How to Sell Workbooks and Activity Books on Etsy, Amazon KDP and Gumroad

Workbook format and price planner

Choose the kind of workbook, what it covers and who it is for, then set a printable price and a paperback size. The planner works out what one sale keeps on each store at your printable price, what Amazon charges to print the paperback and what a copy pays, the KDP settings that apply to this kind of book, the files an Etsy listing should carry, and a listing title and tags. It runs in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere until you press Write this workbook.

What a workbook pays per sale

A printable keeps most of its price, and a paperback keeps what is left after Amazon's share and the printing. That is the one-line answer; the tables below give the exact figures. How much a workbook earns in total is the price times the copies sold, and the copies sold is the part nobody can give you. Inkfluence AI sees that a workbook was sent to Etsy or Gumroad from the app. Neither store tells us what sold, so we do not quote income.

A printable: what you keep from one sale, by store

Take-home per sale in US dollars at three prices, with each store's fees as published on 24 September 2026, before sales tax and before anything you spend on ads.

How each row is worked out. Etsy: $0.20 to renew the listing after each sale, a 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing of 3% + $0.25 for a US shop (Fees & Payments Policy, last updated 13 February 2026; Etsy Payments Policy, last updated 31 July 2026; a UK shop pays 4% + £0.20). Gumroad: 10% + $0.50 on sales through your own profile or links, plus card processing of 2.9% + $0.30, or a flat 30% including processing on sales from its Discover marketplace (Gumroad's fees, pricing page); once your paid sales pass $20,000 in a calendar month, new direct sales that month pay 5% + $0.50. Your own site: Stripe's standard card rate of 2.9% + $0.30 (Stripe pricing). All read on 24 September 2026. Fees change: check the store's page before you set a price.

Fixed fees weigh most on cheap printables. At $4.99, Gumroad's fees and card processing come to $1.44, 80 cents of it fixed whatever the price, and a Gumroad sale keeps $3.55 against $4.07 on Etsy. At $19.99 the two are close ($17.64 and $16.61). That is why small activity printables tend to live on Etsy and bigger course workbooks on Gumroad: the fee structure and the buyers point the same way.

A paperback: what one copy pays on Amazon.com

KDP pays 60% of the list price from $9.99 on Amazon.com and 50% at $9.98 and below, minus the printing cost (Paperback Royalty). Printing depends on the ink, the page count and the trim: anything wider than 6.12 inches or taller than 9 inches counts as a large trim, which covers the usual workbook sizes of 8.5 x 11 and 7 x 10 inches (Printing Cost). A black-ink large-trim book of 24 to 110 pages costs a flat $2.84 to print; above that, $1.00 plus $0.017 a page.

Two things stand out. The lowest price KDP will accept for this book is $5.68, the printing cost divided by the 50% rate, and a price just under $9.99 pays far less than one at $9.99: $1.16 at $7.99 against $3.15. And page count is free up to 110 pages in black ink, so a workbook with generous writing space costs no more to print than a thin one. KDP rounds an odd page count up to an even one and sets the minimum list price for you as you type.

Worked examples (examples, not forecasts)

One more example worth knowing: a 120-page planner at 6 x 9 inches, a regular trim, costs $1.00 + 120 x $0.012 = $2.44 to print and pays $4.75 at $11.99. Smaller trims print cheaper per page, which is one reason planners and journals so often come at 6 x 9. For every price from $0.99 up, our guide to KDP royalties in 2026 sets out the ebook and paperback rates.

What goes on the other side of the ledger

• Your time. Writing is the quick part. Doing every exercise yourself, writing the answer key, laying the pages out for handwriting and photographing a filled-in copy is most of a day for a short workbook.
• Proof copies. Order a paperback proof before you publish and write in it with the pens your buyers will use. A proof costs the printing price plus shipping.
• Listing fees and ads. Etsy charges $0.20 per listing and renews it every four months if automatic renewal is on. Etsy's Offsite Ads charge 15% of an order they bring for shops under $10,000 in yearly sales (you can opt out) and 12%, compulsory, from $10,000. Amazon and Etsy ads are optional and paid as you go.
• The tool. On Inkfluence AI the free plan writes up to five chapters a book and exports a PDF. For a workbook you charge for you will likely want Creator ($9.99 a month) or Premium ($19.99): they remove the footer credit and closing page, add the KDP package, EPUB and DOCX, and send books to Etsy and Gumroad from the Publish window.
• Tax. Gumroad collects and pays sales tax as the merchant of record, Etsy collects it where it is required to (including VAT on digital downloads in some countries), and Amazon handles its own sales. Your income is still yours to report.

Where to sell workbooks and printables

The best platform is the one where your buyer already is: Etsy for buyers who search, Amazon for buyers who want a printed book, Gumroad or your own site for buyers who already know you. The fee differences above matter less than whether anyone sees the workbook at all.

