Lindsay - January 13, 2022If you’re self-publishing, and you have the rights to sell your books/ebooks/audiobooks directly from your site, and you’re not doing so, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.
For this week’s show, six-figure fantasy and romance author Katie Cross joins us to answer our questions on the logistics of selling books from your site and why you’d want to go through the hassle. She actually earns more from her direct sales than from book sales on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.
Here are some of the questions we asked her:
- What was your road to publishing like, and why did you decide to start selling direct?
- I wanted to take a moment to point out the very strong and clear cover design you have. Do you have a cover designer, or is that your handiwork?
- What is your website setup like, and how do you handle payment and delivery? (Katie uses Shopify for the back end, Active Campaign for email integration, and LuLuExpress for print-on-demand paperback delivery.)
- Do you stick with ebooks/ebooks/audiobooks or do you do merch or any higher ticket items?
- Naturally you still have books on Amazon; also naturally, you’re not exclusive. Do you sell wide, or is your non-Amazon sales focus primarily your site?
- Have you ever considered using Kindle Unlimited as part of a selling strategy? If so, how would you approach it? If not, do you think it’s possible to sell direct and have KU work for an author? (Following all of Amazon’s rules, of course.)
- We know from your interview with Joe Solari that you do Facebook advertising. Are you sending them straight to a sales page for a $5 book or giving away a free starter novel or some combination of both?
- Do you have any books/bundles that are exclusive to your site?
- Do you ever do price promos on the direct sales? Is price matching on Amazon a concern?
- Do you have books you haven’t ever and won’t ever put on retailer sites? What is the deciding factor for that? (How do you decide which books to keep only direct, etc.)
- When it comes to selling direct, what are some mistakes you’ve made along the way?
- Lots of authors have an existing website dedicated to collecting email addresses for a newsletter and/or providing updates. Should a website for selling direct be built from the ground up for that purpose?
- How do you handle site outages? Has it happened to you? What advice do you have on this aspect for someone who hopes to have direct sales make up most of their income?
If you want to learn more about Katie’s books, please check out her two websites Katie Cross Books and Katie Cross Romance.
To see how her funnel works and get some ideas for how you might want to sell direct, you can see things in action here: https://welcome.kcrosswriting.com/welcome/
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week!
