Kindle Direct Publishing vs Smashwords

Platform for publishing own books in Amazon Kindle - the largest bookstore, which accepts wide range of categories (fiction, business, children's books, comics, romance, etc.). Amazon takes a 30% commission on book sales, or 65% if the book is not within the recommended price range. For paperback books, the commission of KDP is approximately 40% of the price after deducting printing costs. Publishing a book is quite simple and takes only a few minutes - for formatting the file and adding metadata/pricing. KDP provides authors with free and simple self-publishing tools, giving them control over their book's content, design, price, audience and advertising. Authors retain ownership of their content and can make changes to their book at any time. Authors can also participate in the Kindle Unlimited subscription server and receive royalties for every page read.

Smashwords is the world's largest distributor of indie ebooks. We make it fast, free and easy for any author or publisher, anywhere in the world, to publish and distribute ebooks to the major retailers. We provide free tools for marketing, distribution, metadata management and sales reporting. At Smashwords, our authors and publishers have complete control over the sampling, pricing and marketing of their written works.