Great information here though.

Si glad you found it helpful! Morgana 🙂

Good question! It all depends on your goals and I always say to start out as you wish to finish. For example, if you wanted to win a horse race one day it would be better to start now with a racehorse rather than a Shetland pony.
When you have Payhip, you are dabbling in it, but when you have Shopify, you actually have an ecommerce business and you can take advantage of everything Shopify has to offer. For example, you can print your books via print on demand with Lulu which prints not only in the UK and the US but also in Canada, Australia, and in Europe.
You have the advantage of an ecommerce email and SMS marketing system such as Klaviyo which typically produces 30% of the stores income with its automated flows, and you can have a good review app such as Loox which email is purchased after a set period of time and ask for reviews and post the reviews on your site – all automatically. You have the benefit of being able to establish very good SEO.
So if you want to go into ecommerce, then Shopify is the way to go. I have a YouTube channel called Authors selling direct with heaps of advice on it. Very best of luck!

Best of luck when you do take the leap! Morgana 🙂

I have a long chapter on international sales tax in my book. In a nutshell, it depends where the buyer lives not the seller. In a couple of places in the world it depends on both but it always depends where the buyer lives.
It’s handled differently for different locations.
Morgana 🙂

Free is for the retailers. Lead magnets have no place in an ecommerce store unless they’re for specialty non-fiction such as giving away a recipe on a cookbook site.
Free will completely ruin all your data.
You give a percentage in your pop-up subscribe form and not a lead magnet. That is on your pop-up subscribe form they can receive 10% or 15% off their next order for subscribing.
Keep Free for the retailers. I have videos on this on my YouTube channel, authors selling direct which explain in more detail
🙂 Morgana.

I love this insight, Morgana!

Hi Matthew! It’s a common misconception that you have to undercut the retailers. Yet 8 to 9 figure brands such as Gymshark have ecommerce stores from which they sell products with long and paid-for shipping yet they sell their products on Amazon for the same amount yet with same day prime shipping. Yet they make eight figures a year from their ecommerce stores.
This is simply a an author misconception with no basis in fact. You do not and should not undercut the retailer prices. There are plenty of authors making very good money from their ecommerce stores and they’ll price the same as the retailers. Also, people can build a business around a single non-fiction book and use Shopify as their website
However, when you have a store you have an ecommerce business and of course not everybody wants to do that.
Happy New Year, Morgana.