How Can a Publisher Sell E-books? Discover Alternatives to Major Platforms
Alternatives to Kindle, Skeelo, and Google Books. Publishers can sell e-books directly through their own websites.
How Can a Publisher Sell E-books? Discover Alternatives to Major Platforms
When a publisher decides to start selling digital books, it is common to immediately think of the major e-book platforms available on the market.
Amazon Kindle, Google Play Books, Skeelo, and other services have helped popularize this format and continue to be relevant distribution channels. However, there is an important point publishers should consider: these are not the only ways to sell e-books.
Now, with Folhear, a brazilian software, a publisher can sell digital books directly through its own website, maintaining greater control over its catalog, pricing, customer relationships, and brand.
This possibility significantly changes the way publishers can approach their e-book sales strategy.
Folhear: An Alternative for Publishers to Sell E-books Directly
For a long time, relying on major platforms seemed almost unavoidable for publishers. After all, selling a digital file involves much more than simply making a PDF available for download.
Folhear was developed to allow publishers to sell digital books without giving up their own sales channels.
Its approach differs from the traditional marketplace model.
Instead of moving publishers and their customers into another ecosystem, Folhear integrates directly with the publisher's own online store.
In practice, the process is simple:
1. Folhear integrates with the publisher's website.
2. The publisher uploads its e-books to the platform and links them to the products already sold in its online store.
3. The customer purchases the product normally through the publisher's website.
4. After the purchase, the customer automatically receives the information needed to access the digital book through Lumo Reader.
This way, the publisher maintains its direct commercial relationship with the customer, while the technology handles secure content delivery and access.
What About the Reader? Where Do They Read the E-book?
Books are made available through Lumo Reader, a reading environment designed to provide security for publishers without compromising the customer experience.
Readers have access to features such as:
responsive reading across different devices;
compatibility with PDF and ePUB;
offline reading through Smart Download;
audio reading option;
zoom;
in-text search;
colored bookmarks and highlights;
space for notes and annotations.
This means that selling directly does not require publishers to offer customers an inferior experience compared with major e-reader platforms.
The goal is precisely to combine greater autonomy for publishers with convenience for readers.
Why Sell E-books Directly Through the Publisher's Website Instead of Using Amazon and Other Platforms?
When a sale takes place through a third-party platform, an important part of the customer experience also takes place within that company's ecosystem.
With direct sales, the dynamic changes.
The reader remains the publisher's customer.
They visit the publisher's website, discover other titles in the catalog, receive the publisher's marketing campaigns, and complete their purchase in the same environment where they would buy a physical book.
This can provide several important advantages.
1. Greater Pricing Autonomy
The publisher maintains the freedom to set prices for its catalog and develop its own sales strategy.
Promotions, new releases, bundles, and other campaigns can remain part of the publisher's overall strategy.
2. A Direct Relationship With Readers
Customers do not need to leave the publisher's website to complete their purchase.
This helps strengthen the brand and allows publishers to build closer relationships with the people who actually buy their books.
3. Integration Between Physical and Digital Books
The same online store can offer books in different formats.
Readers can visit the publisher's website and choose between a physical book and its digital edition, for example.
This way, e-books no longer need to operate as an entirely separate business and can become part of the publisher's existing catalog and sales strategy.
4. Greater Control Over the Operation
Instead of adapting its entire strategy to the policies of an external platform, the publisher can preserve its existing commercial structure and incorporate digital books into the business model it already uses.
How Much Does It Cost for a Publisher to Sell E-books?
Another important factor to consider is the financial model.
Major platforms may operate under different rules, percentages, and distribution terms. Therefore, publishers should compare not only the reach of each channel but also how much revenue they actually retain from each sale.
Folhear was designed with affordable monthly plans and a fixed 10% commission on sales, according to the terms of the selected plan.
This allows publishers to add e-books to their catalogs without having to completely transform their existing sales operations.
Do I Need to Convert All My Books to ePUB?
Not necessarily.
One of the barriers to digitizing a publishing catalog is the need to convert files into specific formats.
With Folhear, publishers can work with PDF or ePUB files.
This makes it especially convenient for publishers that already have digital files of their books but have not yet found a suitable way to sell them securely.
Is Your Publishing Company Ready to Sell Digital Books?
Reader behavior has changed, and offering books in different formats can help expand the reach of a catalog, meet new consumer preferences, and create new business opportunities.
For publishers that already have their own website, catalog, and audience, there is another important advantage: much of the infrastructure needed to sell books is already in place.
What was missing was a solution capable of connecting the sale with secure access to the digital book.
That is exactly what Folhear provides.
Your publishing company sells. Folhear integrates. Lumo delivers the reading experience.
This way, your brand remains at the center of the relationship with your readers.