How to Sell Your EBook Direct to Readers with Story Origin

Looking for a simple way to sell your ebook direct to readers. It's been a hot topic around here and I'm excited to share another cool option for this. This is through the software storyorigin. If you want to learn more about this to sell your ebook direct, well then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, Founder of Book Launchers. Selling books direct is the topic of this year and if you don't know why you you want to sell direct, I'll save that for a video I covered on that, which I'll link to at the end for you to watch. For now, let's dive into the latest tool on the market to help you with this. It's through StoryOrigin. We've previously shared some of the cool features of StoryOrigin, like their robust beta reader tool as well as their newsletter swaps feature. But they are so much more than a beta reader tool and a newsletter swap software. Check out their site@bookwunchers.com origin that's our affiliate link. So looking at the menu on the left you see they do universal book links, review copies, audiobook review copies, and so much more. And now they have just added Direct sales. To use this feature, authors need to set up an account on Lemon Squeezy, which is a payment processor. Lemon Squeezy acts as the merchant of record, so they will be responsible for collecting and remitting the sales tax, which makes it way easier for authors to do direct sales. Shopify, which is what we use to collect payments right now, actually makes you the author responsible for collecting sales tax and remitting it. I didn't even know about Lemon Squeezy before Evan Gao, the creator of storyorigin, told me about it from Lemon Squeezy's website. They are the merchant of record. They have a ton of instant payment methods in a lot of different currencies and they make it easy to set up with a no code option for that setup. Lemon Squeezy's normal transaction processing fees are $0.50 plus 5%, which is pretty comparable to the other ones out there. Story Origin authors though that integrate Lemon Squeezy with their Story Origin are going to get a discounted rate of $0.30 plus 5%. So this is only for ebooks, not print books. For print books we have previously done videos on using the IngramSpark Direct share and sell. We also are using Book Vault plus Shopify and and we're constantly adding new options so make sure you've subscribed to the channel and turn those notifications on. So this is a direct sale ebook route. All right, so I went ahead and tried to set this up without creating the Lemon Squeezy account because I don't want another payment processor. But I hit a roadblock in that I didn't have a Mobi file for my book. At Book Launchers, we use epubs for pretty much everything because Mobi files aren't needed. So Mobi files used to only be used on KDP to upload to Kindle, but but in late 2022 mobi was not only discontinued when self publishing your book through the KDP marketplace, but they said that side Loaded books would also not support Mobi files. Additionally, the changes specified that EPUB books would be available to sideload onto your Kindle in addition to all the other supported formats. Now sideloading, in case you're wondering what that is, is getting an ebook onto your E Reading device or app when you haven't bought it from that reader's own maker or sponsor. Like Amazon for the Kindle family, or Barnes and Noble for the Nook readers, or Kobo for the Kobo readers. Like how if I download a free PDF from someone, I sideload it onto my Kindle reader anyway, without the Mobi file I was stalled out. So I wrote Evan was like, what gives, Evan? Why do I need a Mobi file? And Evan was kind enough to provide a rather detailed explanation as to why a MOBI is required. And and he stated you can now email EPUB files to your Kindle email address, which is an awesome feature. However, Kindle devices still can't directly download or open an ePub. So when you send an Epub file to your Kindle email address, Amazon converts it to a Kindle file on their back end, which is what your device then downloads when you upload your EPUB to Amazon as a publisher. Amazon also converts those to Kindle files on their backend for reader devices. Unfortunately, Mobi files will still be required until Kindle supports opening EPUB files directly. So you can even verify this in Amazon's own FAQs under number 11 how can I preview my ebook in my Kindle Device? Their instructions for how to preview an EPUB file on your Kindle is actually to convert the file to dot mobi and then load it onto the device. So you can check that out. I'll put the link in the description below so you can investigate it yourself. So I had to convert my epub to adopt Mobi so I could upload it and because I figured you might run into this too, I wanted to make sure you know how to do it. There are options to do this, and the easiest was actually Story Origin's own converter. It uses Calibre under the hood, and there's a tutorial if you want to use Calibre directly as well. And that's what I did, so you'll see that in a second. But if you have Vellum, you can use Vellum to output a Mobi file, and this is found in Vellum's Generation Settings. You can access Generation Settings by going to the Vellum menu and selecting Settings. I don't use Vellum, so that was not an option for me. But reading the instructions, Evan said the Vellum menu, you select Settings. Select Generation tab. To find the available controls, click ePub+mobi. After you generate your Kindle files, click Show Files in the Kindle folder, you'll find your Mobi file saved alongside your ePub. You can also use Amazon's Kindle Previewer, but because Amazon's Kindle Previewer will allow you to export your EPUB as a Mobi file, so you can go ahead and use Kindle Previewer to do it. All you have to do is drag and drop your EPUB into the Kindle Previewer and then from the menu, select File Export and then select Mobi file as the export format. This is really confusing and Amazon has created it and probably don't care because that's how I feel like Amazon does things. They don't really worry about what happens to authors, but they should have updated Kindle's to natively support downloading and opening EPUB files on Kindle devices. Then everything would be consistent. But like I said, it wasn't that difficult to do the conversion with Story Origin. It was a really easy process. So you can check out what I did right here. So just enter in your title, quickly upload a cover your EPUB file, and within 30 seconds you're going to have that mobi file. Now, the one painful thing here is that I did all this work before I found out I had to had to redo it to get my dot mobi and that isn't saved because I had entered in the description and done all those pieces. I mean it was two minutes of work, but still it would have been nice if it saved. But then I went back through and entered the process all again for you. And at the end of the day I'm not able to finish this setup because I am not getting a lemon Squeezy account. I already have PayPal, Stripe Square, WePay, which is now switching over to a keep platform, Shopify. The list is long. I don't want another one. But I think from what I read on Lemon Squeezy's website and what Evan said, I like this offering. And if you aren't already set up with half a dozen payment providers, payment processors, like I am, well, this is a great way for you to sell your ebook. The other thing you can do if you do already have a payment processor or a bit of a store set up on your website, is to process the payment on your own and automate the delivery of a direct link from story origin. There are plenty of options within this platform for authors looking for simple and straightforward solutions to sell direct. Now, you might be wondering about why I suggest you sell books direct at all. Because it's a bit of a pain. Well, that video talking about why you should sell direct is right here for you. And if you're good with that, but you're wanting a simple solution to sell print books direct without much hassle. Well, good news. The Ingram Direct Share and Sell program is for you. So head on over to these videos and I'll see you there.