The Benefits of Selling Your Books Direct with Lulu
Selling books (or any product) online historically meant one thing: getting your book listed with retailers. That might be self-publishing and listing on Amazon or getting a small publisher to pick up the book and list it through Ingram’s network.
Today, direct sales have proven that retailers don’t have a monopoly on online selling. Recent census data shows that, in the USA, ecommerce sales account for nearly 17% of all retail sales. That’s a significant amount (something like $326 billion) that isn’t helping to line a retailer’s pocket.
That doesn’t mean Amazon is closing down anytime soon. But it does show that retail distribution is only one part of a strong book sales strategy.
Direct book sales create a new and lucrative sales channel. Instead of sending every reader to a retailer, you sell books directly to readers through your own website. That might mean building an author ecommerce store, connecting Lulu Direct to Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce, or using another direct-to-consumer publishing setup that fits your business.
The goal is not to stop using retailers. The goal is to stop relying on retailers for every sale.
The appeal of selling directly comes not just from the improved profit margins (though those are nice). Rather, it’s about earning more access to your customers, retaining control over your content, and making more money.
The Top 5 Reasons You Should Sell Direct
When I was outlining this article, I went to ChatGPT and asked it to search the web and create a comprehensive list of all the reasons creators should sell their products directly to their customers. The list it created was… long. It had, and I’m not exaggerating at all, 34 bullets.
Thankfully, the list included what I consider the top five reasons to sell self-published books directly.
- Increased Revenue
- Owning Customer Relationships
- Controlling the Branding
- Ability to Manage Fulfillment
- Ownership of the Sales Channel
I like these five because they all stem from one important aspect that drives so many creators: control.
Earning the Revenue You Deserve
The clearest benefit of direct sales for authors is revenue. This is pretty easy math to do.
Let’s say your book costs $5 to print and $5 to ship. That’s a $10 total cost. You decide to price it at $20. Of the remaining $10 from each sale, the retailers are going to take 20-40% as their share, leaving you with as little as $6 in revenue from the sale. And if you’re using a distributor (like Ingram) to get into retailers, you’ll need to reduce the cost (called a wholesale discount) to allow for their margin, often cutting your earnings in half.
Yes, retailers provide access to a marketplace with a larger audience than you’ll likely be able to build on your own. But remember that the audience belongs to the retailer, not you. Depending on how your book is sold, you may have to deal with even more restrictive pricing rules, wholesale discounts, or distribution requirements.
Direct sales change the math. Now imagine that same book. $5 to print, $5 to ship. Same retail price of $20. Once you make the sale, the $5 for printing and $5 for shipping go to your fulfillment provider, and you keep the rest.
That’s it.
Okay, not quite it. There’ll likely be a transaction fee for the order of $1 or so. And maybe some additional overhead for the ecommerce service you use.
When you sell your books on your website you control the list price, any discounts or promotions, and most importantly, the presentation of your product page. There won’t be any ‘You Might Also Like’ section or that Amazon cookie reminding you about the slow cooker you were scoping last week.
Higher book royalties are not the only reason to sell direct. But if your book is part of your income, your brand, or your larger content business (which it should be), then keeping more revenue from each sale is a crucial business decision.
Create Personal Customer Relationships
I’m not saying you should try to be buddies with your readers. But the book sale should not be the end of the relationship.
After the concern about how much of your revenue retailers take, owning the customer relationship is the biggest problem you’ll have with retail sellers. When a reader buys your book from Amazon, you will never know who they are. That buyer is just a line item in your payout dashboard. That’s it.
Think about how you shop online—every retail checkout experience is going to ask for your email so they can market to you in the future. If you’re selling through retailers, you’re sacrificing the opportunity to tell them about your next book, send them to your newsletter, or share any relevant updates.
The retailer owns the customer relationship. Direct-to-reader book sales give you back that relationship.
When readers buy from your website, you control their customer journey from the moment they land on your site until the final step in checkout. Think about some of the content you might want them to see or actions you want them to take (beyond just buying your book).
