Sell Your Books Diret from Your Website

Selling your books directly through your website is a prosperous strategy for those running an author business—not just writing books. There are several ways to do this that will allow you to ensure the quality of your product as well as bridge the gap between you and your customer.

It all starts with developing a functional author website that drives traffic to your books. To learn about developing that website, check out the article Author Websites That Sell Books. A key takeaway for the purpose of this article is to have a place to display the cover of your book, the book’s description and tagline, and collect payments. You should be collecting email addresses with every click on your site.

For now, let’s talk about the best ways to sell your book direct.

Self-Fulfillment

As a business owner, you can create a storefront and stock your book in-house. Books can be stored in boxes or on a dedicated bookshelf. Whatever you choose, make sure the product is well-kept and preserved.

When customers place an order, you can package, print the label, and ship from home. This is a great starting point for an author business.

You can use custom packaging or boxes, as well as include goodies with the order. Sunflowers and Romance Publishing offers our clients reader goodies such as bookmarks, stickers, and other collectibles with orders we fulfill ourselves. This also provides the option of signing books upon request. You can do as much or as little as you find comfortable.

You can order free mailers through USPS or even use local shipping companies for the less expensive Media Mail option. Make sure you are using a wise shipping method to preserve the safety of your residence. Learn more by reading Shipping for Authors.

Lulu Printing API

Lulu’s API is our favorite way to sell directly through a website. Lulu’s API cuts out the middleman. You don’t have to transfer client information from one system to another.

When the customer makes a purchase, Lulu’s API receives the order details, charges your account for the shipping, prints, and ships the book automatically. There is very little delay, and it requires little extra work from you.

You will need to keep a balance on the card used so that shipping is not delayed and you are not overdrawn. You’ll also want to consider whether all or just some of your books will be available through Lulu. If a customer orders one book fulfilled by you and another fulfilled by Lulu, you’ll end up paying double shipping.

Lulu’s API only works with WooCommerce, Shopify, and Wix. If your website is hosted on another platform, this option won’t be available to you.

Amazon Drop Shipping

Depending on your distribution option, you can use books printed through Amazon KDP as a dropship method. Once your customer orders, you would log into your Amazon back office to place the order. Instead of shipping the book to yourself, you will input your customer’s information.

We recommend trying this option out if you use Amazon KDP to print—just to ensure the “author copy” band is not printed on the cover.

This option allows you to control the price of your book, drive traffic to your website, keep the bulk of your sales, skip the royalty payments, and collect customer information. You won’t have to spend money stocking books! This option is great for scaling your business and controlling the flow of your sales.

IngramSpark Shareable Link

IngramSpark offers a shareable link as a direct-sell option. You can link this landing page for your book to your website. There’s also the option to share this link directly with your audience.

When customers purchase, IngramSpark will handle pricing and shipping, while you receive your portion. IngramSpark will print and ship your book just as they would for a sale through Amazon or Barnes & Noble. This option cuts out the middleman—and the reduced payouts.

On the other hand, we don’t recommend this option because you don’t get access to your customer’s information. This doesn’t solve the problem of bridging the gap between you and your reader, though it is a direct-sell option.

IngramSpark Drop Shipping

Instead of using the shareable link, we recommend using IngramSpark to drop ship orders to your customer.

Again, your customer will order and pay through your website. You will then take their details and place the order through your IngramSpark back office. Their new book purchase setup makes it easy to do so.

We recommend reviewing the set pricing and shipping options available through IngramSpark and using that to set your list price on your website. Though the book may cost $5 to print, shipping may be as much as $10. That means you may need to set a shipping rate of $10 and a list price of $15 to make a profit—or simply list the book at $25 with free shipping.

Final Considerations

There are various options available to sell directly to your customers. You’ll want to consider your willingness to stock books, where your books are printed, and how to price your books to ensure a profit. Regardless of your path, if you want to sustain an author business, you have to build a direct relationship with your readers and eliminate as many middlemen as possible.

To create a sales plan for your book, grab an Author Consultation with one of our Publishing Professionals today! We can help you create a vision—and a plan—to execute it well.