What authors ask us

No. Keep your books on Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo and anywhere else. Your store sits next to them, for readers who would rather buy from you. One thing to check: an ebook in Kindle+ (until October 2026 called Kindle Unlimited) has to be exclusive to Amazon, so you cannot sell that ebook direct. Its paperback and audiobook are not affected.

Any book you have the rights to: novels, memoirs, how-to guides, cookbooks, workbooks, children’s books, poetry, comics. Sell each one as an ebook, an audiobook, a paperback or a hardback, or all four.

Not on its own. Your published books are listed on Lanternbee Books, our new reader site, but it is new and we can’t promise it will bring you readers yet. Most readers will find you through your newsletter, your back matter, your ads and word of mouth. Once they arrive, Lanternbee makes buying easy and puts every buyer on your reader list.

Lanternbee Books, at books.lanternbee.com, is our new reader site. Your published books are listed there by genre, with new releases and pre-orders, and the Buy from the author button takes readers to your own store, so you make the sale. It is new, so we can’t promise it will bring you readers yet. It is free on every plan, and you can switch it off for your whole store or hide a single book.

Right after they pay, readers get an email with their download links. An ebook opens in their browser, goes to their Kindle, or onto a Kobo or any reading app, and audiobooks play on any phone or computer. If the email goes missing, they sign in to their library and get the links again.

Yes. Put any books together: a trilogy box set, say, or a cookbook with its workbook. Readers who already own one of the books pay less for the rest.

Two ways. With your AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini), there is nothing to install in Shopify: it reads your store through Shopify’s own connection and recreates your books, formats, prices, series and discount codes, and you check each step in the chat. It can’t bring readers, past orders or old links. With the Lanternbee importer, you approve read-only access in Shopify (Shopify adds the Lanternbee app to your store, and you can remove it afterwards), and it brings everything at once, readers, purchases, orders, discount codes and old links included, with a preview first. Have readers and past orders you want to keep? Use the importer. Just want your books over? Use your assistant. Either way, Shopify keeps selling until you point your shop address at Lanternbee. Old links keep working once your old shop address points to your Lanternbee store. Addresses without www need path forwarding turned on at your domain provider.

Yes. Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini to your store and ask in your own words: add a book, set a price, make a discount code, or tell you what sold last month. It shows you a preview and asks before it publishes, changes a live price or deletes anything. Stripe, billing, your team and your web address stay with you, and you can disconnect it at any time.

No. Readers check out with their email address. To find their books later, they type that email and get a sign-in link, so there is no password to forget.

Yes. Join the waitlist before 2027 and your first 6 months on the Author plan are free, counted from the day your store goes live. After that, you get 50% off any plan for your first year. It does not matter when we let you in: the free months only start once we approve your account and your store goes live, and nothing is charged during them. Near the end we email you twice with your choices. If you do nothing, your store moves to the Free plan. Your store keeps running and all your books stay on sale; to add a book past 3, you move to Author. The 50% off works on any paid plan, monthly or yearly, for the first 12 months you pay for. After that you pay the normal price.

Free is for trying Lanternbee with up to 3 books. There is no monthly cost and no fee on your sales. When you want to add more books, move to Author, which has no limit on books.

You connect your own Stripe account. You are the seller, readers pay you, and Stripe pays out to your bank on its usual schedule. Lanternbee takes no fee from your sales on any plan.

By card everywhere, plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and local options such as iDEAL, Bancontact, MB WAY or BLIK where they work. Stripe shows each reader the methods that suit their country and device, from the ones you switch on in your Stripe settings. Methods that take a few days, like bank transfers, are handled for you: books are sent once the money arrives.

Stripe Tax works out the right VAT or sales tax for each reader’s country at checkout and adds it to the order. You are the seller, so you file and pay that tax, the same as on Shopify. Later, we plan to handle EU VAT on ebooks and audiobooks for you by becoming the merchant of record, meaning Lanternbee would sell those books to readers on your behalf and file the VAT. That isn’t live yet.

Yes. Your store starts at yourname.lanternbee.shop, and you can connect an address like shop.yourname.com at any time. Your author website can link to it.

They stay yours. Download your reader list and your orders as a spreadsheet whenever you like.

Yes. Signed copies come from your own stock, with an optional dedication and a signing queue. Any book with a future release date sells as a pre-order and lands in the reader’s library on release day. For a special edition you can run a campaign with reward levels (tiers), a goal and bonus goals, and choose for each reward whether readers pay straight away or when the campaign closes.

Yes. Set any format to Free and readers get it from your store without paying, even before Stripe is connected: they confirm their email, then the book is in their library, and they can tick a box to get your news. For review copies, make a discount code for 100% off the book and limit how many times it can be used. There is no separate sign-up page for a giveaway and no personal link per reviewer, so keep a tool like BookFunnel if you need those.

No. Your store works in any browser, on a phone or a computer.

Not yet. We’re letting authors in from the waitlist a few at a time. Join, and we’ll email you when your store is ready to set up.