How to sell signed books
Selling Signed Books Online Using Shopify, WooCommerce & Square
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hello everyone today we're going to be
talking about selling signed books
online
because of course with everything that
has happened in 2020
you can't do in person and events and
for some authors that's a huge
loss of income so today i'm going to
walk you guys through how i sell my
signed books online
and of course this is also a friendly
reminder that from october 5th to
october 9th i'm having an
online digital book signing where we are
going live
basically every day here on youtube this
is the only day where things are
pre-recorded
and you can get 15 off of all my signed
books
so again stay tuned and i'll show you
how exactly i put this
all together i'm gonna tell you how you
can set up your own
online book signing and how to figure
out the shipping as well as how to do
fun things to get people to want to
buy your signed books if you want weekly
videos on writing
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[Music]
so this is the first time i filmed a
video like this
um pre-filmed something and done it
in a screen share this way but i really
wanted to walk you guys through
everything
that i do so bear with me this video
will probably be a little bit longer but
i've got a
lot of information to share i personally
used to do book signings at least
once a month whether that be a one day
event or an
entire weekend and at those book
signings i could make a profit from
anywhere
to like a hundred dollars to 400
and that's profit so that's after the
cost of like
paying for my booth and product and all
that so
that is 100 profit now because of 2020
and everything that's happening
that is obviously not an option anymore
so i wanted to get a little creative
and figure out how to do my own book
signings so
that's what i'm doing this week i
decided to do my own
digital book signing so what does that
entail
so basically i pretended like i was
having my own little digital
comic con where every day i had panels
and i reminded people to go ahead and go
buy my signed books
so yesterday i talked all about essence
and how the publishing process went for
that and also
how i kind of faced a lot of bullying
when i published essence because i was
so young
and just circumstances of that age
so go ahead and watch that video if you
haven't yet already i'm also having a
different
live stream every day this week so make
sure you check out the live streams for
the rest of this week
but again today we're talking about how
to set up
your book to be sold online and first
things first
is that you have to choose a website so
there are a few different options
um i personally use shopify uh you can
also use the square app you can use wix
and you can use wordpress
wix is the only one i don't have
experience with so that's the only one
where
today i won't be able to give you guys
examples but
for the rest of them i can show you
exactly what i'm talking about so i'm
going to go ahead
and do that and
i'm going to share my screen actually
i'm going to share it this way
okay so i'm going to go over to square
so this is a website i created through
square and you can actually create this
for free the only thing that will like
cost you money is if you want to get
really good deals on shipping costs
and then if you want to purchase your
domain um
and different things like that but i
personally so like i said i use
the square app and i use it on my phone
for
when i want to do in person book
signings you know you guys know what i'm
talking about so it's a little
adapter that goes on here so you can
swipe credit cards
well square is also awesome because they
will help you create an
online storefront as well so one day i
created this one
uh because as you'll watch this video
you'll learn that i've invested a lot of
time into figuring out the most
efficient ways for me to sell my signed
books
and this was one of the ways that i
figured out so
this is a storefront that i created and
then we have the books down here
and then social media and stuff and you
can see powered by square
and again i do want to mention that none
of the stuff i'm talking about
today is sponsored um i wish it was but
it's not so i'm just giving you my
honest opinion for
everything so the reason why i
personally didn't go with square for my
storefront
is just because i use the square app for
in-person book signings
so if i were to make things perfect for
my online storefront it would have kind
of
changed things for my back-end
storefront for when i do book
signings and it was just a little
complicated so i prefer to and
at the end of the day go with shopify
but otherwise i probably would have gone
with the square app because
i just found it really user friendly and
really just cheap because again you can
create this storefront for free
unless you want to customize your domain
which is this right here
um and then another option
is let's see i have wordpress so this is
the back end of my wordpress website
this is www.mandelin.com which
is originally how i used to sell my
signed books
but it got a little bit complicated
um you can use so i use the woocommerce
plug-in to do that
and this is kind of what the back end
looks like please ignore
all the excessive like messages alerting
me to stuff
i'm one of those people that yes i do
just ignore them
um unless i can't anymore uh so you can
see this
is a product that i created which is
essence and
um the i don't obviously i don't have
the storefront anymore but
when you went to like the product page
this was the product page right here
so normally it would be the photo of the
book cover
and then we have what it is and then you
scroll down
and this is the description now of
course you can customize this more
because
obviously i had like started and then
