- When you sell your book through Amazon or in a store,
not only are you making less money per copy sold,
but you're also not getting the contact information
of the book buyer so you can build a relationship with them.
But, selling a book direct from your website is a pain.
Collecting payment, taxes, shipping, ugh.
If you want a simple way to sell your book
on your website with minimal hassle,
this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie the book Broad from Book Launchers.
We're your professional self-publishing team,
helping you write, publish, and promote
a non-fiction book that will help you have
a huge impact on your readers.
And done right, will help you grow your brand,
build you business, and make you money.
The best part, you keep all the rights and royalties.
Selling books from your website is a great way
to make a few more dollars per copy sold
and be able to connect more personally
with the people who buy your book.
But, how can you do it simply and easily?
Well, there's a few options,
but one that I really recommend is using Lulu,
you find them at lulu.com.
And the fabulous Chelsea Bennett from the Lulu team
was kind enough to take a few minutes
and share just how this works for authors with Lulu.
But, first, if you're not familiar with Lulu,
I asked Chelsea to give you a little introduction
to the company, take it away, Chelsea.
- If you're unfamiliar with Lulu,
we are a self-publishing and print-on-demand platform.
So, a great thing about Lulu
is that we are completely free to use,
you just bring your manuscript and cover,
publish, print, and then you only have to pay
when you wanna buy print copies of your book.
Another thing I always like to throw in there
is that we're also a certified B corporation.
So, if you're not familiar what that means,
B corp certification is sort of like
what organic certification is to milk,
so it just means that a third party comes in
and makes sure we are transparent
and committed to sustainability in everything that we do.
- Lulu has great printing.
If you have specialty color books in particular,
I think they have a really great service.
But, one thing I didn't really know
until Chelsea connected with me,
was that they have a really great way
for authors to use Lulu to sell direct
from their author websites.
So, that's what I'm gonna have Chelsea explain
to you right now.
- We have created an app for Shopify
that allows you to sell directly to your readers.
You, as the author, keep 100% of the revenue.
You also get transactional data
which can help build out your email list
and help you market smarter for future books
that you may be publishing.
So, just as an example, if you are an author
and you published a book on Lulu,
and you wanted to use our app for Shopify,
or, alternatively, we have an API as well
that plugs you into our global print
and fulfillment network.
So, if you wanted to use either of those options,
we'll say that the book
that you publish on Lulu costs $5 to manufacturer.
That's what you're gonna pay as the author.
However, if you sell that book for $15,
by selling it through your own website,
you keep $10 of that profit.
If you sell it through the lulu.com bookstore
or if you use our distribution options
and go through Amazon,
we're gonna take our cut,
Amazon obviously is gonna take their cut.
So, selling through the Lulu bookstore,
there's an 80/20 revenue split
so that $10 of profit that I just spoke of
would turn out to be $8 if you sold through
the lulu.com bookstore.
So, we're gonna take 20%, you get the 80.
- Okay, check this out, just head on over to Lulu
and you get the instructions right here.
And then you're going to set up a Shopify account.
After you log into your Shopify account
from your store dashboard,
you're gonna access the app store from the link
on the left menu.
From here, search for Lulu xPress
and Add the app.
With the Lulu xPress app installed,
select Lulu xPress and complete
the login registration process to access the app.
Once the app is installed, you'll be able
to create a book project.
So, you upload the files, set a price
and a shipping cost, and sell your book
without ever leaving that Shopify dashboard.
If you are more sophistaicated
or you have a web developer and you already have
a business in place for selling products on your website,
then you can also use their API
which, just so you know, API is short
for application program interface
and that's really just code for instructions
to have two software programs connect
and speak to each other.
Clearly I'm not a coder either so that's how I explain it.
But, for someone with basic coding knowledge,
APIs are usually pretty straightforward to implement.
So, setting up the ability to sell books
on your website gets you the contact information
for your buyer, you keep more money per book,
and you're also not doing any shipping
when you use Lulu.
You're not the fulfillment house of these books, Lulu is.
So, I think that's really valuable.
And, bonus pts (bulb dinging)
because you don't have to try to calculate
and remit taxes for a bunch of different locations
when you do this because sales tax
is handled through Shopify
for orders that customers place in their store.
If the author doesn't wanna pay taxes
on the Lulu orders, they provide a reseller certificate
and Lulu can stop collecting taxes from them.
That's a real load off your shoulders
for folks thinking of selling books on their website.
Now, before Chelsea finishes for today,
I did ask her to explain a little bit
about the printing options at Lulu
because some of you, looking for specialty books,
or even the option to sell full color versions
of your book from your website,
Lulu could be a great option when you combine
it with the Shopify store option we just talked about.
So, Chelsea, tell us about your printing at Lulu.
- We have four different tiers of print.
So, we'll do our standard black and white,
premium black and white, standard color,
and then premium color.
This can be really nice because authors across
a spectrum who may have just a few color images
or illustrations in their book
can choose the standard and get some really beautiful,
high color, and high quality images for a lower price point
and then those authors who may have photo books
or full color books that they need
to have illustrated or colored, really heavy saturation,
then you can choose the premium
which is gonna be a really, really nice representation
of those photos.
A couple things to note is both of these options
have 60 pound or 80 pound coded paper available.
So, that can be great.
It really just depends on sort of what you're looking for
with your outcome.
Another thing that I'd like to drop in here,
a quick pro tip,
you wanna use images that are at least 300 dpi
and that's gonna give you the best result.
- Print quality at Lulu is great
and that makes this a really good option
for selling from your website
or creating color picture books for special events
or bulk runs and selling them on the Lulu bookstore.
For our clients, we still recommend using KDP print
for selling to Amazon so you make the most money possible
per copy sold and we still use Ingram
for the widest international distribution possible
for print books.
But, more and more, authors want to incorporate sales
onto their website without the hassles
and Lulu really fills the gap in the market
in a wonderful way with high quality books.
If you wanna learn more about all the things Lulu does,
here's where Chelsea says you should go.
- We have a lot of ways you can connect with us
and I hope that you do.
So, lulu.com is our website.
Please check us out.
If you'd like to follow us on social,
we are @luludotcom so L-U-L-U-D-O-T-C-O-M.
- All right, like this tip.
Go ahead and hit that thumbs up button,
it makes you feel good and it'll also make me
and Chelsea feel good too, so go ahead, try it.
Then, stop by the comments and let me know
what you think of this idea
or how you currently sell books from your website.
And when you comment the day a video is released,
you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher swag
like this, #noboringbooks mug where coffee, tea,
and hot chocolate taste better in it.
Or, our oh so soft journal
for writing down all your brilliant book ideas
and even the not so brilliant ones too.
Now that you know how to sell books from your website,
you might be thinking your website probably needs
a little work.
So, this video right here is all about creating
a great author website.
And this video right here
is the latest and greatest from the channel
in case you're not up-to-date.
Either way, I'd really enjoy it
if we could spend a little bit more time together today,
so go ahead and choose one
and I'll be waiting there for you.
(upbeat music)