The publishing world seems to be obsessed with Amazon. There is good reason for that. Over 80% of the digital-book business goes through Amazon. As such, Amazon is the place to be. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful if you’re not on Amazon. In fact, there are highly successful authors and publishers who have a minuscule presence on Amazon.
In this article, we’re going to be looking at how you can make a decent profit by selling on your own website. Moreover, you will find that selling on your site doesn’t have to be a painful process. In fact, you’ll find that it’s pretty straightforward.
Selling on Your Website Using Amazon
You can do all of the marketing, advertising, and promotion for your book on social media, in person, or through word-of-mouth advertising. But when it comes time to selling, your readers can visit your website to pick up a copy of your materials. Here, you can partner up with Amazon to make sales happen.
In this scheme, customers go to your website, click on “buy now” and get redirected to your Amazon page. There, customers check out through the Amazon portal. As such, your website doesn’t actually sell anything. Amazon does it for you. In the end, this option is the easiest and quickest way for authors to make sales. It takes the guesswork out of making sales.
Selling on Your Website Without Using Amazon
In this scheme, you do everything exactly the same as the previous one. The difference is that when customers hit the “buy now” button, they will be redirected to another page within your website. The most complex aspect here is to take payments and process the purchase. Platforms such as WordPress can offer you the tools you need to make this process relatively simple. However, you need to have some technical know-how. For most publishers, this generally means hiring a web developer to handle the nitty-gritty part.
Another approach is to enlist the help of you a third-party payment processor such as PayPal. These companies allow a customer to pay with a credit card or their app. Thus, you don’t need any fancy setup on your website. Once the purchase is complete, users can download your content or receive an email with access to the content.
Which Is Better?
The easiest way is to partner up with Amazon. It offers the easiest means of making purchases. However, you would have to pay a commission for every purchase. Therefore, most authors would rather use a third-party service. That way, there are no commissions to pay. Even a transaction fee on every sale is far lower than the commissions you would have to pay to Amazon. As such, you need to choose between the ease of use and profitability. Although, there is a happy medium. You can offer your customers both options. That way, they can choose whichever option works best for them. In the end, you make sales through your website. That ensures the best possible level of profitability for your publishing business.