abandoned it
and then yeah so this isn't what it
would look like at the end of the day
but it just kind of gives you
a vague idea of what to expect now last
but not least
um this is my storefront
which is my current storefront which
obviously has the most effort poured
into it so it looks the best
um and it's through shopify now i
already
had a shopify website because i do
the book launch planner and you can see
that here like you can see shop the
planner shop the stickers shop the
signed books
um so shopify is probably the most
expensive
option because they do have a monthly
plan but
it's also the most user-friendly
so if you're just selling signed books i
might not recommend shopify
but if you already happen to have a
shopify
then i'd say go for it um
i personally i really really really
wanted to sell my books
under the mandelin.com domain
but i just couldn't do that easily
so i just figured you know what at the
end of the day
i i am all under one umbrella one branch
and as long as everything links to the
correct places i don't think it's the
biggest deal that the url
is thebooklaunchplanner.com because
that's still a url
i own and maybe if i'm lucky when people
shop sign books they might buy a planner
they might buy some stickers
while they're at it so once you have
chosen your website and again i can't
talk about wix because i don't have any
experience with wix so that's something
you might want to look into
as well but once you choose which
host you want to go with then you can go
ahead and start adding
products so let's start with square so
this is what the back end of square
looks like
and this is um how it's set up for me
right now
and this is literally just the simplest
way for me to set it up and it's set up
kind of not the best way because
it's just set up for in-person sales so
when people
are shopping with me they obviously
don't see these photos
i literally just took photos of my book
covers
at a book signing one day to add the
photo so it was easier for me to select
things when i'm on my phone
um but when you go ahead and select on
items
you can go in there and edit things you
can upload the photo
here you can say whether it's a physical
item or a digital item because
if it's a physical item then square will
know that they need to take down
shipping
information at checkout and also charge
for shipping
you can add the title of the book you
can add the description and as you can
see you can do different things like
bold italic
bullets links all of that um
you can decide whether you want the
product to be visible or not
so like if you there's just odd
instances where you're going to have a
product on your website but you don't
want people to be able to buy it
say like you want to set it up but you
don't want to officially
launch the product yet that's when you
would want to hide it
um and then fulfillment whether that
that's basically whether you need to
ship it or if they can pick it up or if
you do local delivery
so as you can see this is for like a
broad range
of um people who want to have online
stores
and then variations is like if you want
to do
a hardcover version of the book or a
paperback
so for this book in particular book
sales that multiply
i only have a paperback so i don't
really have any variations
but if i go back and go to essence
essence on the other hand does have a
variation
where we see we have the paperback book
and the hardcover book and they change
in price
um depending on which version you buy
and you can also see here the weight
changes
as well so that's another thing that
when you're setting up your item you
want to make sure you weigh it to make
sure that you get the shipping costs
correct
so when you're setting all of this up
you'll be able to enter the weight and
some places
also ask for dimensions but most
places base it just on the weight of the
product
um i believe it's only wordpress from
what i can remember
only wordpress was the one that asked me
for the dimensions of my books as well
as the weight of my books
so on the other hand we have wordpress
so if i go in to
edit this product um
which is essence if it will load so
in here again i don't really have
anything set up
um wordpress is a little more complex
and because you can do so many different
plugins on wordpress
things can get a little more confusing
which is why i don't really like it but
really at the end of the day why
i started with my signed books on
wordpress and then got rid of it
is truly just because the
reports were incredibly annoying
like i just wanted to know how many of
each product i sold
and how much i made every month and it i
just wasn't in love with the way
woocommerce does their
reports and analytics for that but as
you can see
we can just put everything up here so we
can put the title
we can put the description um if you go
down here this is where things get a
little more complicated so this is when
you where you can put the
price of the book the sale price of the
book you can keep track of
inventory you can set up shipping so
again you'd put in the weight
you'd put in the dimensions the shipping
class which honest to god i don't even
know what that is
and there's just a lot of other things
like attributes
that's the same thing as like variations
whether or not it's a hardcover versus a
paperback book
and the way to set that up is kind of
confusing
so i'm not going to talk about it today
i highly recommend if you end up going
with wordpress to learn it through
a different youtube video that is a
better tutorial because i
personally am still confused by
wordpress and how all this works
um and yeah so you can just play around
with this in wordpress there's a lot of
different things
you can do so let's go to my favorite
which is shopify store i'm in the
back end of shopify right now this is
the one that i use so you'll see that i