Gumroad: workbooks for people who already know you

Gumroad turns a link into a checkout and a download and handles the sales tax. It is where most workbooks made on Inkfluence AI are listed (see the data below), and it fits the buyer of a coaching or course workbook: someone who found you through your videos, newsletter or classes and wants the exercises that go with them. On Creator or Premium, the book's Publish window has a Sell on Gumroad tab: connect your account, use Auto-fill with AI for the description and summary, set the price (the box starts at $9.99; 0 makes it free) and publish. The app sends the EPUB and the cover. A fill-in workbook needs the PDF, so add your US Letter and A4 PDFs to the product on Gumroad afterwards. The Gumroad selling guide covers each screen.

Your own site and in person

A card payment link on your own site keeps the most per sale, $19.11 of $19.99, and brings no buyers of its own; you deliver the PDF, handle refunds and work out the sales tax or VAT on digital goods. It suits a coach who sends clients a workbook before the first session, or a school selling a revision pack to parents. A paperback also sells by hand: KDP sells you author copies at the printing cost plus shipping, so a 100-page 8.5 x 11 workbook costs you $2.84 a copy to hand out at a workshop or sell at a fair.

Selling a workbook on Amazon KDP: a paperback, not a Kindle ebook

On Amazon a fill-in workbook is a paperback. KDP's Guide to Kindle Content Quality says some books "are simply not well suited to the Kindle format", including "any kind of book where the main purpose is to allow the reader to write or color on the pages", names puzzle books, blank journals, pattern books and coloring books, and warns they "may be rejected upon submission or removed from sale". The paperback is printed when someone orders it, so there is no stock to buy and nothing to post.

The same guide rules out one kind of workbook everywhere on Kindle: "Companion guides (including summaries, study guides, workbooks, analyses, and other related content based on other books) are not allowed, with limited exceptions for guides with positive reader engagement." KDP's Content Guidelines add that companion books based on copyrighted works may not be published outside the US without the copyright holder's written permission, and its Expanded Distribution distributors refuse paperbacks that summarise another published book without permission. A "workbook for" someone else's bestseller is the one workbook idea to drop before you start.

Is a workbook a low-content book on KDP?

A workbook that teaches is not; a planner or a prompt journal is. KDP's Low-Content Books page defines a low-content book as one with "minimal or no content on the interior pages", "generally repetitive, and designed to be filled in by the user", and says this "does not typically include activity books, such as puzzle books or coloring books". Its table puts notebooks, planners, diaries and journals, prompt journals, log books and coupon books in the low-content column, and novels, nonfiction, puzzle books, coloring books, manuals, textbooks and children's books in the column headed "Not Generally Low-Content". KDP adds that there can be exceptions. The word "workbook" does not appear in the table, so judge by the pages: explanation and exercises that differ from page to page read as nonfiction or a textbook; the same prompt and lines repeated for a year reads as a journal.

The practical difference is the sample and the series. A buyer judging an activity book wants to see the pages before paying, and the free ISBN turns the Look Inside sample on; volumes of a workbook series (book 1, book 2) can sit on one series page. A low-content planner published without an ISBN gets neither, so its detail page has to show the inside with A+ Content images. The printing and royalty sums are the same either way.

The rest of the KDP set-up for a workbook

Create a paperback on your KDP bookshelf. Title and subtitle should name the outcome and the reader ("The First $5k Month: A Pricing Workbook for Freelancers"). The description should say what the reader does on the pages, the page count, the size and whether there is room to write. For a children's activity book, set a reading age: KDP's help says a children's book without one may not appear in age-specific search. On the content page choose black ink and white paper unless the pages truly need colour, the trim you exported, and No bleed if nothing runs to the edge; upload the interior and the full wrap cover, answer the AI questions, check every page in the Print Previewer, and order a proof. KDP limits title creation to 2 per book format each week (Create a Book), which is plenty for a careful series and nowhere near enough for flooding a category. The KDP paperback guide goes through each screen.

On Inkfluence AI the KDP package (a print-ready interior PDF and a full wrap cover sized to the page count) comes with a paid plan or a credit pack. Choose the trim under Page Size & Content before you export: US Letter for 8.5 x 11, Workbook for 7 x 10, or Trade for 6 x 9.

Workbook, journal, planner or activity book: which are you selling?

Work out which one you have first, because the store, the KDP settings and the price all follow from it. A workbook teaches and then makes the reader practise; a prompt journal asks and leaves space; a planner repeats a layout; an activity book gives a child something different to do on every page. The price bands below are starting points worked out from length and use, not market data: before you settle on one, look at what three comparable listings charge on the store you picked.

The line between a guided workbook and a prompt journal is the one sellers most often get wrong. "Thirty days of gratitude" with the same three questions on every page is a prompt journal. "Thirty days of gratitude" where each day explains a different practice, gives an example and then asks the reader to try it is a workbook. If you make journals and planners too, the journal generator is built for them.

What kinds of workbooks and activity books sell?

The ones built for one buyer with one job to do. Nobody outside the stores can see sales, so be wary of any list of "best-selling printables" that quotes numbers without saying where they came from; what can be said is what makes a buyer pay for pages they could find free. Four things do most of the work.

