Every author needs to know where to sell books online.
There is no right or wrong way when you decide which self-publishing book and ebook services you are going to select. All of them can help you to sell books online.
You aim to use the best possible routes toward potential book buyers to gain sales for your titles.
There are many online book publishers available. But when it comes to ebooks, there are a few decisions you will need to make before you list your book.
Make sensible retailer choices to help you sell books
The first is to decide if you only want unit sales at your cover price.
Or do you also want to offer your ebooks to ebook subscription services?
Note that ebook subscription services usually pay a much lower royalty than ebook unit sales.
The second decision is whether you a willing to accept Amazon ebook exclusivity.
Or do you want to remain independent?
In other words, do you want your ebooks available on as many ebook retailers as possible or only on Amazon Kindle?
To make these decisions, you need to understand what online retailers can offer you.
And, more importantly, what they demand from you.
The details below are for the major online book and ebook retailers.
It will give you a brief outline before doing your research and starting to learn how to sell books online.
Amazon, FBA, Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, KDP, and KDP Select
Amazon sells books.
It sells every type of book you can imagine.
It is the place to sell textbooks, paperback novels, coloring books, hardcover bestsellers, and university or college textbooks.
In my teaching job, I buy all my textbooks online from Amazon.
This is because shipping is free, and it even offers textbook buyback if I overorder.
If you publish outside of Amazon, you can still sell copies of your printed books in its store.
You need to use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
You need to get a price quote and shipping labels to use Amazon’s service to sell for you.
Almost all authors choose to have both their paperbacks and ebooks available on Amazon.
Amazon is by far the largest global online book retailer.
So it is always the best place to sell books online.
It is especially true if you are new to self-publishing and looking to publish your first book.
For paperbacks, hardcovers, and audiobooks, Amazon is absolutely the primary book retailer to use.
What about ebooks?
When it comes to ebooks, Amazon gives you two choices about how you can offer your ebooks on the Kindle Store.
You can upload and publish an ebook on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) easily.
Your ebook will then be available for sale on the Kindle Store on all Amazon sites.
But when you publish your Kindle ebook, you will be given the option of enrolling in KDP Select.
It is definitely not the same as the standard KDP.
If you enroll with a simple click into KDP Select, you will be granting Amazon total exclusivity to your ebook.
You will not be able to offer your ebook for sale on any other retailer for 90 days. Or longer if you also have auto-renew ticked.
If you want to sell your ebooks with other retailers, do not enter your book in KDP Select.
But, if you want to offer your ebooks on Kindle Unlimited, you will have to enroll in KDP Select.
There are some advantages to KDP Select.
But be sure you know the differences between KDP and KDP Select before making your choice.
Blurb
Blurb is an excellent choice because you can cover all the bases in one place.
You can design and create beautiful trade-quality print books as well as ebooks.
Then you can distribute your books from Blurb to Amazon, iBooks, and Ingram. It also has an excellent online bookstore.
If you want an easy way to produce, publish, and sell your books, Blurb is a terrific option for you.
Apple and iBooks
Apple iBooks only sells ebooks.
But it is second to Amazon in market share, so it is a very good online retailer to use.
More and more people are reading on iPhones and iPads.
So having your ebooks available for sale on Apple is a good option to help you sell books online.
It is possible to publish directly with Apple.
But it is much easier to use an aggregator that will do this for you. You can read about aggregators later in this article.
Apple does not have an ebook subscription service.
For some authors, this is a good thing, as royalties from sales remain stable.
Barnes & Noble and Nook
B&N used to be second only to Amazon.
But in the last couple of years, its bookseller market share has declined.
It is especially so for its Nook ebook business.
You can publish ebooks directly with Nook.
But this option is only available for US authors. For non-US authors, the only option is to use an aggregator.
It is worth noting that you can also publish a paperback.
But it does not offer the facility to make your books available on any other sales channel or retailer.
Kobo
Coming in after Apple in market share, Kobo is worth using. But don’t expect a huge number of sales.
Kobo has a small but loyal user base. So if your ebooks manage to gain some traction, it is possible to gain sales.
