Best digital products to sell on Amazon, and where else to go

The best digital products to sell on Amazon are the ones Amazon has a program for: Kindle ebooks, print-on-demand books (including low-content journals and logbooks) and audiobooks. Amazon has no general download shop for templates, printables or courses. Those belong on a platform like Gumroad, and Amazon can carry a book version of the same idea.

Upfront work: roughly 15 to 40 hours for a short guide or a simple journal, covering the interior, the cover, formatting and the listing. A full nonfiction book takes much longer.

Ongoing work: a few hours a month for promotion, price checks and the occasional update. More if you run ads or answer buyer emails.

What Amazon will actually let you sell

Many lists online make Amazon sound like Etsy with a bigger audience. It isn’t. Every digital product on Amazon goes through a specific program, and each program has its own rules.

Ebooks go through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Paperbacks and hardcovers, including journals, planners and logbooks, also go through KDP as print-on-demand. Audiobooks go through ACX, or through KDP’s AI-narrated Virtual Voice if you’re invited. Apps go through the Amazon Appstore, but since August 20, 2025 it only runs on Fire TV and Fire tablets, not Android phones.

Some things that often show up on these lists don’t fit. Music goes through outside distributors such as TuneCore. Courses only work once you turn them into a book or an audiobook. Kindle Vella, the serial fiction program, closed on February 26, 2025. Merch on Demand prints physical products, a different kind of work that’s covered in print on demand vs digital products.

Product ideas that sell

Small, specific products suit this kind of work best.

• A narrow how-to ebook, such as a plain guide to keeping a sourdough starter alive through its first month. Kindle readers with that one problem buy it.
• A logbook for a specific hobby or trade, such as a plant-watering journal, a beehive inspection log or a small-engine maintenance record. Hobbyists buy these for themselves, and gift buyers pick them up for someone they know.
• A guided workbook based on something you already teach. Prompts and exercises count as real content, so it can be both an ebook and a paperback. Students and readers who want structure buy these.
• A themed puzzle book, such as gardening word searches for retirees, often bought as a gift by family. KDP doesn’t treat puzzle and coloring books as low-content books, so the normal book rules apply.
• Editable templates (spreadsheets, Notion pages, digital planners) for people who’d rather fill in a file than paper. Sell these off Amazon and keep a printed version on KDP.

For more starting points, see small AI business ideas for digital products.

The quiet math of a Kindle ebook

KDP has two ebook royalty options: 35% of the list price, or 70% after delivery costs. Since July 7, 2026, the 70% band on Amazon.com runs from $2.99 to $12.99. Before that, it stopped at $9.99. If you priced an older book at $9.99 to stay inside the old band, you’ll need to reprice it yourself to use the higher ceiling.

Here’s a worked example: a 2 MB ebook priced at $12.99. Delivery on Amazon.com costs $0.15 per MB, which comes to $0.30. Seventy percent of the remaining $12.69 is about $8.88 per sale. At 35%, the same book would earn about $4.55.

There are two conditions to keep in mind. To get 70%, your ebook must be priced at least 20% below any print edition on Amazon. And if Amazon’s price-matching pushes your price below the 70% minimum, your royalty drops to 35%.

Print books, and the one-cent lesson

On Amazon.com, paperbacks earn 60% of the list price at $9.99 or more, and 50% at $9.98 or less. KDP then subtracts the printing cost.

Take a 120-page black-ink logbook. On KDP’s US printing cost table, that’s $1.00 plus $0.012 per page, so $2.44.

• At $9.99: 60% is $5.99, minus $2.44, leaves about $3.55.
• At $9.98: 50% is $4.99, minus $2.44, leaves about $2.55.

One cent off the price costs you a dollar per copy. It’s worth looking at every print price with that in mind.

Low-content books have their own limits. They’re print-only, with no ebook version. They don’t need an ISBN, but they can’t use KDP’s free one. They also can’t use Expanded Distribution, join a series or have a scheduled release date.

Audiobooks and the AI formats

ACX moved to a new royalty model on May 26, 2026. It pays 50% if your audiobook is exclusive and 30% if it isn’t. That share comes from a pooled “Member Value” that Audible divides up based on listening, not from a fixed cut of each sale. The old model ends at the end of 2026. If you go exclusive, your audiobook is limited to Audible, Amazon and Apple Books, and Audible holds distribution rights for seven years.

