The self-publishing world has been abuzz with talk of direct sales and the impact that direct sales could have on your journey as an author, but what are direct sales?
Direct selling refers to customers of your books purchasing your titles from you directly via your online store, as opposed to selling through retailers such as Amazon or Gardners.
You can transfer titles uploaded to Bookvault across various online stores, including Shopify, WooCommerce and Payhip. Once your books sell, Bookvault will print and send your book to the customer based on your shipping options.
Bookvault has apps for these e-commerce integrations to link Bookvault to your online store.
Check out our guides for installing each integration here: https://bookvault.app/category/integrations/
Benefits of direct sales
This strategy has become favourable in the last year, with authors able to retain more profit without a retailer acting as a middleman. It’s no secret that these large retailers take a cut in royalties, on top of the initial print cost.
Of course, without being listed with a global retailer, the role of promotion falls upon the indie author. Promoting your book could mean any of the following:
- Author website and blog ( this can be part of your site, with a dedicated shop page attached)
- Release teaser excerpts
- Short-form video content (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube)
- Have a social media presence, particularly in author/reading communities
- Create effective email lists (more on that below!)
One Huge benefit of selling direct is the valuable information collected via your sales, social media and website. An email list of customers is a priceless tool for authors as you can keep potential customers in the loop. With this email list, it is important to regularly engage customers with content surrounding your work, promotions or even excerpts. These will all help build traction prior to release.
Selling direct also grants you access to the sales revenue far quicker than if you were to sell through larger retailers.
By selling direct via a print-on-demand service, you can eliminate the burden holding stock brings. Historically, holding onto stock was a hurdle for indie authorship. Nowadays, direct sales allow you to print and ship books as they are purchased so that books can be produced and shipped by Bookvault without any action from the author.
Of course, you do not have to sell direct exclusively. An ideal sales strategy would utilise all possible sales channels available to their full effect. For example, listing your pre-orders and early purchases through your direct site and opening up to a greater audience with retailers further down the line. This strategy is described perfectly by Joanna Penn @thecreativepenn in the following article.
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2022/08/12/selling-books-direct-with-shopify-minimum-viable-store/
