How do you sell a self-published book online and manage shipping?

Part 4: An insight into self-publishing a book

This is the fourth and final part of a series about how we self-published a book. This part is about online selling and distributing your book.

There are various means of selling and distributing a self-published book. The service you used to print your books may go a long way to deciding — or even dictating — which method or services you adopt, which we’ll come back to. You can also use multiple sales channels to reach a wider audience. This article delves into the pros and cons of the options available to you and shares our story of how we sold and distributed our book.

Photo by Bench Accounting via Unsplash

I’ll start with the three options we didn’t do, and why.

1. Print-on-demand online stores

Some print-on-demand services have their own online stores that sell your book. For example, see Blurb’s Bookstore or BookBaby’s BookShop. Your book gets its own web page you can direct customers to, and is discoverable on their platform. If you’re looking for the easiest option and you’re not too bothered about profit, then this option is fine. It requires almost no setup and no input from you (i.e. no maintenance and no processing orders).