Virtual Voice is invite-only and US-only. It pays 40%, with prices from $3.99 to $14.99. Kindle Translate is a free beta that translates between English and Spanish, German, French, Italian or Portuguese, and translated titles carry a label in the store.

Where to sell

Using Gumroad’s pricing, a $12 template earns you about $10.30 when the buyer comes through your own link, and $8.40 when the sale comes through Discover. Gumroad has been the merchant of record since January 1, 2025, so it collects and pays sales tax on your sales.

Amazon gives you reach, but it controls the shelf. Gumroad gives you the customer relationship, but you bring the visitors. Etsy is another common home for printables. Check its current fee page before you set a price there.

Pricing tiers

These are suggestions, shaped by the royalty rules above.

• Good: a short Kindle ebook at $4.99, inside the 70% band.
• Better: a paperback workbook at $16.99 with its ebook edition at $12.99. The paperback earns the 60% rate, and the ebook sits more than 20% below it, so it still qualifies for 70%.
• Bundle: editable templates and printable PDFs on Gumroad, sold as one package.

A word of caution about the bundle. KDP Select, which gets you Kindle Unlimited, Countdown Deals and free promotions, requires digital exclusivity, and that includes your own website. If your Gumroad bundle includes the ebook, that ebook can’t be in Select. Print editions aren’t affected. Enrollment lasts 90 days and renews automatically.

The rules worth reading twice

KDP’s content guidelines require you to disclose AI-generated text, images or translations, even if you edited the output heavily. Work you wrote yourself and only polished with AI counts as “AI-assisted” and doesn’t need disclosure. If AI tools are part of your process, this honest look at ChatGPT and Canva is a useful companion.

Check the license for every font, stock image and piece of AI art you use. Some aren’t licensed for commercial products, or for embedding in files you sell. If an AI tool made your cover, read that tool’s commercial-use terms before you publish.

Amazon won’t accept plain copies of public-domain books when a free version is already in the store. Skip PLR packs and any other content you don’t clearly have the rights to sell.

There’s also a slower pace now. Since September 21, 2026, KDP allows 2 new titles per format per week, down from 10. Ebook, paperback and hardcover each count separately, and the limit resets on Sunday at 12:00 AM UTC.

The not-so-passive part

Amazon can change royalty terms with 30 days’ notice. It can also remove a book that breaks its rules, and the royalties go with it. Your ACX income now depends partly on how much people listen across all of Audible.

A new title with no readers stays quiet. Most of your ongoing work is getting it in front of people, through a newsletter, a little social posting or maybe ads. You’ll also fix typos, refresh covers and answer buyer questions. Passive income streams, explained for digital makers goes into this side more fully.

Royalties arrive monthly, about 60 days after the end of the month of the sale. There’s no minimum payout for direct deposit.

Taxes and scams, briefly

KDP sends a Form 1099-MISC by January 31 if your royalties across all Amazon businesses passed $10. Self-employed writers report royalties on Schedule C. The IRS charges 15.3% self-employment tax, and you have to file Schedule SE once your net earnings reach $400. Gumroad collecting sales tax doesn’t change any of this. This is general information, not tax advice, so an hour with a tax professional is time well spent.

KDP is free to join. It never charges for editing or design, and it never asks for your password. In February 2025, a court awarded Amazon $36.4 million against people who had posed as KDP and charged authors for publishing services. Authors have also reported emails claiming their account was terminated and asking for around $3,000 to restore it. Ignore them, and trust only kdp.amazon.com, kdp.amazon.co.jp and kdpcommunity.com.

Ship a tiny version

This week, choose one logbook for a hobby you know well. Keep it between 24 and 110 pages, where black-ink printing is a flat $2.30. At $9.99, that leaves you about $3.69 per copy.

Design a clean interior with fonts you’re licensed to use. Make a simple cover, upload it to KDP as a low-content book (no ISBN needed) and set the price at $9.99.

Then put a one-page printable sample on Gumroad with a link to the book. That’s enough for a first small product, and a quiet start you can build on.