• A named buyer and outcome. "Fractions practice for Year 3, with answers" and "A pricing workbook for freelancers" both tell the buyer in five words that it is for them. "A workbook" tells them nothing.
• Pages that differ. A child who has done the maze wants a different puzzle on the next page, and an adult wants the next exercise to build on the last. KDP's own quality guide rules out content "excessively reused, recycled, or repeated within or across books".
• Room to write, and answers that are right. Lines long enough for real handwriting, boxes big enough for a child's numbers, and an answer key that has been checked. A wrong answer in a maths worksheet turns into a review.
• A reason to buy the next one. Series sell each other: Pond Life, then Garden Birds, then Rock Pools, in the same layout; or a course workbook with a second volume for the advanced module.

Seasons help children's printables (back to school, holidays, summer holidays), and a problem the buyer has right now helps adult workbooks (a new job, a new baby, a diagnosis, a first client). For topic ideas with the demand evidence behind them, see our ebook ideas that sell; for the wider money question, making money selling AI ebooks and passive income from ebooks.

How much should you charge for a workbook?

Charge for what the workbook helps the buyer do, checked against three comparable listings on the same store. A children's activity printable is an afternoon of quiet; a pricing workbook for freelancers might change what they earn for a year. Those are different prices even at the same page count.

Three rules of thumb hold across stores. On Gumroad, price above the fixed fees: 80 cents a sale is a quarter of a $2.99 printable and 4% of a $19.99 workbook. On KDP, respect the $9.99 line: a paperback at $9.98 pays 50% and one at $9.99 pays 60%, with the same printing cost, so the extra cent is worth $1.00 a copy on the 100-page example above. Do not price from the default: many sellers never move off the number already in the price box, which is how the typical Gumroad price across products published through the app ended up sitting exactly on the app's starting price.

Bundles change the maths. Etsy charges its listing fee per listing, not per file, so a pack of three workbooks in one listing pays one renewal; a course workbook sold with the course is priced as part of the course. For a paperback, a longer book costs more to print only above 110 pages in black ink, so a 100-page workbook and a 60-page one print for the same $2.84 at 8.5 x 11.

How to make and sell a workbook, step by step

The route from an idea to a listing. The making steps are short here; the workbook video walkthrough shows them on screen, and the workbook generator page covers the format in detail.

1. 1. Pick the buyer and the outcome

   Write one sentence: who uses it, and what they can do at the end. Then search the store you plan to use and note the three workbooks that come up first: their price, their page count, and what their reviews complain about. Complaints about too little writing space, wrong answers or repeated pages are your brief.

2. 2. Decide printable, paperback or both, and price them

   Use the planner to see what a printable keeps and what a paperback pays at your page count before a word is written. If the paperback only works above $9.99, write a book that is worth $9.99.

3. 3. Start the book in the workbook format

   From the dashboard choose New Book, then Choose a book type, then the Workbook / planner tile ("Exercises, prompts, and action items"). The next screen asks "What will readers work through?": type the outcome and what readers will be doing on the page, or paste the planner's brief. The tile recommends eight chapters; the free plan writes up to five a book. Chapters come out with short guidance, labelled prompts such as Your Turn, Reflect and Apply It, fill-in lines and checklists.

4. 4. Edit the plan before it is written

   On the plan screen, rename chapters so each is one skill or one step, put them in the order the reader will work, and delete anything that does not serve the outcome. Changing the plan costs nothing; only writing uses your allowance.

5. 5. Do every exercise yourself

   This is the step that decides your reviews. Work through the book as the buyer would. Check every fact and every answer, make sure each exercise can be done with what the chapter taught, and write an answer key. Add your own examples, the ones only you know; a coach's real client story or a teacher's tried classroom game is what separates a workbook worth paying for from a free download.

6. 6. Lay it out for handwriting

   Open the export preview and choose Workbook in the Book Style row: it turns bullet lists into checkboxes, numbers steps in badges and boxes the prompts. Under All tools, then Insert, a Table makes a fill-in grid and a Page break puts a worksheet on a page of its own. Give each answer space more room than looks necessary; handwriting is bigger than type.

7. 7. Export the files each store needs

   Export the PDF twice, once in US Letter and once in A4, for Etsy, Gumroad or your own site; the PDF exports on every plan. For a paperback, export the KDP package at the trim you chose (US Letter, Workbook 7 x 10 or Trade 6 x 9); it comes with a paid plan or a credit pack, as do EPUB and DOCX. A PDF from the free plan carries a small "Made with Inkfluence AI" footer and a closing page, which a paid plan or credit pack removes.

8. 8. List it

   On Etsy, list a digital download with the two PDFs and the answer key, put the AI line in the description and choose the AI option under How it's made. On KDP, create a paperback, tick Low-content only for a planner or a prompt journal, set a reading age for a children's book, and order a proof. On Gumroad, attach the PDFs. On Creator or Premium, Publish then Sell on Etsy or Sell on Gumroad drafts the listing for you; add the PDFs on the store afterwards.

9. 9. Photograph a filled-in page, and keep improving it

   Show the buyer the book in use (next section). When a buyer reports a mistake, fix it, export again and replace the file on each store; on KDP, upload the corrected interior to the same book so the reviews stay with it.