Selling Books Directly to Your Readers
Good news! You can now easily sell books directly to your readers. I’ve been wanting to set up a new online shop for some time and, finally, this week, I managed to complete the task. (The things you achieve when you can't get into your usual writing routine...)
Make Your Books Available Widely
In these uncertain times, authors like many other creative entrepreneurs, need to put in place alternative ways of receiving income from their work.
If you are tied to one retailer for the sale of your books, however successful that enterprise (Amazon) is, you are losing some control over how your books are being presented to the readers. I wrote a blog post about going wide versus KDP Select (go here to read it), so I won’t go into the various arguments for and against these two different strategies. All I will say is that if you wish to sell your books directly to your readers, you can’t be exclusive to one retailer.
If you are ‘wide’, all of your eBooks will already be available in various stores including Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes&Noble, and GooglePlay. In addition to this, if you’ve uploaded your paperback files to IngramSpark, any brick-and-mortar bookstore can order copies (in normal times, that is). And both your paperbacks and eBooks are (if you’ve ticked the right boxes) also available from libraries across the world. All your readers need to do is ask the library to order the book – and you as the author will still get paid even if the books are free for your readers to borrow. It’s a win-win!
As well as having all of your books available to buy from these retailers and borrow from libraries, the retailers also have their own marketing machines, presenting opportunities for you to promote the books to their huge customer bases.
It’s Their Store, Not Yours
But there are downsides to all of these re-sellers. In short, you’re selling your books in their stores, not yours. You still don’t have much control over how much they push your books in front of the readers, even if you invest heavily in advertising or play with their algorithms.
Plus, you have no control over their finances. You cannot do anything if, for example, due to a worldwide pandemic, a bookshop (either a high street store or an online retailer) closes and stops selling your books. You will most probably have to wait for a long time for your royalties, or never get them if the retailer goes bankrupt. And what do you do then? How do you get your books in front of new readers?
Cashflow
Even if the retailer is financially stable and open, you will have to wait up to 90 days for your royalties to come through from the re-sellers. This is a long time for any entrepreneur, but for writers, the return on investment is even longer than this. Cashflow is a real issue for many authors.
Here's why.
Most writers take one to two years to produce an edited, proofread, and formatted book with a professionally designed cover. All the costs of the cover, editing, formatting, and proofreading have to be paid upfront. If you are self-published, you won’t have the cushion of an advance from a publisher, which should cover the research and writing phase of producing a saleable title. So any return on the investment for an indie author will be about one year plus 90 days away. An author writing their first title will need to fund their writing time, plus put aside a sum to pay for the publishing services, perhaps years before they press 'publish'. So you can see how a site that offers the sales proceeds from your books immediately after a sale would be highly attractive…?
Payhip Shop
There are several answers to this cashflow problem. You can set up a shop directly on your own website, but this can be complicated. If the traffic to your website is large, however, and you update it regularly with a blog or similar, this will definitely be the best option to use.
But there is also another, simpler, solution: Payhip.
Today I took the plunge and set up my own shop on Payhip. This site will pay any proceeds from a sale directly to my bank account. I will not have to wait 90 days for a settlement but get paid as soon as a reader purchases my books.
You do have to sign up for Paypal, but if you wish to have the names of those who bought your books, you can offer them an opportunity to sign up for your mailing list. Now wouldn’t we love to have this opportunity to know who purchased our books from Amazon or the other eBook resellers?
To find out more about Payhip, go here. I found the process of setting up the shop very easy. I just uploaded all of my book files, copied the blurbs across, set the price, connected to my Paypal account and hey presto, I have my shop up and running! There is even a way to connect your titles into series, which I was very pleased about.
There are three different levels of membership. I opted for the free one, just to test the site. This means I will pay 5% to Payhip from each transaction.
Example: for a book priced at $2.99, I will get $2.85 from Payhip, whereas with Amazon I’d get $2.09. Of course with my introductory discount of 25%, (see below) the royalties I get will be the same, but don’t forget I will get paid immediately, rather than up to 90 days later.
Discount codes
You can also set up a variety of discounts with codes and social share alternatives. I decided to set up a 20% discount for social share and a 25% personal code for my readers, but you can decide not to give any discounts at all. Instead, you can set the prices lower – you are only paying a small percentage to Payhip after all.
So far, I am happy with the site, but I will certainly report back to you if there are any issues.
My Payhip shop includes my newly updated book, Write Your Story: Turn Your Life Into Fiction In 10 Easy Steps, plus all the books in The Nordic Heart as well as Love on the Island series, and my other fiction titles.
To celebrate my new shop, I have a special discount set up. Use the coupon code HELENAHALME to receive 25% on all my books on Payhip. But hurry, this offer ends 30 April 2020.
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