The arrival of the Amazon Kindle self-publishing platform and other similar platforms shook the publishing industry to its roots and it is still causing waves. The introduction of self-publishing platforms opened the eyes of big and small authors to the possibility of publishing their books without any assistance from traditional publishers. The idea that you can start making money almost immediately after you finish your book is an attractive one for any author.

True, most self-published authors don’t make heaps of money and the ones that do had created large groups of followers prior to publication. Regardless of whether a writer is writing his first book or not, he can start selling his book quickly by uploading a book and hitting a publish button. If you decide to use the Kindle publishing platform, you will have to contend with commissions as high as 30% of the book sales. This sounds like a lot of money but it is better than what an author would have to part with when he chooses to go the traditional publishing route. Still, it is a huge price to pay especially if the author does all the marketing work and only uses the online retailer as a selling point.

Is there a solution to such heavy taxes for self-published authors? Luckily, yes. There is now a lot of democracy in the publishing industry and several payment and delivery platforms are starting to be created. These platforms can be used by authors to avoid heavy taxes from the likes of the Kindle publishing platform. The rival platforms also allow an author to own the customers which is difficult to do when using Amazon since you never know who is buying your books. There are four main alternatives to selling eBooks other than Amazon.

Gumroad

This is a platform that allows anybody with a digital product to sell his products directly using their websites. It is a payment and digital delivery system which was designed by an author to help him sell his own books without having to pay heavy taxes to Amazon. This platform is available to any person with a digital product.

E-commerce websites

Although e-commerce websites are usually used by people to sell physical products, more people are now using them to sell digital goods. These platforms are slowly evolving to enable easier sale of digital goods which is great news for the self-published author. These websites allow authors to use app plugins such as FetchApp to deliver their eBooks to customers as soon as they pay for them.

WordPress

Although it does not have a native e-commerce platform, several plugins have been developed for WordPress to help people to sell digital goods. One of the most popular plugins, Woocommerce, enables authors and other people to set up their own stores and sell eBooks securely.

Squarespace

It is a web publishing platform that now supports turnkey transaction and digital delivery of eBooks by authors.

All these are alternative ways to sell books if you don’t want to pay hefty commissions to Amazon. However, authors should know that Amazon and other large retailers have worldwide reach and hundreds of millions of existing customers. It makes little sense to go for a solution with lower commissions and sell few or no books at all.