How to sell your books direct

What selling direct means

When a reader buys your ebook on Amazon, Apple Books or Kobo, the store is the seller. It takes the payment, sends the file, keeps the reader’s email and pays you a royalty later.

When you sell direct, you are the seller. The reader pays you, gets the book from you and becomes your customer. You set the price, you choose what goes in a bundle, and you know who bought what.

You can keep your retailers too. A reader who only buys on Kindle will keep buying on Kindle, and that is fine. Your own store is for the readers who would rather buy from you: your newsletter, your street team, the people who follow you on social media and the reader who wants a signed hardback.

Why authors sell direct

You keep more of each sale. With a retailer you get a royalty, the share left after the store takes its cut. When a reader buys direct, there is no royalty. You get the full price, then pay your own costs: card fees, the cost of your store and, for printed books, printing and postage. What is left is usually more than a retailer royalty on the same book.

You know your readers. Every buyer’s email comes to you. When book four comes out, you can tell everyone who bought books one to three, with their permission.

You set the rules. Run a sale today. Sell the whole series as a bundle. Charge more for a signed copy with a dedication. Sell a workbook PDF next to the nonfiction book it goes with. Nobody has to approve it.

What you give up

Be honest with yourself about three things before you start.

A store does not bring readers. Amazon has shoppers browsing all day. Your website has the readers you send to it. Selling direct works best when you already reach readers through a newsletter, social media or events, and want somewhere for them to buy.

You do the seller’s jobs. Someone has to answer “where’s my book?” emails, refund the odd order and deal with a card dispute now and then. A good setup makes these rare, but they land with you.

Tax becomes your question. When you are the seller, sales tax and VAT are yours to work out, unless you use a service that takes them on as the seller for you. More on that below.

There is one rule to check before you sell a single ebook. If an ebook is in KDP Select, so it can be read in Kindle+ (until October 2026 called Kindle Unlimited), Amazon requires that ebook to be sold only through Amazon. You cannot sell it from your own website while it is enrolled. Paperbacks and audiobooks are not covered by that rule. The KDP Select glossary entry explains the details.

What you need

Every direct bookstore does four jobs, whichever tools you use.

A store

A store is the place a reader sees your books, picks a format and pays. It should show each book on one page with all its formats, keep your series in reading order and sit at an address readers remember, such as shop.yourname.com.

General store builders can do this, but they think in products and variants. A book with an ebook, an audiobook and a paperback becomes one product with three variants, and a series becomes a collection with no reading order.

Delivery

After paying, the reader needs the book. For ebooks that means a download link by email, a way to get the file onto a Kindle or Kobo, and a link that still works when they lose the email. Kindle readers need the most help, because a file bought outside Amazon has to be sent to their Kindle.

Audiobooks are larger files. Readers want to listen in the browser or download chapter files into their own player.

Print books need printing and posting. Print on demand means a printer such as BookVault or Lulu prints each copy when it is ordered, so you hold no stock. Own stock means you post copies you already have, which suits signed copies and short runs. The sell direct pages go through each format: ebooks, audiobooks, paperbacks, hardbacks, special editions and signed copies.

Payments

Readers pay by card, and a payment provider such as Stripe or PayPal moves the money to your bank. In most setups, card fees come out of each sale. On top of that, some stores take their own share of each sale, and some charge a monthly fee instead. That difference is most of what separates the options below.

VAT and sales tax

Readers pay tax on books in most places, and the rules depend on where the reader lives.

• In the EU, an ebook or audiobook sold to a reader is taxed at the rate of the reader’s country. If your business is based in one EU country and your sales to readers in other EU countries stay at or under €10,000 a year, you can charge your own country’s rate instead. Sellers based outside the EU get no threshold for digital sales. The One-Stop Shop lets you file one return each quarter for all EU countries.
• In the UK, printed books and ebooks have a zero rate. Audiobooks pay the standard 20%. The EU One-Stop Shop does not cover UK readers.
• In the US, there is no national sales tax. Each state sets its own rules, and they disagree most about digital books. A state can ask you to collect once your sales there pass its threshold.

There are two ways to handle this. Some services act as the merchant of record: they are the seller in the eyes of the tax office, so they collect and pay the tax for you and take a bigger share of each sale. Otherwise you are the seller, and a tool such as Stripe Tax works out the right tax at checkout while you report and pay it. The VAT by country pages have the rate for every EU country, the UK and the US, each linked to its official source. They are general guidance. Check with an accountant for your own case.

Your options

Prices below are in US dollars and come from each company’s own pages. The store costs pages work out a full year on each, with sources and the dates we checked them.

Keep selling through Amazon and other retailers

You can leave things as they are. Retailers handle the store, delivery, payments and tax, and they have shoppers. In return they keep part of each sale and keep the customer. Many authors sell through retailers and direct at the same time, and that is usually the best of both.

Shopify with book apps

Shopify runs stores of every kind. Shopify Basic is US$39 a month, or US$29 a month paid yearly. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds 2% to every sale.

