You wrote the book. When you sell it through a marketplace, you hand over a cut of the price — and the reader.
You wrote a book. That's the hard part, and you did it. Now people want to buy it from you — after a talk, in your newsletter, after a podcast, in a DM. So you send them where books are sold: Amazon, Bol, a marketplace.
And two things happen, both quietly.
First
A chunk of the price disappears. The platform takes its percentage for the privilege of hosting the sale. You did the writing; they take a cut for the checkout.
Second — and this one matters more
The reader becomes their customer, not yours. The platform knows who bought your book. You get a payout and a stranger. When your next book comes out, they can email that reader. You can't.
Most authors default to this because it feels like the only way to sell a book online without building a shop. It isn't. It just never looked like there was anything in between.
The direct page
"The reader lands on it, sees the cover, reads the description, sees the price, and pays you — directly. Full margin. Your reader."
If it's an ebook, they get the download straight away. If it's a physical copy, you handle the fulfilment, but the sale and the buyer are yours. Full margin. Your reader.
This isn't about boycotting the marketplaces. They do one thing well: discovery. Strangers find your book there, and that's worth something. The mistake is sending every sale through them — including the readers you already reach yourself. Those people came for you. There's no reason to pay a middleman to sell to an audience that's already yours.
So use both. Let the marketplace do discovery. Sell directly to everyone you can already reach — your list, your talks, your followers. Keep the margin. Keep the relationship. Tell them about the next book yourself.
You wrote the book. You can sell it on your own terms.
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One page per product. No catalogue. No cart. No platform to build or maintain.
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