Anybody here sell their own books?

[Chocolate]

Are you an independent comic author? If so, where do you sell your books? Do you recommend working with big chains like Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, etc.? Or selling your own books on your own website? Would love to hear from a veteran comic author. Thanks in advance!

[joannekwan]

I have books on Amazon and Lulu and it's so much easier when they do printing and shipping fulfillment. Of course your profits get a chunk taken out, but with these sites you have almost 0 overhead and it's a lot more stress-free.

[vholdfield]

I self publish some my books on Amazon and Smashwords

[Chocolate]

H*ll yeah! Tell me more? Do you have to pay them a monthly fee? How do you market your book? Did you launch a Kickstarter before publishing your books?

[Chocolate]

Which service is better? Did you run into any trouble? What about refunds to customers who don’t like your books?

[joannekwan]

There is no monthly fee, the only fees ever charged are when you make a sale and that's usually already rolled into the print cost of the book. Or if you're doing e-books, the fee is only taken when you make a sale as well.

I market on my socials. I also did a little giveaway promo when I launched my first novel. I offered a free book kit for people who filled out a google form when they preordered a physical copy.
I've acutally talked about this as well as the rest of my self-publishing journey in this past thread!

Nope, never done a kickstarter. But I have the benefit of having a healthy savings account. If you do need funds that you don't readily have, then I do recommend a kickstarter.

[Chocolate]

Thank you so much for the post! That would help tremendously! :3

[vholdfield]

Both are good. They take a part of the profits but it gives you more visibility. I never had any trouble and found it easy to publish them. What I really like about Amazon is the possibility to get a hard copy of your book (you only pay the printing costs so it's pretty cheap). It's a great way to see how others will receive it and see if something needs to be corrected or not. I never had to refund someone so I can't really answer that

[Chocolate]

Thank you! What about tax? Do you file yourself or Amazon give you a form? :>

[vholdfield]

You can download the tax form on your account!

[Chocolate]

It’s so cool seeing all of these creators publishing their own books on Amazon! I want to jump in, but I’m just scared of doing taxes on my own.

[Shanny8]

I mainly self publish through POD services like Ka-Blam and Greko Printing then sell at conventions; been trying to get my own website and start trying to sell stuffs through that...I'm not ready to deal with places like Amazon and my audience isnt large enough to do a Kickstarter(plus with the hubbub about them doing crypto and NFT, I'm kinda keeping my distance from that one)...

Since Covid, I've taken a hit and havent been really selling much of anything, but I've gotten enough distractions down & out of the way that I'm going to try to focus on getting my site built this year.

[system]

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.