Selling books directly to readers
Sell a copy through a store and the store keeps a large share of the price, tells you almost nothing about who bought it, and owns the relationship from then on. Sell the same copy from your own site and you keep most of the money and you know who the reader is.
That second part is the one that compounds. A store gives you a sale. A direct sale gives you a sale and an email address, and the email address is what makes the next book easier to launch than this one was.
Everything else about direct selling is work, and the work is the subject of this page.
What you are taking on
The software is often free or cheap. The obligations are not.
A storefront. Somewhere a reader can see the book, choose a format and pay. That is a page, a product record, cover images, descriptions and prices, and it has to keep working while you are writing the next book.
Payment handling. A payment processor means an account, identity verification, a payout schedule and a settlement delay. Card payments carry fees and chargebacks — a reader disputes a charge and you lose the money and usually a fee on top.
Tax. This is the part authors underestimate. What you owe, whether you must register, and whether you must collect tax from the buyer all vary by your country, by the buyer's country, and by what you are selling. Digital goods in particular are taxed by many jurisdictions according to where the buyer is, not where you are, with thresholds that can be very low or absent entirely. Physical goods have their own rules, and cross-border shipments add customs. Some selling platforms take that obligation on as the merchant of record; some leave it entirely with you. Find out which you are using, and check your own country's rules with someone qualified rather than with a forum post.
Delivery. Files have to reach the buyer, reliably, at two in the morning, without you. Physical books have to be packed and posted.
Support. Someone's download link expired. Someone's parcel never arrived. Someone bought the wrong format. Every one is your inbox now — the recurring cost people forget when they compare the two royalty numbers.
Selling ebooks direct
Mechanically this is the easier half: it is a file-delivery problem wrapped in a tax problem.
You need a delivery system that issues a unique, expiring link rather than a public URL, and that can reissue one when a reader loses it. You need to decide which formats you supply — an EPUB covers most readers and devices, and some buyers will need instructions for getting it onto a particular device.
You are also competing against friction. A reader who already has a store account buys with one tap. On your site they type an email address and card details, then work out how to get the file onto their reader. Every step there loses people, and no amount of margin per sale rescues a checkout that readers abandon.
In the tools. Direct sales need the same files as everything else: an EPUB that validates cleanly, a print-ready PDF, and a cover at ebook size from the same design as the paperback. Mockups give you the product images a storefront needs for a book that only exists as files. Start a book → · about the tools
Selling print direct
This is a different business, and worth being clear about before you start.
Holding stock means ordering copies at author cost, storing them, and shipping them yourself. You have money tied up in boxes, you are packing and posting, and postage — especially international — costs more than most authors assume. What you get is control: you can sign them, include something extra, and make the parcel part of the experience.
Using a print service that ships for you removes the boxes and the post office. You send an order, they print and mail it. What you give up is margin, most of the personal touch, and the ability to sign anything.
Either way, print direct usually earns less per copy than the ebook version of this and involves far more handling. Do it for the copies where the handling is the point.
What direct is good for
- Signed and personalized copies. Nobody else can sell these. It is the clearest reason a reader has to buy from you rather than from a store.
- Bundles and box sets. Ebook plus print, or a whole series in one purchase, priced in ways stores make awkward.
- Early or special editions. Selling a week ahead of general release, or a hardcover edition that exists nowhere else.
- Backlist. Readers who have just finished book four will happily buy one through three from you in one transaction.
- Readers who want to support you. Some people actively prefer the author to keep the money, and they will take the extra steps if you tell them the option exists.
What direct is bad at
Discovery. This is not a small caveat.
Nobody browses your website. Stores are where people go when they do not yet know what they want to read, and their recommendation systems put books in front of readers who have never heard of you. Your site only sells to people you already reached somehow — through a newsletter, a social account, a podcast, a back-matter link in another book.
Which means direct selling does not replace an audience. It monetizes one. If you have no list and no following, a storefront is a page nobody visits, and the effort is better spent on The newsletter, and what to give people for joining and on the channels in Going wide, or staying exclusive.
The honest position
For most authors, direct is a supplement: a place for signed copies, bundles and superfans, running alongside the stores that do the discovery.
For authors with an established audience — a large list, a series with committed readers — it can become the main channel, and at that scale the extra margin is worth the operation it requires.
Start small: sell one thing direct, learn what breaks, and add to it only when the first thing runs without you.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Getting into libraries and bookstores · More: Pricing a self-published book · The author website, reduced to what it needs · EPUB and print PDF are two different books