In search of the optimal platform to market your eBooks on the internet? Don’t worry, this article has got you covered. Whether you’re just done writing your eBook or planning to write one in the future, this piece will guide you to discover your eBook’s new home.
Some of the sources mentioned in this article are going to be ebook marketplaces, and some of them are ebook selling tools. We will help you decide which option you should choose by looking into their features and costs.
But before that, let’s talk about why so many people are selling the ebooks online, and why should you do it too?
Why selling eBooks online is a good idea?
If we could jump into a time machine and take ourselves 20 or 30 years back, the idea of selling your informational product would not be as realistic as it is now.
Back then, investing in writing and printing equipment, hiring a bunch of writers and editors, taking care of distribution processes, making sure that the product reaches the bookshops with customers was a more of a realistic idea to make money with info products. And we are not even mentioning the marketing part yet…
But today we have a chance to take a quicker and more efficient approach.
While physical books are still popular, the use of these books is statistically declining. More and more people are switching their habits to digital technologies and by that, we can see the increasing use of electronic books with no signs of decline in the future.
So why not adopt this revolutionary trend by starting to sell our ebooks online?
In fact, creating and selling eBooks can be as effective and profitable option as selling real printed books, it just it’s more headache-free, and doesn’t require a large investment.
First of all, it can be 100% free to create an ebook and all you need for that is a laptop with Microsoft Word installed. If you don’t want to write it yourself you can turn into one of the ebook writing services.
While you may want to hire a graphic designer to design your book, you can also do this yourself for free with the design tools like Canva.com.
When it comes to distribution and marketing, it’s up to you which strategy and platform you should choose, but again, things don’t necessarily need to come at a high cost and you can find some cost-effective options according to your financial needs.
And that’s what this article is going to be about – helping you to find a perfect balance between cost, and features. Also, every mentioned platform in this article has some specific characteristics, so hopefully, you will find the one that fits your specific needs.
So without further ado, let’s get into the best places where you can sell your eBooks online
Where To Sell eBooks Online? (Best Places)
Here are the top 8 places to sell ebooks online:
1. Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is a service, that allows you to easily publish and sell your ebooks to a worldwide audience.
Here, publishers can distribute their books in multiple versions including, kindles, audiobooks, hardcovers, and paperbacks.
The reason why this platform is so popular among so many creators is that it gives a significant reach to a massive ebook retail market.
From 2016 to 2017 Amazon announced they have sold over 487 million Kindle ebooks, and the majority of the U.S. population choose Amazon as the main source for their ebooks.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your ebook is going to get exposure and sell great.
Amazon Kindle works as a search engine and has a built-in ranking system, which determines your ebook’s position according to a certain search phrase.
The rankings and traffic to your listed ebook depend on the competition, relevancy of the title, product quality, sales volume, reviews, and some other factors.
The process of selling your ebook through Kindle Direct Publishing is straightforward. You sign up with them, upload your ebook, choose the right category, set up the price, and you are ready to go.
It’s free to list and market as many ebooks as you want on KDP, and you have the freedom to set up the prices for your products. However, Amazon is going to take 30% of your profits, so you will be earning 70% of the royalties from every single ebook you sell.
The amazing thing about Kindle is that they allow marketing and selling physical copies of your ebook for free.
When someone buys a physical version of your ebook, books are being printed and shipped immediately, so they are never a part of the inventory and you will never run out of their stock.
Main Features:
- Access to real-time reports and analytics
- Allows to create your author page for free
- KPD University – webinars, videos, and other useful guides
- Giveaway promotion – allows running free giveaways for 5 days each month
- Publishes, prints, and ships physical copies for free
- Free ebook cover creator and file converter
- Additional Tools
Costs:
For the books priced from $2.99 to $9.99, the royalties are 70%, meaning that Amazon is going to take 30% of your profits. And for the books priced higher than $9,99 they will let you keep 35% of your profits.