Shopify does not deliver ebooks or audiobooks itself, so authors add apps. A typical setup adds BookFunnel’s Mid-List plan for delivery at US$20 a month, a bundles app at about US$20, a reviews app at about US$15 and a print-on-demand app that is free to install and charges per order. That comes to about US$94 a month before you sell a book.

Shopify makes sense if you sell a lot of merchandise next to your books, want a specific app only Shopify has, or have someone to set up and look after the store. It has a far bigger range of apps and themes than anything else here. Shopify for authors, compared.

Payhip

Payhip sells downloads, courses, memberships and physical products from one simple store. Its free plan has no monthly cost and takes 5% of each sale. Plus is US$29 a month and takes 2%. Pro is US$99 a month and takes nothing.

Payhip says it works out, collects and pays sales tax for you in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU. That is a real job off your hands. Bundles and reader reviews are built in. It has no printing of its own and connects to Bookvault for print on demand. Payhip suits authors who mostly sell ebooks and PDFs and want something simple and cheap to start. Payhip, compared.

Gumroad

Gumroad has no monthly fee at all. It takes 10% plus US$0.50 of every sale you make through your own links, and 30% on sales that come through its Discover marketplace. On a US$5 ebook, that is US$1.00 to Gumroad.

Since 1 January 2025, Gumroad handles sales tax for you worldwide as the merchant of record; part of its fee pays for that. Readers can send only MOBI and PDF files up to 16 MB to a Kindle from Gumroad, so EPUB files do not work for that. We found no way to print books through it. Gumroad suits authors who sell now and then and would rather pay a bigger fee per sale than any monthly bill. Gumroad, compared.

BookFunnel

BookFunnel is a delivery service with no store of its own. It sends ebook and audiobook files to readers and helps them get the book onto their device. Authors use it with a store, such as Shopify or WooCommerce, to deliver the books they sell.

Its Mid-List plan, the first with delivery for direct sales, is US$20 a month or US$200 a year. Audiobooks are an add-on from US$2 a month plus US$0.04 for every hour of audio delivered. BookFunnel also does jobs a store doesn’t: reader magnets with their own sign-up pages, advance review copies with a link for each reviewer, and group promotions with other authors. You can keep it for those even after you change stores. BookFunnel, compared.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns a WordPress website into a store. The plugin costs nothing, but you pay for hosting, which WooCommerce itself puts at about US$25 to US$350 a month, and for extensions, at US$29 to US$299 a year each. A bundles extension is US$79 a year. Lulu has an add-on that prints and ships books.

You own and host everything and can change any part of it. You also look after the updates, backups and security. WooCommerce suits authors who already run a WordPress site, like to tinker or have a developer. WooCommerce, compared.

Lanternbee

Lanternbee is a bookstore for independent authors, and it is not open yet. We’re letting authors in from the waitlist, a few at a time.

It does the four jobs above itself. Each book has one page with all its formats, and series keep their reading order. Readers get their download links by email, keep their books in a library and can send EPUB ebooks of up to 25 MB to their Kindle. Audiobooks play in the browser, with nothing charged per listening hour. Printed books can be posted from your own stock. Sending orders to BookVault or Lulu is being built now.

Readers pay you through your own Stripe account, and Lanternbee takes no fee on your sales. The Free plan costs US$0 a month for up to 3 books. The Author plan is US$39 a month, or US$29 a month paid yearly, for as many books as you write. Stripe’s card fees apply on both. On Lanternbee you are the seller: Stripe Tax works out the tax at checkout, and you report and pay it.

Your published books are also listed on Lanternbee Books, our new reader site, on every plan, and you can switch that off. The pricing page has the details.

A quick way to choose

Start from what you sell and how much.

If you…	Look at
Sell a few ebooks a month and want tax handled for you	Payhip or Gumroad
Sell rarely and want no monthly bill	Gumroad, or a free plan with no fee on sales
Sell merchandise as much as books	Shopify, with a delivery app such as BookFunnel
Already run WordPress and enjoy the technical side	WooCommerce
Give away reader magnets and send review copies	BookFunnel, next to whatever store you choose
Sell ebooks, audiobooks and print, often in series or sets	A bookstore that handles formats and series, such as Lanternbee

Whatever you pick, add up a whole year, not one month. A low monthly price with a share of every sale can cost more than a flat fee once you sell regularly, and the reverse is true in quiet years. The store costs pages do that sum for a quiet store and a busy one.

Your first direct sale

You don’t need your whole catalogue on day one. A small start teaches you more than a big plan.

1. Pick one book, ideally the first in a series or your best-known title. Add it in every format you have.
2. Check the Kindle rule. If that ebook is in KDP Select, sell the paperback or audiobook direct for now, or wait until the enrolment ends.
3. Set your prices. A simple start is your retailer price, plus something only the store has: a series bundle, a signed copy or an early release.
4. Buy it yourself with a real card. Check the email, the download and the Kindle delivery the way a reader would.
5. Tell your readers. Send one email to your newsletter and add the store link to the back matter of your books, where readers who just finished one are looking for the next.
6. Watch the first month. Read every question readers send you. They tell you what to fix before you add the rest of your books.

Selling direct grows slowly. Treat your store as one more place to buy, next to your retailers, and keep sending your own readers there.