When I recently moved my website to WordPress I was looking forward to being able to sell my books directly to interested readers. Copies were already available through Amazon of course, as well as other outlets such as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, AppleBooks, and Kobo, but they all take their cut and they can impose certain restrictions. This is certainly true of Amazon. I also found it difficult to link all of these outlets to one marketing campaign. My idea was simple, have one place where customers can purchase a digital copy of the book the want and have it available in whichever format suits their preferred eReader. I was hoping that by upgrading to the Premium plan on WordPress I would be able to use the popular WooCommerce platform, but that is reserved for business plan users only. I would have to upgrade again to get access to it, which means more money being spent of course; my budget is already straining!
Fortunately, I discovered another platform that allows users to sell all manner of products online, including digital books, and it is called Payhip. It works very much like WordPress, using blocks to customise a basic webpage. I found these as annoying as I have done previously with WordPress, but eventually I was able to get my Payhip store to look something like my WordPress website. The two are now linked together. If one of my books takes your fancy you just click on the 'Buy Now' button and it takes you directly to the product page from where you can choose the the file type for your eReader, purchase the book, download it to your device, and begin reading. It is surprisingly seamless and straightforward.
I am in the process of designing some marketing campaigns for my books and being able to utilise both my website and online store in this manner is, I hope, going to prove very useful. Payhip even allows me to sell paperback copies of my books as well, which is something I very much want to do in the near future.
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