put the most effort into it
so i'm gonna go ahead and click on
essence
and when i go to essence you'll be able
to see i've input everything so i've got
the title of the book
i've got about the book i even put in
the book trailer
i put in what amazon reviewers have to
say so
i just put as much info in as i can and
it when it comes to images
i personally enjoy putting like the 3d
rendering of the product
so it just looks the best and i'm
actually working on doing that with
the entire book launch planner website
where i put in the 3d rendering for
everything so
it just is very clean clear and
crisp so here's the product page right
here and you can see that i've set up
the variation so you can choose whether
it's the paperback
or the hard cover and then the price
change is dependent on that you can
um choose how many you want then we have
the info about the book here
and all of that so i guess my biggest
pet peeve
with shopify is that depending on what
theme you choose
and the theme is just like what your
website looks like
depending on the theme is dependent on
how your product page will look here
and my theme it just so happens like it
lines up everything
to just go down like i can't put
anything underneath
here and it really just bothers me
um but i i can't do anything about that
unless i redesigned my entire website
and i'm just not
at that point yet um so
this is what it would look like but when
i go in here you can see
i have a few different things so i have
the product type is
a book and then i also tag it as a book
and that is so it sorts into these
different collections so i have
um you know i have a collection of all
my stickers
i have a collection of all the signed
books
and then i also designed it so it had
this cute little banner here
um it doesn't normally have this little
banner but i
added it because this was a big event so
i wanted to make it very clear like
what the perks were for the event so
once you scroll down
past where you can upload the image is
where you can add the
variants so it's very clear on shopify
how to do that
so you can see the paperback the
hardcover the prices
and then if i were to hit edit um you
can see
even more info um so i can track the
quantity here i've already put in the
weight
so it's 16 ounces um and the best way to
take the weight of your book is to
either hopefully you have a kitchen
scale laying around
or you can purchase this kitchen scale
because you're gonna need
the weight in ounces just because books
are so small
um so yeah but really shopify is awesome
because
i personally never really looked at any
tutorials for it
i just really started clicking through
and it was super clear on how to use it
so last but not least let's talk about
shipping so
each website is different in terms of
shipping i
honestly when it comes to wordpress um
the shipping was very confusing it
calculated the shipping for me based on
what i
put for the weight but sometimes when i
went to go ahead and actually
pay for the shipping it didn't always
line up correctly and that could have
been on me because again obviously as i
talk about wordpress it's very
clear i have no clue what i'm talking
about but the way it works through
websites like this
is that after you input stuff like the
weight of the book and the size of the
book
um the website will be able to calculate
the shipping cost
for the customer and when the customer
checks out they pay for the shipping
that way when you go to buy the shipping
it should be the same cost
if not a little less for you so i'm
going to show you how it works for
shopify because that's the one i'm most
familiar with so the way you set up
shipping
in shopify is that you go to settings
and then you can go ahead
and go to shipping and delivery and this
is where you can really
customize things so i have two like
shipping zones one is for the united
states and the other
is for just the rest of the world so if
i click
manage rates you can kind of see that a
little bit more in depth
the cool part about this shipping area
is that i can also
choose like what type of shipping i
want to use so as you can see for usps i
basically use all the shipping
i let my customers choose whether they
want first class mail they want first
class package
media mail which is the cheapest so
that's what most of my
customers choose uh parcel select ground
priority mail and priority mail express
so i can choose that for both whereas
like um
the rest of the world i only have like
um
a few international options but for you
know domestic mail i have all these
different options that my customers can
choose from
so they can choose how fast they want
their package to arrive
based on the price or whether they want
insurance
or whatever so a handling fee is
cost of the shipping materials so for
people who have like shopify stores in
etsy stores
we like to make packaging as cute as
possible
so i personally when i ship out the book
launch planner i wrap things
in tissue paper and a sticker
and eventually i want to make it even
cuter than that but you can do stuff
like
add in a handling fee so i just add in a
one dollar handling fee
to pay for the cost of my shipping
materials
and also as a little buffer because
sometimes
usually it doesn't happen but sometimes
especially for international shipping uh
what the customer pays
is less than what i will need to pay for
shipping just because like
calculations were off or something like
that but i added that one dollar buffer
just in case
some sort of oopsie has been made and
i'll end up having to pay more for
shipping than
calculated um so that is the shipping
settings and then we also have
um that i don't offer local delivery
because i
don't want people showing up at my house
but i also have everything
set up to my p.o box um so that's
another thing when you're shipping out
books
