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Store costs

What a direct book store costs on Squarespace

Squarespace builds good-looking websites and can sell downloads and printed books. On its Basic plan it takes 2% of each store sale; from Core up it takes nothing, so busier stores pay for Core.

Three stores, three bills

The bill changes with how many books you have, which formats you sell and how much you sell. For each store we picked the cheapest Squarespace plan for those sales.

StoreSquarespace planSquarespace, a yearLanternbee, a year
Starting outSquarespace Basic$978$654
A growing backlistSquarespace Core$1,944$1,812
A busy storeSquarespace Core$5,952$5,820

Lanternbee shows the cheaper of Free and Author for each store. Both include card processing.

Starting out

3 titles, selling ebooks. About $500 in sales a month from 50 orders.

Monthly cost of a Squarespace book store: starting out
What you pay forPriceEach month
Squarespace BasicThe store itself$25 a month$25
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Squarespace feeOn $500 in sales2% of sales$10
Card processingSquarespace Payments on Basic and Core, on 50 orders2.9% + 30¢$29.50
Total each month$81.50
Total for a year$978
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee Free5% fee on $500 + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$54.50$654
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$74.50$894

A growing backlist

8 titles, selling ebooks and audiobooks. About $2,000 in sales a month from 160 orders.

Monthly cost of a Squarespace book store: a growing backlist
What you pay forPriceEach month
Squarespace CoreThe store itself$39 a month$39
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Card processingSquarespace Payments on Basic and Core, on 160 orders2.9% + 30¢$106
Total each month$162
Total for a year$1,944
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee FreeFree covers up to 5 titlesNot availableNot available
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$151$1,812

A busy store

20 titles, selling ebooks, audiobooks and print books. About $10,000 in sales a month from 500 orders.

Monthly cost of a Squarespace book store: a busy store
What you pay forPriceEach month
Squarespace CoreThe store itself$39 a month$39
An email toolNewsletter and automated emailsabout $17$17
Card processingSquarespace Payments on Basic and Core, on 500 orders2.9% + 30¢$440
Total each month$496
Total for a year$5,952
The same store on LanternbeeEach monthA year
Lanternbee FreeFree covers up to 5 titlesNot availableNot available
Lanternbee Author$45 a month + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢$485$5,820

What we counted

  • US prices on monthly billing.
  • An email tool for your newsletter, at about $17 a month, for every store, the same as on our pricing page. If the store's own email tools are enough for you, take that off.
  • Card processing on every sale. Lanternbee uses your own Stripe account, at Stripe's standard US rate.
  • Squarespace counts a download, such as an ebook file, as a store sale. Its higher 7% and 5% fees on Basic and Core apply to courses, member areas and video pages, not to downloads.
  • Each download can be at most 300 MB. A long audiobook in high quality can be larger than that, so you may need to split it or send it another way.
  • Paying a year ahead brings Basic down to $19 and Core to $29 a month.

What we left out

  • Printing and shipping costs, which you pay the printer whichever store you use.
  • Your domain name, a paid theme and any design work.
  • Sales tax and VAT themselves. Tax tools may cost extra, including Stripe Tax on your own Stripe account where you are registered to collect tax.
  • Extra card fees for cards from other countries and currency conversion.

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