SIGN UP HERE: KDP.Amazon.com
Also Read: Sell Ebooks on Amazon Without Writing
2. Selz.com
Selz.com is not a digital product store but a solution that allows selling various digital downloads including, videos, software, and ebooks in a multi-channel way.
This platform is essentially an online store creator packed with a variety of beautiful themes and effective marketing tools.
Here you can create your own independent online store (under your own custom domain name) where you are going to be selling your ebooks.
You can also integrate the Selz ecosystem into your existing website. No matter whether you have a WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, or any other site, with Selz you can turn it into a fully functional digital product store within the minutes.
You can also integrate the Selz eCommerce solution into your Facebook page. You can transfer your whole ebook inventory to your new Facebook shop, with features like messenger chatbots, payment/shipping solutions, as well as discount codes and coupons.
Other than that, this platform also made sure that you have enough built-in marketing and analytical tools throughout your journey.
Main Features:
- Multi-channel selling
- Online store creator
- eCommerce solution for existing websites
- Built-in content marketing tools and SEO optimization
- Complete payment solutions
- Facebook integration
- Paid advertising options
- Business insights and analytics
- Budget optimization features
- Promotions and discounts
- Inventory management system
- Tax and invoice solutions
- 24/7 support
- Free 14-day trial
Pricing:
Selz.com offers 3 pricing plans:
- Basic: $26/month
- Standard: $53/month
- Advanced: $179/month
There are different features available for each of the plans:
SIGN UP HERE: Selz.com
3. Payhip.com
Payhip.com is another third party solution to sell all types of digital files, including ebooks.
This platform is for those who already have their website set up and are looking to sell digital products from it directly.
Payhip is not an online store builder and it only works as an integration to your current website. It allows you to store your ebooks on their server and they offer you a checkout page that can be customized and designed.
They take care of the transactions and business security as well as of providing your customers with instant downloads.
The unique selling point of Payhib is that it also carries out the membership solutions for your website. So, if you are thinking to turn your website into the recurring membership site, this platform is a great option for that.
Another great thing about Payhib is that it allows you to recruit affiliates who are going to promote your ebooks for a commission, and affiliate marketing is a trusted strategy for many successful ebook sellers.
Unlike Selz.com, this platform has a free membership option, so everyone can start selling ebooks through their platform at no cost.
However, they take a 5% transaction fee from every FREE member, a 2% transaction fee from a PLUS member, and no transaction fees for PRO members.
Which membership plan you should choose entirely depends on the selling volume and prices of your eBooks. But, if you are just starting out, you can take a big advantage of their free membership plan.
Main Features:
- Affiliate system
- Custom offers and coupons
- Social media discounts
- Customizable checkout page
- Membership integration on your website
- Secure transactions
Pricing:
- FREE – $0 /month + 5% transaction fee
- PLUS – $29 /month + 2% transaction fee
- PRO –Â $99 /month, no transaction fees
SIGN UP HERE: Payhip.com
4. Blurb.com
Blurb is a complete all-in-one ebook creation, promotion and selling platform.
This platform works best for those who haven’t created their ebooks yet, as this platform offers a variety of options how to do that.
First of all, Blurb.com has a foundational design software called Bookwright that you can download for free and use for your ebook creation and design process. This app allows you to create not only ebooks but also, trade books, magazines and many more.
Besides that, Blurb.com has some other tools for the complete digital info product creation. There’s also a PDF to Book converter software, Adobe Indesign & Lightroom integration plugins, as well as the mobile ebook creator app for iPhone & iPad.
So if you are looking for the maximum freedom in the ebook creation and design process, you are in the right hands with Blurb.
When it comes to the distribution and marketing, you can sell your ebooks directly from the Blurb Bookstore, without any listing charges or fees. Blurb Bookstore is essentially a big marketplace with a wide spectrum of various ebooks accessible for anyone.
Apart from selling on their marketplace, Blurb also allows you to easily distribute your ebooks on other popular channels, such as Amazon, Ingram, or Apple iBooks store.