you probably want to get a po box just
because you need a return
address and you ideally don't want that
return address to be your home address
just
for privacy reasons i don't want people
to know where i live
i doubt anyone else wants people to know
where they live either so
get a a p.o box i'm lucky my p.o box
in my area was super cheap um
so i lucked out in terms of that uh then
we have packages so i've uploaded all
the different packages
that i use i actually don't even use
this sample box this is like the default
that shopify uses um
but the custom soft pack is what i use
for books it's what i use
for um for the book launch planner so
that's set up as my default so as you
can see
i set up how big it is and how much it
weighs and if i wanted to change that
i can hit edit if i want to add another
one i can hit add package
and then you can see i have two other
ones as well
so i have another package and then a
stay flat mailer which is what i use to
ship
out my stickers so again i have all the
weights
added of these there and then when it
comes to shipping labels so what you're
gonna do when you go to ship
out a product is that you're gonna
create a shipping label
um so you create a shipping label based
on
what carrier you want to use i for
almost everything use usps because i
ship
books so i'm able to use the media mail
rate so
that's already super cheap to start with
but because i work through shopify you
can see here
i get huge discounts so i get discounts
for
um usps ups and dhl
um i very rarely use dhl but i do know i
have some international customers who
say they can
only ship using dhl so that's why
i keep that in there so that is how
you set up your online store and how you
can figure out the shipping situation
and i know even after watching this
video that it
still might not make a whole ton of
sense
and trust me when i say you really just
have to play around with it i've
invested
a countless amount of hours into
figuring out shipping
and what was best for me and what was
best for my customers
how to get the cheapest prices for my
customers um there are some other cool
tricks but if you're an author odds are
you aren't shipping enough
to get huge discounts and shippings
because sometimes you can like
call up usps and see if you can make a
deal with them and be like hey i ship
out x amount of packages every month
can you cut me a deal on shipping rates
um
that is something that is possible but
you have to ship out a lot of packages
every month to make that
possible so with that said how exactly
can you make things
exciting for your customers and make
them actually want to go ahead
and buy your books whether that's a
one-time sale or a
long-term you just always have
signed books on your website so i would
do
kind of what i'm doing like i'm this is
experiment for me
i've never done a digital book signing
like this but i'm hoping it will pay off
uh but basically what i'm doing is that
i'm pretending i'm my own
little comic-con event or whatever but
it's
all about me um yep
so i'm having like daily panels that
will remind
people that you know the sale is going
on and i'm gonna talk about the books to
make them excited to read them and want
to purchase them and hopefully just
encourage them to buy the signed books
because i personally
i make more when people buy signed books
rather than buy a book on amazon
and that's complicated because amazon
it's better to have sales on amazon
because you can get a better ranking
but money-wise it's better to sell
through myself because i don't have to
give
amazon their cut or anything like that
um so it's really like what your
personal goals are
but i also think just having a signed
book and doing a signed book sale is
super exciting
then there's also you can add in fun
stuff like
incentives to buy so like for me i did
two different things
i did 15 off everything or i should say
15
off of all my signed books and then
stickers so i designed these cute
adorable stickers
that for every book you buy you get a
sticker so if you want all three
stickers you have to buy
all three books so that's my incentive
to get people to buy as many books as
possible
and then also an incentive is that i had
these little buttons made and i actually
got them
made for bookcon but obviously bookcon
didn't happen this year so now i just
have these buttons sitting around
and they're cute and so i'm like you
know what if people buy a signed book
they're also gonna get them buttons so
even if you just buy one book
it'll be 15 off you'll get a free
sticker and you'll also get a button and
then you also get a bookmark but like
it's hard to count bookmarks as like
an extra item because you can also call
a blank sticky note or bookmark or an
old receipt a bookmark
um so yeah you get all those things when
you buy just one book but of course if
you want to get more stickers
you can buy more books and it's also
just a matter of
everything's 15 off so buy as much as
you can
while you still have that sale um so
that's another thing you want to make
this
time sensitive you want to make sure
that people
don't have an excuse to be like oh i'll
buy it later
like make it time sensitive so they're
like i need to buy this now because
i won't be able to get the same deal
next week so i think that's gonna be it
for this video i hope it was helpful i
hope it wasn't
too confusing it's hard to really show
everything without just really getting
into the deep nitty gritty
um there are tons of other tutorials out
there online so
if you feel like i didn't cover anything
feel free to just
further search away on youtube if you
enjoyed this video be sure to give it a
thumbs
up um and support this digital book
signing by going
on my website and buying a signed book
and thank you all so much for watching
be sure to give the video a thumbs up
comment down below and subscribe
