I like math. I like questioning assumptions and double-checking long-held beliefs. This question makes me very happy.

So first, how do authors sell books directly?
-The method I use is I order author copies – AUTHOR COPIES NOT PROOFS – from Amazon KDP. I find the shipping price I pay from Amazon is lower than IngramSpark, and I haven’t had any glaring quality issues with KDP. Yet. Then I host my author store on Payhip. Someone goes to my store and purchases, and they send me a notification to mail out the book. I only offer this in the US because shipping is included in my price, and for me to eat the international shipping cost would be prohibitive. I would lose money on each sale.

How much do I make selling a book directly on my website compared to Amazon?

The Infinite-Infinite is $16.99 on Amazon and my Website. (If people want to buy the series, I do offer a discount on my website, which is something I have control over on my website and not anywhere else.)

This book sells on Amazon for $16.99. I make a royalty of $6.45

To sell it on my website, I have to spend:
$3.74 for the book. I have to pay shipping when I order from Amazon. (Yes, even over $35 orders, I have to pay the shipping) I tend to order a larger number of books when I restock to spread out that shipping cost across the books. The last order I did was .68 per book. Then, when I sell it to someone, I spend about $4.74 on USPS Media Mail (I have videos on this) and my bubble mailers cost about .72 a piece. So it costs me 9.88 just to have the stock and ship it out. But when a reader buys it for $16.99 from my website, I pay a fee to PayHip as well as a fee to PayPal who handles the transactions. So 15.38 is what hits my bank account. Then you take away the 9.88, and I net $5.50 per sale.

Now, if I had a larger VOLUME of sales, I could pay a monthly fee to PayHip to run my store. But I’d need to be moving a lot of units to have that be the lower of two costs. If I had a larger volume of sales, I could also work with a local printer to make my books and potentially lower that cost as well.

The difference between a sale on Amazon and a sale on my store is less than a dollar. That adds up over time.

To get to the heart of this question for an author looking to move from Trad to Self Pub: is it worth it to sell my book direct?
Maybe?
If you look at just dollars and cents, no.
If you look at the potential to send a follow-up transactional email with the tracking link for the book, as well as a reminder to subscribe to your newsletter or leave a review, that’s something we don’t get with Amazon. When we sell a personalized autographed copy, we’re building a relationship with that reader, and that can be a worthwhile investment.

I didn’t start selling direct for a few years. It’s becoming a bigger part of my business each year, though.

In terms of selling into bookstores as an indie, that takes patience, relationship building, eating a 50-55% wholesale discount, and stomaching the potential for returns. Unless you do consignment, which has its own ups and downs. I have other videos on that as well.

What other questions do you have for me? Let me know in the comments below!

My PayHip Store: https://payhip.com/MKWilliamsPublishingLLC/collection/autographed-copies

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