Main Features:
- Create info products in multiple formats
- Individual and large order printing services
- Online sales tools
- API printing services
- Expert hiring option
- Printing advice and planning
- Expanded print options
- Variety of design tools
- Social media discounts
- Customizable checkout page
- Membership integration on your website
- Secure transactions
Pricing:
Blurb charges a one-time conversion fee of $9.99 per ebook.
SIGN UP HERE: Blurb.com
5. Lulu.com
Lulu.com’s mission is to make content creation and consumption a simpler and more rewarding experience for people around the world.
It’s a service that helps to create and sell both – ebooks and physical books online.
Lulu.com itself does not offer any ebook design tools, however, it has a PDF and EPUB converter, which allows converting your Word document into the formats that are available to all eReaders and tablets.
They have print-on-demand options, and you can sell paperback versions of your ebooks too. In this case, they will charge higher fees of your profits, which will include book manufacturing costs.
Lulu also offers quality author services such as ebook creation, design, editing, publicity, and promotional services, but they will come at the cost.
This platform allows free self-publishing and you can set your own pricing here. However, they will take off 10% commissions of your net profit, and you will also have to pay a fixed hosting fee, which is $0.99 per ebook sold.
You also have multi-channel selling options here, and you can either sell your ebooks on the Lulu Marketplace, or you can distribute them on other popular places, like Amazon Kindle, iBooks, Nook, or Kobo.
And of course, Lulu offers the biggest profit margins if you distribute your ebooks through their marketplace.
They also have Shopify integration, so your customers can order ebooks directly from your Shopify store and Lulu will take care of the orders.
Main Features:
- Print-on-demand service
- Bulk order discounts
- Multi-channel selling
- Shopify integration
- Paid design, editing, publishing & marketing services
- Learning resources
Pricing:
Lulu will deduct 10% of commissions from the profits of every single ebook sold. They will also charge a fixed hosting fee of $0.99 per ebook.
SIGN UP HERE: Lulu.com
6. BarnesAndNoble.com
Barnes and Noble is a well-known and popular ebook supplier and its marketplace daily reaches millions of people worldwide.
Similarly like Amazon Kindle, this platform can give significant exposure to your ebooks, and the publishing process is really straightforward here. You sign up, pick your desired format, upload your files and you are ready to sell.
This platform works mainly as a marketplace, and it does not offer any additional features, such as ebook creators, or marketing tools.
However, they can help you in the marketing process, as they regularly notify their visitors with new products in their selected genre or category.
They also have monthly themed collections where both, new and established sellers can be featured and given some extra exposure.
Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing platform is called Barnes & Noble PRESS. Through this platform, you can upload your ebook and submit it for sale on the main Barnes & Noble site.
Besides ebooks, here you can also sell printed versions of your books with no upfront cost.
If you feel you need additional training on the ebook topic, Barnes & Noble has an entire learning section on that. And if you feel you need an extra hand in the whole process, this platform offers some 3rd party paid self-publisher services in topics like editorial, design, marketing, and websites.
Main features:
- Big marketplace
- No upfront cost
- Allows to create and sell paperbacks and hard copies
- Author spotlight
- Detailed sales reports
- Paid self-publishing services available
- Learning resources
Pricing:
– They will pay 40% royalties for sold ebooks that are in the price range of $0.99 – $2.98.
– They will pay 65% royalties for sold ebooks that are in the price range of $2.99 – $199.99
SIGN UP HERE: Barnesandnoble.com
7. IngramSpark.com
IngramSpark is
The unique selling point of this platform is that you have a chance to distribute your books to a lot of retailers and online shops worldwide.This platform works best for those who are willing to invest a little more and dominate the industry by appearing on multiple ebook marketplaces.
As you publish your books with IngramSpark, you can easily distribute your ebooks on all of these platforms too:
- 24Symbols
- Amazon
- Apple
- Barnes & Noble Nook
- BibliU.com
- Bookmate
- Booktopia
- De Marque Retail
- eBooks.com
- Hummingbird DM
- ITSI Education UK
- Kobo
- Libreka
- Libri
- LitRes eBook
- LIX
- RedShelf (Virdocs)
- SpoonRead
- VitalSource
- Wook
IngramSpark gives you complete management over your global book distribution along with the fair royalty setup system.
