While it is much easier for you as an author to make deals with Amazon or physical bookstores, selling from your website has its own charm. This way, you also get to keep the entire amount of the sale instead of having to honour any sort of arrangement with the retailers. These arrangements can often prove to be a hefty cut off your sale price. Apart from this, being able to sell books directly from your website means you are building up a more sturdy relationship with your reader. There are a hundred reasons why you might want to sell more books from your website, but how to actually do it?

1. Get your website up and running

Many authors make the mistake of not having a fully functional website before their books come out. The truth is that a website needs time to make an impact. The right time to start marketing your book on your website is when you start writing it. It is important for fans to know where to find everything about you in a short space and that can only be on your site. The more information you have on your site, the more fans will keep coming. It would be even more fruitful if you can have a forum section where fans can discuss your books and where you can interact with them occasionally.

2. Have your site designed professionally

Way too often, people think they can design their own sites themselves with some basic knowledge. While it is good to have knowledge of how your site functions and in a pinch, to know how to solve a problem with it, it is not a good idea to design your entire site yourself – unless you happen to actually have experience with designing commercially viable sites. Readers are also people who have a pretty good idea about which site is professional and which isn’t, so don’t try to fool anyone. Authors with a decent website can sell more books than those who have just put up some cheesy or shoddy site up.

3. Emphasise safe purchase

One major problem that e-commerce faces today is that buyers are extremely cautious of handing over their card details to websites unless they are fully assured that there will be no leak of their financial data. With a simple click, people can get financially ruined, so it is only fair that their concerns are taken seriously. Implementing the highest safety standards to any purchase is important. But just as important is to inform prospective users that their banking or card details are safe if they make purchases from your site. Just a phrase such as ‘secure data’ can work wonders. Such a message can increase the prospects of a customer completing their purchase.

4. Offer free shipping

You have no control over what online stores charge for shipping, depending on their various policies. But when you sell from your website, you can make the purchase seem just that slightly more attractive by offering free shipping. If you make a conditional offer, then it is quite likely to increase your sales. You can offer free shipping with a certain number of books purchased or when the amount of purchase is above a certain amount. You could also offer such incentives more regularly to the members who have signed up at your site in order to encourage more people to join.

5. Offer payment options

When you want to increase the likelihood of more customers shopping more on your website, make sure that you offer them options for making payment. Not everyone might have a credit card. Similarly, PayPal is hugely popular, but not ubiquitous. Your goal should be to cater to as many different customers as possible, so offering all possible payment options is the smart thing to do. Payments by credit card or by debit card, direct payment by net banking or through PayPal or MoneyGram are the most commonly used options. If you are looking to widen your scope even further, you can include options such as Google Wallet, Bitcoin, etc. Ultimately, what matters is that your customers should feel comfortable using one of the options you are providing. This will definitely increase your sales prospects.

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Kavitha is a freelance content writer and French translator, and has been working in this field since 2008. She has degrees in computer applications and international business and has a background in business and international trade. She enjoys learning languages and is currently learning Japanese. Her interests vary from books and writing to travelling and history.