Authors deserve every penny.

Traditional publishing has always been stacked against the writer. When an author signs with one of the Big Five publishers, they typically receive 10-15% of the list price on hardcovers, around 7.5% on paperbacks, and just 25% of net receipts on ebooks—which, after the retailer’s cut, can work out to as little as 12-17% of the cover price.

Advances have been shrinking for decades. Most first-time authors receive between $5,000 and $15,000—if they’re lucky enough to land a deal at all. Only about one in four books ever “earns out” its advance, meaning the vast majority of authors never see a single royalty check beyond that initial payment.

The result? According to the Authors Guild’s 2023 survey of nearly 6,000 writers, the median author earns just $2,000 a year from their books. A quarter of all authors reported earning nothing at all. Half of full-time authors make less than minimum wage from their writing.

When Amazon launched the Kindle and its Digital Text Platform in 2007, it seemed like a turning point. For the first time, any author could publish an ebook and reach millions of readers without a gatekeeper. In 2010, Amazon introduced a 70% royalty option—a direct response to Apple offering the same rate on iBooks.

But that 70% came with strings. It only applies to books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. There’s a delivery fee deducted per sale. Price your book outside that narrow window, and you drop to 35%. Want your book in Kindle Unlimited? You must give Amazon 90 days of exclusivity—meaning you can’t sell your own book on your own website.

Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription service, pays authors from a shared monthly pool based on pages read. A 300-page novel, read cover to cover, earns roughly $1.36. Amazon raised the subscription price for readers from $9.99 to $11.99, but per-page payouts to authors haven’t meaningfully increased.

In 2025, Amazon cut print royalties from 60% to 50% for books priced under $9.99. The trend is unmistakable: as Amazon’s market dominance has grown—they now control roughly 67% of U.S. ebook sales and over 80% when Kindle Unlimited is included—the author’s share keeps shrinking.

This isn’t just about Amazon. The entire publishing ecosystem is built on the assumption that the creator’s share should be the smallest. Publishers, distributors, retailers, and platform operators all take their cut first. The author gets what’s left.

In 2014, when Amazon slowed shipping and removed pre-order buttons for Hachette authors during a contract dispute, nearly 1,000 authors—including Stephen King, John Grisham, and Malcolm Gladwell—signed an open letter calling out Amazon’s “selective retaliation.” But nothing fundamentally changed. Authors remained dependent on a platform that could throttle their sales at will.

The Authors Guild reported a 42% decline in author earnings over the decade leading up to their 2018 survey. The flood of AI-generated content on platforms like Kindle Unlimited has only made things worse, diluting the already thin payout pool that legitimate authors depend on.

This project started at our kitchen table. My wife is an author. She’s lived through the full arc—from traditional publishing deals that paid 6% royalties, to the early promise of self-publishing on Amazon, to watching her share steadily erode as the platform took more and more.

We kept asking the same question: why does everyone else get paid before the person who actually wrote the book?

Author Direct is our answer. We don’t take a commission. We don’t take a percentage. Authors keep 100% of every sale. The only cost to the buyer is the transparent credit card processing fee (2.9% + $0.30), which we show as a separate line item—no hidden markups.

We didn’t build this to enrich ourselves. We built it because the people who pour their creativity, time, and soul into writing books deserve to be the ones who benefit from their work.

When you buy a book on Author Direct, your money goes directly to the author. Not to a corporate middleman. Not to subsidize same-day delivery on laundry detergent. To the person who wrote the words you’re about to read.

You also get a direct connection to the authors you love. No algorithm deciding what you should read next. No subscription tricks. Just readers and writers, the way it should be.

If authors keep 100%, how does Author Direct survive? We sustain the platform through advertising revenue. Authors and publishers can promote their books to interested readers. Readers discover new work. And the author’s royalty stays untouched.

It’s a simple idea: let the marketing subsidize the platform, so the creative work stays with the creator.