Here, you can create not only ebooks, and paperbacks, but also hardbacks, and that’s one of the reasons why many creators turn to IngramSpark.
This website won’t directly help you with ebook writing, editing, or design tasks, however, they provide a complete section of learning sources where you can learn for free.
While IngramSpark is considered a fairly good platform to use, it also has some negatives that could hurt the user experience.
First of all, before you publish your ebook on IngramSpark, make sure that everything inside your ebook is correct and you won’t have to apply any changes and edits after publishing. Because if you publish your ebook, and then later decide that you want to change something inside, you will have to pay $25 processing fee for that.
It’s better if you also set your pricing, genre, royalty rate, and write your description correctly before you publish your book. It’s because even if it won’t cost anything additional to change these, the changes won’t appear instantly, and you will have to wait for the next month to come. Whereas, on Kindle Direct Publishing, and other platforms, you can see these kinds of changes right away.
Features:
- Â 24/7 customer support
- Â Online sales reporting
- Â Free publishing tools and resources
- Â Affordable advertising opportunities
- Â Global distribution to over 40,000 retailers and libraries
- Â Discounts with outside experts on publisher services
- Â Free online self-publishing courses
Pricing:
Print and ebook publishing – $49 for both
Only ebook publishing – $25 per ebook
As you can see they also have a feature that converts print books into ebooks, and for that, they charge 60 dollar cents per page.
SIGN UP HERE: Ingramspark.com
8. E-Junkie.com
E-Junkie is another solution that can help you sell ebooks on your online shop, blog, social media or eBay account.
It’s simple to start selling with E-Junkie. All you do is you add your ebooks, and connect E-Junkie to your selling platform. They provide a shopping cart and “buy now” buttons codes that you can easily integrate into the platform where you want to sell your products.
They also have their own product marketplace, where people can browse and purchase the ebooks published with E-Junkie. However, this marketplace is incomparably smaller than major shopping destinations, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble, so you will need to also have a website to market your products.
If you don’t have a website, E-Junkie is capable to create an SEO friendly product landing page, to which you can send your customers from anywhere.
Or, you can also create an entire ebook shop with them, but they will have their name in the subdomain section of your shop’s URL. (for example – www.myehop.e-junkie.com)
You have numerous options to choose from when it comes to payment methods. E-junkie works almost with all payment solutions, including Paypal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Braintree, and many more.
This platform will safely process every sale and for digital goods, and they will also do an instant delivery for your customers.
They don’t charge you for ebook sales, and all you pay is a fixed monthly fee, which depends on the features you want to take advantage of.
Must mention that they also have an affiliate system, so you can recruit the affiliates who are going to promote your ebooks for the commissions.
Main Features:
- Landing page creator
- Online store creator
- Analytics
- E-book protection (PDF stamping)
- Customizable shopping cart
- Promotional tools such as discounts and coupons
- Easy third party integrations mailing lists, logistics or accounting software
- Inventory management
- Affiliate programs
- Easy Tax/VAT calculations
- 30 Day Free Trial
Pricing:
Pricing depends on how many products you want to sell with E-Junkie, as well on which download storage you want to choose:
– 10 products – $5/month
– 40 products – $10/month
– 150 products – $20/month
– Unlimited Products – $40/month
SIGN UP HERE: E-junkie.com
Final Words:
It’s important that you choose the right place for selling your wonderful ebooks online. To maximize sales, you would also want to sell those ebooks from your website, blog, or online store.
For that reason, it’s okay and even advised to use a combination of the sources provided in this article.
Pick one marketplace where you would like to store your ebook, and pick one ebook selling solution that will help you integrate and sell the products from the platform you own – your website.
Which marketplace and which third-party integrations you should use entirely depends on your needs and the budget. However all of the platforms mentioned in this article have earned a high reputation from its users over time, so you can’t really go wrong when choosing any of these.
Good luck making money by selling ebooks!