How to Sell Ebooks Online: Formats, Platforms, Pricing, and Revenue Math for 2026

You can sell ebooks online through a marketplace like Amazon KDP, through a third-party storefront like Gumroad or Payhip, or directly from your own website using WordPress and a plugin like DigiCommerce. The platform you pick determines how much of each sale you keep, and the difference is bigger than most first-time sellers expect.

This guide walks through the full process: choosing the right file format, picking a platform that fits your goals, setting a price that reflects real value, and marketing your ebook so it actually reaches readers. Whether you plan to sell a single PDF or build a catalog of twenty titles, every decision here applies.

Most guides on this topic focus almost entirely on Amazon or on the writing process itself. They skip the part that matters most after you hit publish: where your money goes. A $19.99 ebook on Amazon nets you between $7.00 and $13.99 depending on your royalty tier, while the same ebook sold from your own WordPress site costs you nothing per transaction beyond the Stripe or PayPal processing fee. That gap adds up quickly when you start moving volume.

Before you upload anything to any platform, you need your ebook in the right file format. The three most common options are PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, and each one works best in different situations.

PDF is the simplest option and the one most people already know. It preserves your layout exactly as you designed it, which makes it a good fit for ebooks with complex formatting, charts, code snippets, or images that need to stay in a fixed position. The downside is that PDFs don’t reflow text to fit different screen sizes, so they can be hard to read on phones. If your audience reads primarily on laptops and desktops, or if your ebook is heavily visual, PDF works well. It’s also the default format for selling directly from your own site because there’s no DRM lock tying it to a specific device or app.

EPUB is the open standard used by Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Google Play Books, and most reading apps outside the Amazon ecosystem. Text in an EPUB reflows to fit whatever screen size the reader uses, which makes it comfortable on phones, tablets, and e-readers alike. If you plan to distribute through multiple retailers, EPUB is the format you’ll produce first. Tools like Calibre (free), Vellum ($49.99 one-time on Mac), and Atticus ($147 one-time, cross-platform) can convert a Word document or Google Doc into a clean EPUB file.

MOBI was Amazon’s proprietary format for years, but Kindle now uses KPF (Kindle Package Format) instead. If you publish through Amazon KDP, you upload a Word file, EPUB, or KPF and Amazon handles the conversion. You don’t need to produce a MOBI file yourself anymore. Amazon’s Kindle Create app (free) generates KPF files from your manuscript with chapter detection and basic formatting.

Your ebook’s cover also matters more than most first-time sellers realize. On Amazon, the cover is the first thing a shopper sees in search results, and a poorly designed cover kills conversions before anyone reads the description. On your own site, the cover appears on your product page and in social media previews when you share the link. Canva’s ebook cover templates (free tier available) work for simple designs, but if your ebook is priced above $15, investing $50 to $150 in a freelance cover designer on Fiverr or 99designs usually pays for itself within the first few weeks of sales.

For most sellers, the practical approach is to create a clean EPUB first, then export a PDF version for direct sales. If you also publish on Amazon, upload the EPUB or Word file to KDP and let Amazon convert it. That covers every major channel with the least amount of extra work.

There are three broad categories of places to sell ebooks: marketplaces, third-party storefronts, and your own website. Each one comes with trade-offs in reach, fees, and control.

Amazon KDP is the largest ebook marketplace by far. It gives you access to millions of active Kindle readers and handles hosting, delivery, and payment processing. The cost of that access is steep: Amazon keeps 30% of every sale on the 70% royalty tier (available for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99) and 65% on the 35% royalty tier. The 70% tier also deducts a delivery fee based on file size, roughly $0.06 per megabyte. If you enroll in KDP Select (which requires exclusivity for 90 days), your ebook gets included in Kindle Unlimited, where you’re paid per page read from a shared monthly pool. For fiction and niche non-fiction with strong category demand, KDP can generate consistent sales with minimal marketing effort on your part.

