Why I'm building Lanternbee

I’m Dario. I’m from Argentina, I lived in London for years, and now I live in Portugal. I write software for a living. For a long time that meant payments: who pays, who gets paid, who keeps the customer.

I also love reading. That’s what made me want to know more about the book industry, and how the money moves from a reader to the person who wrote the book.

So when I started talking to authors, one thing bothered me straight away. The author writes the book. Amazon sells it. And Amazon keeps the reader.

Amazon is great at selling. For Amazon.

I’m not going to pretend Amazon is bad for authors. It’s where most readers buy ebooks, and you should be there. But look at the deal.

If your ebook costs between $2.99 and $12.99, you get 70%, minus a delivery fee for the file size. Outside that range, you get 35%. If you want Kindle+ (it used to be Kindle Unlimited), you have to put the ebook in KDP Select, and then you can’t sell it anywhere else for 90 days. Not even on your own website.

And the money is not the only thing. Most authors I talk to already have an audience. A newsletter, a Facebook group, TikTok, Instagram. They worked years for it, and it’s the best thing they have. But look at launch day. You send all those readers to Amazon. They buy there, and Amazon keeps the sale and the customer, and shows them ten other books next to yours. You found the reader, and you still don’t know which of them bought. That’s crazy to me. If you already have the audience, the sale should happen in your own store.

So you try Shopify

A lot of authors I talk to decide to sell direct, and they go to Shopify. I understand why. It’s a good product. But it was made to sell t-shirts, not books.

Shopify Basic is $39 a month, or $29 if you pay for the year. It doesn’t deliver ebooks or audiobooks, so you install an app for that. Then another app for bundles. Another for reviews. Another for print on demand. A normal setup ends up around $94 a month, and you still haven’t sold one book.

Then every app has its own settings and its own support. A box set becomes a project. A reader who already bought book one pays full price for the bundle, because the apps don’t talk to each other. Many authors end up paying someone to keep it working. I don’t think an author should need a technical person to sell an ebook.

What I’m building

Lanternbee is a store for authors. Only for authors. You add a book once, and the ebook, audiobook, paperback and hardcover are on the same page. The reader pays you, through your own Stripe account. Lanternbee takes no fee on your sales. And every buyer’s email is yours.

The reader gets the download links by email the moment they pay, and can send the ebook to their Kindle. If they already own one book of a bundle, they pay less for the rest. Signed copies, pre-orders and campaigns are already there. If you are on Shopify now, the importer brings your books, readers, orders and old links.

You don’t have to leave Amazon. Keep your books there. Your own store is for the readers who already know you, so they can buy from you directly.

The price

Free for up to 3 books. The Author plan is $39 a month, or $29 a month paid yearly, for all your books. Stripe charges its card fees on both, like anywhere else. Everything is on the pricing page.

What is not ready

I prefer to say this now. Sending print orders to the printer is not built yet. Today you can sell the paperbacks and hardcovers you have at home, ship them yourself, and Lanternbee prints the packing slips.

On Lanternbee you are the seller. Stripe Tax calculates the tax at checkout, but you report it and pay it. I’m an engineer, not an accountant, so I won’t tell you what to do with your taxes.

Your books also appear on Lanternbee Books, our new site for readers. It’s new, so I can’t promise it brings you anyone yet. Your own store won’t find readers by itself either. You bring them, and Lanternbee makes sure they stay yours.

Where we are

Lanternbee isn’t open yet. I’m letting authors in from the waitlist, a few at a time, because I want to talk to each one. It’s just me for now, a sole trader in Portugal. If you write through the contact form, I’m the one who answers. And if you want to see what readers see, have a look at books.lanternbee.com.

I’ll write here about what I learn along the way. The good and the bad.

Join the waitlist if you want in.