More Thoughts on Direct Sales

All I can say is: Wow. The response to last week’s article on direct sales was so enthusiastic and immediate, I could start an entire newsletter focused on that topic alone, and it’d probably be more successful than this one.

I’ve been contemplating why this topic resonates so strongly and what it says about our current moment. During my earliest publishing days, I worked at a company that had multiple direct-to-reader book clubs serving enthusiast communities. It was never seen as a sexy business—and it did feel rather dowdy at the time—but it was profitable. However, once Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other online shopping options came online, those clubs found it challenging to compete and ultimately shuttered by 2010.

Now the old has become new again. Subscription book operations like Literati and FairyLoot are thriving; some are even starting their own publishing arms. Every significant release seems to have a special or deluxe edition tied to it, sometimes available exclusively from a retailer, the author, or the publisher. Ordering from Amazon feels like dumpster diving by comparison, given the odds these days of receiving a poor quality book or counterfeit book from a third-party seller. More than ever, consumers put their money into businesses that reflect their values and the creative people they want to see flourish, and avoid supporting billionaire-owned tech companies, at least when it’s convenient to do so or when a compelling enough offer arrives.

After I sent last week’s issue, I heard from Allen Befort, the CEO and founder of Givington’s, a company that supports authors, publishers, and others who want to sell direct and produce special products. They’ve been in business since 2012 and have long championed the power of direct sales—and he was happy to see last week’s article speaking his language. Befort told me he doesn’t think the publishing industry is changing as much as the retail environment is changing. But he has a tough time convincing the biggest publishers to sell direct (even though Givington’s reports sales to BookScan) because they don’t want to tick off Barnes & Noble and other retailers. But Befort argued that if you’re a big publisher that acquires authors with a big platform and you don’t sell direct, you’re missing out. I’ve also been learning about other businesses supporting authors’ direct sales, such as INKfluence (a relatively new company) and Elanders Americas (an old company that recently started targeting authors).

All of this aligns with the rise of the creator economy (here’s an explainer if you need it), and I’m seeing a chasm open up between authors prepared to build a full-time career as creators versus those who just want to see their books come out from a legitimate publisher and be placed on a store shelf. Creators regularly put out content on social media, do email marketing, run crowdfunding campaigns for their projects, have exclusives for their devout fans, understand marketing funnels, and may earn money on advertising or partnerships. Self-publishing authors, at least the ones making a living at it, behave like creators, and it’s rare to find traditionally published authors who behave similarly unless they started out as creators in the first place. This is much bigger than authors learning how to market and promote. It’s about building a business that bypasses publishers, agents, and retailers and instead focuses on online visibility and reach and turning that attention into money.

Consider indie author and audiobook narrator Cindy Gunderson as an example; she makes a six-figure living as an author and began writing and publishing in 2019; she has more than 40 books on the market. I talked to her last week about how she built her business.

• Gunderson started selling direct about two to three years ago, after leaving Kindle Unlimited. She built her own Shopify store and promoted it through her email list and Facebook ads. She eventually returned her ebooks to Kindle Unlimited for reach but now releases her books first on her website and adds them to KU a couple weeks later, rewarding direct buyers with early access. She continues to run Amazon and Facebook ads to support visibility and sales.
• At TikTok, she operates 15 accounts, some under pen names, others focused on specific content types (like sweet Christmas romance), because TikTok rewards focused, single-theme content. She uses TikTok to build community and sales funnels for her books on Shopify and KU.
• Meanwhile, Gunderson uploads full audiobooks to her YouTube channel and says they don’t cannibalize her sales—instead, they drive fans to buy other formats. She earns significant ad revenue from YouTube as a result. She also uploads YouTube Shorts, repurposed from TikTok, to drive traffic to the longform YouTube videos.

That’s emblematic of what creators do, but it’s not what I see traditional publishers do. And traditionally published authors can’t follow this playbook even if they have the skills, because they don’t have the rights.

Gunderson also told me that any author not using video today is getting left behind, and I wish she were wrong, but it’s increasingly difficult to find a successful indie novelist these days—someone who started out in the last five years—who is not making use of TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. (This phenomenon, of course, is much bigger than publishing. Don’t miss Everything Is Television.)

I continue to research direct sales and will be returning with more discoveries this fall, such as direct sales through TikTok Shop. For now, I’ll share the many insightful responses from readers about direct sales. Thank you all for writing in.

Readers respond

Andrew Chapman: “With reference to Bookvault: (1) They also have a WooCommerce integration which works well. I run it on my small-press site. (2) They also print in the US and Australia aside from the UK operation. (3) Their quality is good (better than KDP/Ingram), though delivery (at least here in the UK) isn’t super fast: typically a week, but it’s notably faster through their own UK online public-facing shop. (4) Technically you have to load your Bookvault account with funds so that when an order goes through from your website, the print cost comes out of them; if you don’t, you have to remember to pay for the job before it will be processed (the WooCommerce revenue goes to your own Stripe account or whatever). They’re definitely a valuable piece of the puzzle alongside the standard POD-to-market options.”

Sue Trowbridge: “I enjoyed today’s newsletter, since I work with a couple of authors who are now selling direct. I’ve run into a bunch of problems with Shopify, though. Fraudulent orders, for one—we had to install yet another app, Blockify, in order to deal with them. I think we’re still using the free version of Blockify, but we’ve also had to pay for the ‘pro’ versions of other apps that provide functionality I would have assumed should be built-in. Designing the store is not terribly intuitive, and despite my 20 years of experience as a web developer, I had to hire a freelancer (whom I found on Upwork) who specializes in Shopify to help me with some things I couldn’t figure out. I think it could be a great tool if it was a little more user friendly—for instance, why doesn’t Shopify itself do more to help with the fraudulent orders, instead of having people install yet more apps? I suspect the top users who have the most expensive plans get great customer service, but the folks selling a few hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise a month have to muddle through.”