Third-party storefronts like Gumroad and Payhip sit between marketplaces and your own site. They handle the checkout, file delivery, and (in Gumroad’s case since January 2025) sales tax collection. Gumroad charges 10% plus $0.50 per transaction. Payhip offers a free plan with a 5% transaction fee, a $29/month plan at 2%, and a $99/month plan with no platform fee. Both let you sell PDFs, EPUBs, or any downloadable file without exclusivity requirements.

Selling from your own website gives you the most control and the lowest ongoing fees. With WordPress and a digital commerce plugin like DigiCommerce, you host your product pages, handle file delivery through secure download links, and pay only the payment processor’s cut (typically 2.9% + $0.30 on Stripe) with no per-transaction platform fee on top. The trade-off is that you need to drive your own traffic, since there’s no built-in marketplace audience browsing for ebooks. For authors and creators who already have an email list, a blog, a YouTube channel, or a social media following, this is often the most profitable option from day one. If you’re still figuring out what to sell, our guide on how to create digital products covers how to pick a topic, validate demand, and build something people will pay for.

Distribution aggregators like Draft2Digital and Smashwords (now part of Draft2Digital) let you upload once and distribute to Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and dozens of smaller retailers simultaneously. They take 10-15% of the sale price as their cut. If you want wide retail distribution without managing each retailer separately, an aggregator saves time, though you lose some control over pricing and promotions on individual platforms.

Many successful ebook sellers use a combination: Amazon for discovery and volume, plus their own site for higher-margin direct sales. That way, a reader who finds you on Kindle can later buy your next title directly from your site, where you keep a much larger share.

The difference in revenue per sale across platforms is large enough that it should factor into your strategy from the start. Here’s what a $14.99 ebook actually nets you on each major platform, after all fees.

On Amazon KDP at the 70% royalty rate (available for ebooks priced $2.99 to $9.99, so this example would fall to the 35% tier), you’d keep $5.25. If you priced at $9.99 to qualify for the 70% tier, you’d keep roughly $6.93 after a small delivery fee. On Gumroad, the same $14.99 ebook nets you $12.99 after their 10% + $0.50 fee, minus Stripe or PayPal processing. On Payhip’s free plan (5% fee), you’d keep $13.74 before payment processing. And on your own WordPress site with DigiCommerce, there’s no platform fee at all, so you’d keep $14.99 minus the Stripe processing charge of about $0.73, leaving you with roughly $14.26 per sale.

Those numbers look abstract until you multiply them. At 100 sales per month, the difference between Amazon’s 35% tier ($525 total) and your own site ($1,426 total) is $901 per month in your pocket. Over a year, that’s nearly $10,800 in additional revenue from the same number of sales, simply by choosing a different platform.

This doesn’t mean Amazon is the wrong choice. If Amazon’s marketplace drives 500 sales where your own site would drive 50, the total revenue from Amazon still wins. The right question isn’t “which platform pays the highest percentage?” but “which combination of platforms maximizes total revenue?” For most independent sellers, the answer is to use Amazon for reach and their own site for margin, then gradually shift traffic toward the higher-margin channel as their audience grows.

One detail that surprises new sellers: sales tax and VAT handling. In the US, digital products are taxable in about 30 states, and the rules vary. Amazon and Gumroad (since January 2025) handle tax collection and remittance for you. Payhip also manages EU VAT on digital goods. If you sell from your own WordPress site, you’ll need to either use a tax automation service like TaxJar or Quaderno, or manually track and file in each jurisdiction where you owe tax. DigiCommerce integrates with Stripe Tax, which calculates and collects the right amount at checkout and simplifies your compliance. You’ll also want to make sure your site has a proper cookie consent setup if you’re selling to EU customers, since GDPR applies to any transaction involving EU residents.

Ebook pricing is less about finding some magic number and more about matching what your reader expects to pay for the type of value you’re delivering. Fiction, short guides, and entry-level non-fiction typically sell in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. In-depth non-fiction, professional references, and course-like ebooks can command $14.99 to $49.99 or even higher when they solve a specific, expensive problem.

