written Word Media, which divides author royalties by pages read in its own reports, puts the US rate for September at $0.005365 a page, the highest in its 2026 table.

That is about half a cent a page. A book with a 300-page KENPC read from cover to cover earned roughly $1.61 in September. The same book earned about $1.55 in August and $1.27 in July. If you are deciding between KDP Select and going wide for a given title, that swing matters more than the headline fund size.

The last six months

The fund figures below are Amazon's, taken from its monthly forum posts. The per-page rates are Written Word Media's calculations, which Amazon neither confirms nor disputes. Your own rate will differ by marketplace, because each Amazon store is paid from its own share of the fund, so check the KENP report for Amazon.co.uk separately if most of your readers are there.

Two things stand out. The fund barely moves: $4 million separates the best and worst month, and the All Stars bonus has sat at $3.4 million all year. The rate moves a lot more, because it depends on how many pages subscribers read. July had the biggest fund of the six and the lowest rate, which is the summer reading surge spreading the same money across more pages. September had a smaller fund and the best rate, because pages read fell back.

What a page is

Amazon pays on Kindle Edition Normalized Pages, not on the page count of your paperback. Every ebook gets a KENPC, a normalised count that adjusts for font and formatting so that a 300-page paperback and the same text set in a larger font pay the same. You can see your book's KENPC on the KDP Bookshelf. Amazon pays once per page per subscriber: if a reader finishes your book, you are paid for every page; if they stop at page 80, you are paid for 80. Re-reads do not pay.

So the arithmetic for your own book is your KENPC multiplied by the month's rate, multiplied by how far readers get. A 420-page KENPC thriller read to the end earned about $2.25 in September. A 180-page novella earned about $0.97.

A read against a sale

A $4.99 ebook on the 70% option pays 70% of the price after a delivery fee of about $0.15 for a 1MB file, so about $3.39 a sale. At September's rate you need roughly 630 pages read to match one sale, which for a 300-page book is a little over two complete reads. At July's rate you needed about 800 pages, closer to three reads. If your book is priced at $2.99, where a sale pays about $1.99, one full read at the September rate gets you most of the way there, which is why Select suits shorter, cheaper, series-led books better than long standalones priced higher. Our piece on KDP Select or going wide, book by book goes through that decision.

The Kindle+ change that will show up next month

On 21 October 2026 Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+ and put audiobooks into the subscription for US customers, both audiobooks with virtual voice and eligible ACX titles. Its announcement says listening is paid by page from the same KDP Select Global Fund and that Amazon is adding money to the fund to cover it. It also says a page is paid once whether it is read or listened to, and that Immersive Reading pays at the higher of the two rates if they ever differ.

The October fund, due in mid-November, is the first that will include listening pages. If the extra money matches the extra pages, the ebook rate holds. If it does not, the rate drops and the table above becomes the benchmark to compare against. Amazon's reporting FAQ of 31 October also explains why some authors in the virtual voice beta saw their historic KENP totals fall: Audible Plus listening used to be counted in the KENP report and has now been moved out of it, including for past months.

What to do

1. Open your KENP report and filter by format. Note your pages read for September and compare them with your Prior Months' Royalties figure. Your own effective rate is one divided by the other.
2. Write down your KENPC for each title in Select. Multiply by $0.0054 for a quick view of what a full read is worth this month.
3. For each book, compare that figure with your royalty on a sale at your current price. If a sale is worth more than three full reads and your read-through is low, the book is a candidate for going wide at its next 90-day renewal.
4. Put 15 November in your diary for the October fund announcement. That is the first month with Kindle+ listening in the pool.

Books in Select cannot be sold as ebooks anywhere else, including your own site, so the direct channel is only open to titles you take wide. If you do that, the Indie Author Toolchest sells the ebook and paperback from your own author page with you as the seller, which is the one channel where the rate does not change every month. Our breakdown of what you keep on a £4.99 ebook sold direct has the numbers for that side of the comparison.