It’s never been easier to sell books—or anything else—with tools and platforms that make setting up your own store a painless process. Social sales channels, print-on-demand tools, and commerce platforms like Shopify let you get set up in minutes.
Set up your online store
Now that you’ve done your branding exercise and honed in on your business model, you can set up your ecommerce store and website even before you’ve bought inventory. There are a number of benefits to getting a website and social pages live pre-launch. You can build excitement for your brand, get early feedback, and grow your audience and email list so you have eager customers waiting once you officially launch.
Start a business selling books online and try Shopify free for 14 days
Plug your logo, visual assets, and copy into a theme that complements your brand. Many are fully customizable, allowing you to update colours and page elements to suit your layout.
Here are a few preset themes we’ve picked for booksellers:
- Label theme in “Books”
- Foodie theme in “Grind”
- Story theme in “Chronicle”
- Context theme in “Chic”
- Minimal theme in “Vintage” (free)
Remember that beyond tweaking the themes yourself, you can also hire a Shopify Expert to help you build additional customizations.
Power up your online bookstore with apps that integrate seamlessly with your Shopify store. Here are a few apps designed for online booksellers:
- Lulu Direct is a print-on-demand service for books.
- GoodreadR Book Reviews imports reviews from Goodreads and displays them on the product page for each book.
- Kodbar: Barcodes & Labels will generate bar codes for products and is compatible with ISBNs.
- Crowdfunder lets you run a pre-order crowdfunding campaign to self-publish your book.
- Easy Digital Products is perfect for those looking to sell digital book formats like ebooks, PDFs, and audio books.
Other bookselling sales channels
- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
- Apple Books for Authors.
- Kobo Writing Life.
- Barnes & Noble Press.
- Google Play Books.
- Takealot.com.
- Draft2Digital.
- Smashwords.
Marketing your bookstore
Marketing continues to be reported as the biggest mystery for new business owners. It’s no wonder—with changing algorithms and trends around how customers find and interact with brands, it can be difficult to keep up.
As with any other business, it’s important to find out where your ideal customer is hanging out. Facebook ads might be best for you if you cater to kids and their parents. TikTok is a great place to invest if your book business caters to a Gen Z audience.
With zero budget as a new bookstore owner, start with a few organic marketing tricks to help you build buzz and an audience for your business:
- Set up social accounts and post consistently with content that brings value to the reading community.
- As you build social audience, push them to a landing page or your website homepage and offer a perk or discount for subscribing to your email newsletter.
- Invest in learning SEO and content marketing. If you can establish yourself as an expert on a subject (through a blog or other content on site) and rank for key terms, you can push that organic traffic toward purchases. “A free ebook that provides excellent and useful content encourages readers to try your other books,” says Joanna.
- Run free virtual or IRL events like author readings, book clubs, speaker series, or children’s storytime. Dominique also says it’s important for local business owners to be visible in the community. “I make it a priority to travel to venues and events around Madison to reach more and more people,” she says.
- Start a loyalty program with incentives for referrals to have your best customers become ambassadors for your brand.
- Leverage influencer marketing. Top influencers will be out of your league in the early days, but emerging niche influencers in the book space may have affordable rates or be willing to shout out your brand in exchange for product. “To help market the first box, I sent a preview box just to influencers I knew,” says Kerrie.