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Whether or not an author should sell books on their own website is a question I get asked all the time as a web designer.

The answer depends on how much time you have and your overall marketing and sales strategy.

I’ve listed the pros and cons of selling books on your author website vs. linking out to retailers below.

Selling books on your author website

PROS

• You’ll make a higher profit per book sold

• You have the ability to add more goodies to your orders, like stickers, personal handwritten notes, or other promotional merchandise

• You’ll have your reader’s contact information and potential opt-in to your mailing list, which is a huge part of growing your brand and author platform

• You can offer promotions like free shipping or 20% off whenever you’d like

CONS

• Your book sales won’t be counted towards charts like Amazon

• You miss out on earning reviews on other platforms, which can be a vital selling tool for organic discovery

• Packing up orders and dropping them off at USPS can be time consuming

• You’ll have to pay for shipping yourself by working it into the price of your book, or charge customers a shipping fee they’re not accustomed to paying on most major websites

  
  

Linking out to retailers

PROS

• The retailer fulfills all orders

• You can earn reviews on their platforms which will help your organic performance in their algorithms

• You can run ads for your book on sites like Amazon to quickly reach more readers

• Your book has more of a good chance to rank favorably on Amazon’s diverse genre and sub-genre charts

• Customers are already used to buying books from their preferred retailers

CONS

• You make less profit per book

• Amazon can change the price of your book at any moment

• You aren’t gathering your readers’ contact information

• You can’t add any other promotional materials to their orders

Basically what it comes down to is your overall marketing strategy for your book, and the time you have to fulfill orders on your own. 

Whatever you decide, take a minute to think about your overall marketing strategy for your book launch.

Do you want to build steady reviews on Amazon and run ads to ride the charts? 

Or are you envisioning more of a grassroots approach by selling your books directly to readers through outreach of your own, like speaking events and book fairs?

Remember: You can always do both!

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