Why Are Direct Sales Important to Authors?

Readers everywhere see authors (indie authors, specifically) posting about direct sales. Along with those posts come a lot of questions for the reader. "What does 'direct' mean?" "How does it help anyone?" "Doesn't it cost more?"

Allow me to shed some light on the subject.

What Does "Direct Sales" Mean?

When you see "Direct Sales" plastered on an author's post, it means that anything you purchase is coming directly from the author and not through a third-party system such as Amazon.

Authors such as myself order author copies at printing cost, store them, personalize them (if you choose that option), accept orders, print shipping labels, and send them off all by ourselves!

So, you may be asking...

"What's the point?"

The answer to this question is two-fold:

1. You get to purchase items that come from the hands of the creator, which means they can be personalized. Also,, how special is it to connect like that across the planet?

2. The author sees a lot of benefit, as well. Through direct sales, authors can receive the profit. See the photo below:

This is a little snippet of a sales report I received recently. The top line is paperbacks and the bottom is hardcovers. The leftmost column is the sales (which means the print cost has already been taken out), and the rightmost column is what I got in the end. With direct sales, I can cut out those middle columns and go directly from left to right.

It's a whole lot of work to add Direct Sales into my already-too-busy life, but I consider it an investment.

I don't envision myself ever taking my books off of these distribution sites. They provide great reach and trusted sources for people to purchase my books (especially in regards to ebooks!), but I do hope to lean into direct sales and keep some of that profit so that I can someday become a fulltime author.

So, if you want to support an author (beyond purchasing their book which is already amazing!) please consider purchasing directly. It allows us the freedom to control the profits and host things like sales and package deals.

Thank you for reading and for being here!

~ Leah Jubilee