Laterpress Review: Better Than Amazon KDP?

About this video

Dale reviews Later Press as an alternative to Amazon KDP for selling ebooks directly to readers through a dedicated landing page and personalized storefront, with no exclusivity. Its headline draw is direct reader access: buyers can join the author’s email list, so the author owns the reader relationship rather than having data hidden by a retailer. On royalties, if a reader arrives via a link the author controls, the author keeps 100% of the sale minus Stripe’s processing fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents, so a $5 book nets about $4.56 versus about $3.50 on KDP’s 70% plan before delivery fees; if another author refers the sale, that author gets 5%, Later Press takes 10% and the author keeps 85%, and if the platform drives the sale Later Press takes 10%. He credits the published Author Constitution governance framework with preventing unilateral ad, fee or paywall changes without the user base. He then publishes his roughly 39,000-word book YouTube for Authors step by step: uploading a cover, title, genre, optional ISBN and a description of up to 5,000 characters, importing an EPUB, optionally letting readers download it, setting a permanent website URL, price and a free preview of about 10%. Cleanup took him roughly 90 minutes, and his front matter was stripped during upload, so he urges previewing on desktop before going live; publishing itself was instant with no review process. Live features include monthly subscriptions, scheduled chapter publishing and preview unlock timers, with audiobooks, a mobile app and a teased community feature in development. Drawbacks: there is no native marketplace to bring readers, and it does not support print or fixed-layout formats or discount codes yet.

Key takeaways

• Authors keep 100% of sales from their own links on Later Press, minus only Stripe’s 2.9% plus 30 cents fee; a $5 book nets about $4.56 versus about $3.50 on KDP’s 70% plan.
• Buyers can join the author’s email list at purchase, giving authors direct reader access that Dale says Amazon and other retailers withhold.
• Referral sales split differently: the referring author gets 5%, Later Press takes 10% and the book’s author keeps 85%.
• Publishing Dale’s roughly 39,000-word book took about 90 minutes of cleanup, his front matter was stripped on upload, and there is no review delay once published.
• Later Press has no native marketplace and no print or fixed-layout support yet, so authors must drive their own traffic.

Episode details: published July 31, 2025 · 15:44 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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