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Your page count is not just a design decision — it is the biggest single driver of your per-copy print cost and therefore your margin. At typical black-and-white rates a paperback costs roughly $0.85 fixed plus about $0.012 per page to print, so a 300-page book costs around $4.45 and a 500-page book around $6.85; full colour multiplies the per-page rate several times over. Because Amazon's 60% royalty is calculated on list price minus that print cost, page count quietly decides whether a price is profitable. This calculator takes your page count, list price and interior type and returns the print cost, your net on Amazon and your net via expanded distribution.
Every page costs money to print, and trim size and colour change the rate. Enter your page count, planned list price and interior type to see the per-copy print cost and what you actually net on Amazon.
Full-colour interiors typically run several times the black-and-white per-page rate — often $0.07 or more per page on top of a higher fixed cost. A 40-page colour children's book can therefore cost more to print than a 300-page text novel.
Amazon pays 60% of the list price minus printing cost for paperbacks sold on Amazon, and about 40% of list minus printing cost through expanded distribution to bookstores and libraries. That difference is why the same book nets less per copy off-Amazon.
Larger trims use more paper and often carry higher fixed and per-page rates, and they change how many words fit per page — which changes your page count. Standard 6x9 is the efficient default for text-heavy books.
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