- Your site can include email subscription forms to add customers to your email list.
- You can recommend your other titles.
- Provide samples or excerpts as a free download.
- Buyers on your site can see your updates about a sequel, new edition, events, courses, or any related product.
When you sell from your site, you’re not just making a sale. You’re also building an audience.
Your Branding Everywhere
Branding isn’t just for iconic companies like Nike, McDonald's, or Apple.
For individual creators and small publishers, branding is about being remembered and recognized outside of your own site, social media, or newsletters. Even if you do not think of yourself as a brand, you are. Readers form an opinion based on how they find your book, how they buy it, the experience they have on your website, and what happens after they order.
Buying your book from a retailer means the customer is only seeing that retailer’s branding. The buying experience belongs to the retailer: the product page is built to match their site design, checkout uses their system, and all the emails come from them.
Your site is yours, and you can build it to suit. The product pages can do more than list a title, cover, price, and description. It can explain who the book is for. It can show sample pages. It can include reviews, videos, bonus content, FAQs, and links to related products. It can fit naturally into the rest of your author website.
When you use direct sales tools like Lulu Direct or an API integration, you’ll have control over the packing slips and shipping emails. That means you can leverage your own branding both on your site and social platforms and for the books your users get in the mail. The customer buys from you, and the experience stays centered on your brand.
Paul
Fulfillment Via Self-Publishing Distribution
Many years ago, I worked for a literary magazine that published quarterly. When the new edition was ready, boxes of books would be printed and shipped to the little office space we worked out of. Then a few of us would spend hours packaging, labeling, and shipping out books to our readers.
Tedious, time-consuming, and rough on the hands (paper cuts are the worst). The trade-off was that we were selling the anthologies directly from a simple WordPress site. No Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
For most authors, the prospect of packing and shipping their own books isn’t worth the time and effort. They’d rather take the hit from retailers and save themselves time to do more writing or marketing.
That is fair. No one wants to turn their living room into a shipping station.
Today, print-on-demand book fulfillment eliminates the need to hold inventory. Indie authors are using this modern print technology to send individual orders directly to their readers. And ecommerce tools like Shopify make selling from their own storefront simple and affordable.
The combination of ecommerce accessibility and print-on-demand gives you complete control over the fulfillment process.
Finally, there is your backlist. BookScan found that, in 2023, backlist sales in the US accounted for 70% of all book sales.
For individual authors and creators, selling backlist books before print-on-demand meant keeping extra copies and fulfilling them yourself. Now, you can offer every book you’ve ever created without holding a single copy on hand.
Control Over Offers and Sales Channels
Retailers want to sell products. Bookstores want to sell books. They don't care if they're your books or not.
When you sell books directly, you control the product pages, pricing, and special offers.
You can create book bundles for a series you’ve written. Or maybe you pair a book with a workbook, course, calendar, download, template, or piece of merchandise.
Because Lulu’s direct sales tools connect with the most popular ecommerce platforms, you’ll also be able to take advantage of other selling options from said platforms. Upsell your print book by offering a digital download of a sample chapter for a new book. Create volume discounts when readers buy multiple books.
That flexibility is powerful and helps you meet your reader’s expectations and desires. Not every reader wants the same thing.
Offering paperback, hardcover, ebook, and even audiobooks (with additional resources, Lulu doesn’t offer audiobook publishing at the moment) gives your readers the options they want. And it helps ensure you make a sale.
Build a Sales Strategy You Control
All of these benefits—and the many others I didn’t touch on—come back to control. Creators no longer have to give away control over their work to a publisher. You are the publisher.
That said, selling direct is not a replacement for other book sales channels. It’s a way to build control into your publishing strategy and improve the longevity of your business by building direct relationships.
The goal is not to completely ditch retailers. Amazon still has a place in your toolbox of selling options. But what you do want to do is avoid depending on any single retailer for your entire book business.
The real value of selling books directly is control. The value of selling through retailers is reach. Keep that distinction in mind as you develop your book sales strategies.