Amazon’s royalty structure pushes most KDP sellers toward the $2.99 to $9.99 window because that’s where the 70% royalty rate applies. Price above $9.99 and Amazon drops you to the 35% tier, which means you’d need to nearly double your sales volume to match the revenue of a lower-priced ebook. If Amazon is your primary channel, pricing at $9.99 usually maximizes revenue per reader unless your ebook is a premium reference that buyers specifically seek out.

On your own site, those constraints don’t apply. You can charge $29 or $39 for a specialized guide and keep nearly all of it. Many successful creators sell their ebooks at a higher price on their own site than on Amazon, with the reasoning that direct buyers already trust them and are willing to pay for the convenience of a DRM-free file they can read on any device. Some also bundle the ebook with supplementary materials (templates, checklists, video walkthroughs) to justify the premium.

A few pricing principles that hold across platforms: price in odd numbers ($9.99, $14.99, $19.97) because they consistently outperform round numbers in conversion tests. Offer a launch discount (20-30% off for the first week) to drive early sales and reviews, then raise to full price. Test your price after 60-90 days of data; if conversion rates are healthy but total revenue feels low, a $2-3 increase rarely hurts volume and drops straight to your bottom line.

Avoid pricing below $4.99 unless you’re writing short fiction or using the low price as a lead magnet for a more expensive product. Cheap ebooks tend to attract readers who don’t finish them, don’t review them, and don’t buy your next one. If your ebook is genuinely useful, price it like it is.

The biggest mistake first-time ebook sellers make is finishing the manuscript, uploading it, and then asking “how do I get sales?” Marketing works best when it starts before the ebook is done, not after.

In the four to six weeks before launch, build anticipation with the audience you already have. If you write a blog, publish two or three posts that cover topics from the ebook in less depth, with a note that the full version is coming soon. If you’re active on social media, share excerpts, behind-the-scenes progress, and the table of contents. If you have an email list of any size, send a pre-launch announcement with a signup link for early access or a discount code. Even a list of 200 subscribers can generate enough launch-day sales to trigger Amazon’s algorithm if you’re also selling there.

On launch day, send your email list the buy link with a time-limited discount (72 hours works well). Post on every platform where your audience spends time, but write native content for each one instead of copying the same announcement everywhere. A LinkedIn post about a specific insight from your ebook will outperform a generic “my ebook is live” banner on every platform.

After the first week, shift from launch energy to steady-state marketing. The most effective long-term approach for ebook sales is content marketing tied to the ebook’s topic. Write blog posts that answer related questions and link to your ebook as the next step for readers who want to go deeper. If you run a WordPress site, this is where internal linking between your blog content and your product page compounds over time, because each new post adds another entry point for organic search traffic.

Guest posts on relevant blogs, podcast appearances, and collaborations with other creators in your niche are worth the effort if you can arrange them. A single guest post on a blog with 10,000 monthly readers will typically drive more targeted traffic than weeks of social media posting. YouTube reviews or tutorials that reference your ebook can also drive consistent sales for months, since video content has a long shelf life in search results.

Paid advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Ads) can work for ebooks but only at certain price points. The math is simple: if your ebook costs $9.99 and you keep $6.93 after Amazon’s cut, you can’t spend more than about $5 per acquisition and stay profitable. At $29.99 on your own site, you keep roughly $28.70, which gives you a much larger budget to acquire customers through paid channels. This is another reason direct sales matter: they make paid marketing financially viable.

Selling ebooks online is a straightforward process once you separate the signal from the noise. Pick a file format that matches your distribution plan (EPUB for retailers, PDF for direct sales, both if you’re doing a combination). Choose platforms based on the revenue math, not just convenience. Price according to the value you’re delivering, not according to what feels safe. And start marketing before your ebook is finished, not after.

The creators who build real income from ebooks aren’t the ones who write one book and hope for the best. They’re the ones who treat each title as a product with a launch plan, a distribution strategy, and a pricing model that accounts for where the money actually goes. If you already have a WordPress site, adding a direct sales channel through DigiCommerce takes less than an hour and immediately gives you the highest-margin option available. The marketplace sales can keep running in parallel, but every reader you bring to your own site is a reader whose full purchase price stays with you.