By Kris Maze

Being an indie author is a hellava lotta work, my friends. Passion for crafting great stories and knowing how to sell them as an indie author is just the beginning. You might have solid advice, a dream team to set up your store, and books your audience will devour, but that's only part of the puzzle. To truly make waves, to make a disruption in the publishing world as an indie author, there are other factors to consider. Read on for an inside look at my experience using WooCommerce to sell physical books from my author website, complete with its promises and woes.

The Hosting Nightmare

My website journey began years ago with Bluehost. Back then, my site was just a single page, and I was taking a class to improve my author platform. I fumbled my way through setting it up and, in an effort to save money, purchased a three-year hosting plan for a bargain price. Then Bluehost was sold to another entity. I figured, what difference does it make who hosts my site? As long as my books had an online home, I was good to go.

It turns out, it does make a difference.

Under new ownership, Bluehost’s quality dropped significantly, particularly when it came to supporting small, independent businesses like mine. Customer service became nearly impossible to reach, and when I did get through, the answers were vague or included upsells for add-ons I didn’t need. Billing was a mess—I once received an invoice for an additional three years of hosting that totaled nearly a thousand dollars.

WooCommerce Woes

My website itself was a disaster. I had set up WooCommerce on my own (full disclosure: I had no idea what I was doing), and it was cluttered with free and recommended plugins that often conflicted with one another. Unknowingly, I'd followed the advice of affiliates who were more concerned with their success than mine. My eBook links failed more often than they worked. Instead of a professional storefront, I had a clunky site that whimpered "amateur," eroding any buying confidence my audience had.

It's interesting in hindsight, but as authors we know that we need to disclose our affiliate links. But seeing those affiliate links in how-to videos, I believed that each one of those plugins was the solution to a problem, just like the YouTuber said it would be. I didn't understand that they could conflict with each other and cause even more problems... that other YouTubers would be happy to tell me how to fix by adding yet another plugin.

The real fly in my fondue? Customers were trying to buy my books. One particularly frustrated reader emailed, “I am literally trying to give you money. Why can’t I do that?” Imagine hearing that after months of sweat, investment, and energy spent trying to make this store functional. And for every customer who reached out, how many gave up after hitting the first broken link?

After two years of frustration, I knew it was time to call in the experts. I needed a website that actually worked—a clean, professional store that could sell my books reliably.

A Professional Website

I began working with Lisa Norman, our resident website expert at WITS that other authors highly recommended to me. Together, we rebuilt my site from the ground up. We designed a clean, polished store that could sell both eBooks and paperbacks. Lisa added logos for my two pen names. She set up analytics so I could track my sales, and installed essential security and spam protection. She removed the unnecessary and expensive fluff. I even got designated emails to make my storefront communications more professional.

At that time, Lisa warned me about my hosting company, and while I wasn’t thrilled with my long-term commitment, we decided to stick it out for the final year. The site looked fantastic, and I was excited to share it with my audience.

I ran a sale, prepped my email list of then 1,500 double opt-in subscribers, blogged, and created promotional materials. My readers were engaged—they interacted with my emails, commented on social media, and clicked my Calls to Action. Statistically speaking, someone should have been buying.

But I wasn’t selling books. Worse, during a big launch week, a broken URL greeted my customers. All the effort, momentum, and excitement vanished. I received confused emails from readers saying my site was flagged as “suspicious” or “spam,” despite having every privacy and security box checked. I had done everything right, but it still wasn’t working. My website was literally pushing customers away. When Lisa checked, she found that pieces of my website were randomly vanishing due to some problem with the hosting setup. As soon as she fixed one thing, another would break. We were both exhausted.

Discovering WooCommerce’s Hidden Costs

When setting up my store, I wanted customers to be able to buy paperback books, which meant navigating shipping rates and taxes. WooCommerce offered a supposedly new payment plugin that looked promising—until I tested it. My test customer couldn’t buy the book at all.

Next I learned that WooCommerce doesn’t automatically calculate shipping fees and taxes. You can set up flat rates and shipping zones, and as long as no one buys more than one book, it might work. But for taxes, you’re on your own. Each tax rate has to be added manually, state by state. For many authors, this is something an accountant handles. But as an indie author who wears all the hats, I decided to track taxes myself. Sadly, but within a realistic expectation as a small, growing business, the lack of sales made this less of an issue.

To cover my bases, I set flat shipping rates and added a note at checkout asking customers outside the continental U.S. to contact me directly. While this kept my costs in check, it didn’t give me the confidence to run promotions. I was constantly worried about orders falling apart or losing money on paperback sales. I've since learned that for shipping and taxes to work well in WooCommerce you'll need to invest in a costly plugin with an annual fee, annual fees that have been going up a lot lately.

Integration Issues: Lulu and USPS

I tried working with Lulu to automate paperback fulfillment, but the costs were ridiculous. I was losing money on every sale. So, I decided to manually ship my own paperbacks, which felt more sustainable but far from automated.

My next step was to integrate a USPS shipping plugin. For a $100/year subscription, I hoped to streamline the checkout process. Instead, I found myself trapped in a lucid nightmare. The plugin’s customer service was incomprehensible—one email was a copy-paste from their website, while another was so technical I couldn’t understand what they needed. After two months of frustration and a near-meltdown, I managed to secure a refund. To this day, I don’t know if the USPS plugin would have been a solution because I could never get it to work. I can't even tell you if the problem was with the plugin or my application with the USPS for an account.

The Big Switch

The three-year stint of Bluehost was nearly finished and I switched to the more reliable hosting service Lisa recommended last summer. I am happy to report that since that month, I have not had a crash or email complaint. Even though I have not held a full book launch since this change, I am getting small revenues each month without doing a thing. My confidence to dive into promotions is high. It feels like I finally have the indie website I intended. Had I realized how much the hosting service was impacting the functionality of my site, I would have made a better business decision to cut my losses and ties to the previous company. 

Live and learn. And learn from others. As I tell you my story, I hope you can take from my experience and find an online sales platform that works for you. 

The Takeaway

The combination of bad hosting, unreliable plugins, and unhelpful integrations made my website journey unnecessarily painful. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Investing in quality hosting and tools isn’t optional—it’s the cost of doing business. As indie authors, we put so much effort into creating great books. Our websites, the places where we sell those books, deserve the same care and attention. Anything less will only cost us time, money, and readers.

Your Turn

About Kris

Kris Maze is an author, blogger, and teacher. She enjoys writing twisty, speculative fiction with character driven plots. After years of reading classic literature from around the world, mysteries, and thrillers, she began to write and publish her own sci-fi and horror books. She also writes for various publications including a regular post at the award-winning Writers in the Storm Blog. 

When she isn’t spending time with her favorite people and stories, Kris Maze is taking pictures, hiking, or pondering the wisdom of Bob Ross. 

And sometimes, she cuts down a natural Christmas Tree.

Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories

Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories is a collection of short fiction written to mystify and frighten readers. With stories under the pen names Kris Maze and Krissy Knoxx, these tales span the speculative subgenres of science fiction and light horror. It includes award-winning stories and a preview of a YA science fiction series. Are you brave enough to take the path less traveled?