Kobo also offers an ebook subscription service called Kobo Plus.
Again, you can publish directly with Kobo, but the easier way is via an aggregator.
Google Play Books
Google is worth a try.
I have always thought that Google Play Books should perform much better than it does.
You need to publish directly. But it has an awful and confusing publishing dashboard and an even worse sales reporting system.
You might get lucky, but I have never gained a lot of sales. But sales do sometimes trickle through.
The other retailers and libraries
There are many ebook retailers, including Tolino, Scribd, 24Symbols, and Playster, to name a few.
There are also some specialty retailers like All Romance Books and Omnilit.
While much smaller in market share, you might be lucky and find some sales traction.
The last sales avenue is libraries.
You can get your ebooks into libraries if you use an aggregator that supplies OverDrive, which specializes in library ebook distribution.
Choosing an aggregator
The best-known ebook aggregators are Smashwords and Draft2Digital.
Both are truly excellent services that offer very good support.
In choosing between the two, you might want to consider which one suits your needs best.
Draft2Digital is easy to use and requires very little knowledge of ebook formatting.
But Smashwords offers a wider range of distribution channels, including libraries.
You can read more here about Draft2Digital and Smashwords.
Use an aggregator or go direct?
The benefit of using an aggregator is that your ebooks are made available to a list of ebook retailers.
Also, your royalty payments are managed in one place by the aggregator, making it a convenient way to get paid.
But if you publish directly with retailers, you will get a slightly higher royalty and won’t pay a small cut to an aggregator.
However, your royalty payments will be split and might also be affected by minimum earnings payments.
It always pays to check how and when you will be paid before you make a decision.
Conclusion
When you self-publish a book, you need to learn how to sell books online.
Choosing your online retailers for paperbacks is easy.
Get your books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if possible, and as many more as you can find.
With ebooks, however, there is always a difficult choice to make.
Open-publishing means having your ebook available with as many retailers as possible.
But Amazon KDP Select exclusivity means your ebook will only be available on the Amazon Kindle Store.
This choice is up to each author. There is no right or wrong choice, as there are benefits to both.
If you have several titles, you can always have some in and some out. Then you can see which works best for you in the long term.
Tip! Don’t forget to ask your local bookstores if they will agree to stock your books.
You can also offer and sell your ebooks directly from your website, blog, or social media.
But if you want to build a store on a WordPress site will need a little technical ability to link downloads with a payment service gateway.
After you have made your choices about where to sell your books and ebooks, it will be time to promote your books.
That is when the hard work really starts.
Related Reading: I Wrote A Book, But It Won’t Sell – Learn How To Sell Your Book
Gave D2D a try and discovered their converter cannot handle anything but first-level headings. It’s okay for fiction or narrative non-fiction, but not topical non-fiction with sub-headings. Another problem I encountered was with bullets to call a reader’s attention to specific points or procedural steps. Their converter does strange things if you put a space between the bullet and the text associated with it. D2D will accept uploads in the EPUB format, so authors who know how to revise the HTML in an EPUB file might be able to get around some of these problems. But D2D won’t change an EPUB file to accommodate the points of sale where they distribute your book, so that might cause some problems with NOOK, B&N, Apple and so forth.
Thank you. I learned something. My books are sold only on Amazon and I was wondering if it’s worth expanding.
I’m almost ready to launch my novel, and I’ve also been considering Tablo, especially as you have access to global print-and-demand services. Have you used this feature, or are you only distributing ebooks?
I have published my last two books on tablo.io, located in Australia. The platform is fun, permitting the author to literally write the book chapter-by-chapter at any time of day…sharing content with other members and with Twitter and Facebook. When the book is completed, a simple click of the publish button and the book is placed under review. Within a few days, the editors notify you as to the status of publishing. If accepted there is a small charge to refine, edit and make the book technologically appropriate to be printed-on-demand and as an eBook. The book is then listed on various sellers like amazon, B&N, as well as many others around the world. I have been extremely positive about the entire process and the way my books look and read. I have even spoken with Ash Davies, the founder! LOL
Google play is horrible to use. Least user-friendly publishing tool I’ve ever used.