Lori Straus: “I looked at Shopify last year when I finally ended my WooCommerce reliance (far too many plugins to manage with WordPress/WooCommerce). However, they didn’t have an easy way to allow multiple authors in their blogging platform: I would’ve had to pay US $99/month to open more accounts so I could have more authors. I sometimes let my employee from my other business write something, so that functionality was important to me. I’m still with Fourthwall: They also work off commissions. They haven’t been developing as fast as I’d hoped, but I also haven’t paid for a website for most of this year now.” Later, Straus encouraged writers to keep an eye on Shopify’s new features and functionality—things change quickly.

Shane Crabtree, Clovercroft Publishing Group: “I just wanted to add one other item to the direct sales pathways by authors. Ingram operates the book sales platform IndiePubs. I use this for my authors all the time, and they don’t have to set up any sort of Shopify account or set up a fulfillment account. I give my authors a link that they embed into buy buttons on their site, and Ingram takes care of the rest—pick, pack, ship, billing. My authors make close to 75 percent of retail price versus 30 percent for sales through bookstores, at least with our company. However, I believe you have to be a part of Ingram Publisher Services to use this because we warehouse our authors’ books with Ingram. My company is part of PGW [owned by Ingram]. We do offer authors, if they have their books already printed and approve of one of our imprints, the opportunity to distribute through PGW. As you know, this gives their books access to the sales people at Ingram as well.”

David Wilk: “While it’s not easy and is not the right option for everyone (bookstores exist for a reason!), the benefits of deep connections with one’s readers are significant. One option for publishers and authors who want to sell direct is the truly excellent Publica.la platform. It was founded by Pablo Laurino in South America. It is now based in Europe. Publica was originally digital only, with their own really excellent ebook reader to make it a seamless experience for the customer, and now they have enabled selling print books in a unified cart. A cool feature is that you can sell books from other Publica publishers and authors in your own store, so potentially an author could run their own romantasy bookstore to broaden their offerings, for example. Full disclosure: I did some consulting for Publica briefly some years ago. I am not connected in any way to Publica, just a fan of their work.”

Melanie at Bronzewing Press: “I use Beventi for signing pre-orders because of visibility. I find people like to explore new authors at larger signings because they want to get ‘bang for the buck’ at the ticket price. So I have offers at a range of price points on there. For my own store, I’ve settled on Snipcart. It’s a percentage-based option that embeds in your own website and uses webhooks and API to connect with other SaaS [software as a service]. I have a little more technical know-how than the average author, but I’m not a coder or web developer by a long shot, and it’s proving to be relatively easy to set up. Just a flat 2 percent or $20 per month, whichever is greater. But what’s fantastic is you can sit in development mode for as long as you want. There’s no rush to get everything up and running. It’s not as pretty out of the box as Shopify, but it’s all HTML embeds and much cheaper and more versatile. Another alternative for authors who don’t need a full site or want to run a permanent fulfillment warehouse from their house (and that’s most of us, I’m sure) is ThriveCart. It’s a one-time-fee model for sales pages, and there’s not a way to add multiple items to a cart, but if you’re only doing ebook preorders before releasing into Kindle Unlimited, it’s fantastic. I’ve been using it for a while, and they also natively integrate with Lulu and other distribution and shipping services, as well as Printful for merch. I plan on using this for limited edition book boxes, as I can create a sales page easily with it and not need to make an entire linked page on my website. If that one-time fee seems a bit rich, AppSumo has a similar SaaS one-time-fee cart listed called Zylvie, which is highly rated and competitive with ThriveCart, but around 20 percent of the cost. … I think my point is, for those with tech know-how or the time and willingness to learn, there are far cheaper and more versatile solutions than Shopify.”

Lisa Norman: “As someone who has helped set up a lot of authors’ stores, here are a couple of bits which you probably know but can’t hurt to revisit: (1) Avoid WordPress and WooCommerce if you can. The add-ons to process sales and taxes are insanely priced and it is hard to make money, especially with the current instability and WordPress drama. (2) Shopify is expensive but does a great job. (3) Payhip actually works really well. One of my most prolific clients recently switched from WooCommerce to Payhip, and she is loving it. Authors have so many cool toys these days!”

November 5, 2025 update

I continue to receive interesting reports from all of you about direct sales efforts. Here’s what Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy shared: “We also started selling/giving away our Reedsy books direct through a Shopify store, and so far it’s been quite successful (3,000+ orders in the past few months, though the majority are for free books). I was surprised by how easy it is to set up (it takes a lot of time, but there’s nothing technically complicated) and by how well the Bookvault integration works. The main drawback is that shipping is paid for by the customer, and that can be expensive, but it seems readers are happy to bear that burden.”

Fayet continued, “The best part of direct sales (as a marketer) is this: (1) You can create a lot of coupon, bundle, and upsell offers on the site (e.g., if someone adds book number one in a series to their cart, you can promote a discounted box set of books two through four to them to go along—or if they add the ebook version, you can offer the audiobook as well, etc. (2) You get the reader’s data (email address, physical address). (3) You can add first-party tracking to your site (e.g., Meta Pixel or any pixel, for that matter, via Google Tag Manager). This means that you can start running conversion-optimized ads to your site rather than just traffic ones. The world of advertising in general (and Meta in particular) is moving more and more toward conversion optimization; you don’t need to find niche audiences to target. [Instead], the platforms find those for you based on your data and automatically go after the users who they think are most likely to convert.”