Direct sales platforms for authors

January 8, 2026

The following is my opinion. It’s mostly based on my experiences using (or at least trying out) the various platforms. In some cases, it’s based on my research into the platforms before deciding it wasn’t right for me. Where that’s the case, I’ve made it clear in the below.

Who am I and why am I writing this?

I'm by no means a big author – I’m not at quit-my-day-job money. But I am someone who puts a big focus on direct sales. Around two-thirds of my author income comes from direct sales.

First off, I’ve disregarded anything that doesn’t integrate with BookFunnel (or at least StoryOrigin). You don’t want to be doing your own tech support. It’s just not worth it. I’ve actively used three of the platforms below (Payhip, Shopify, and Woocommerce). and taken Gumroad and Fourthwall for test drives (as in, I created accounts and started setting things up before abandoning the process). And I’ve looked at Lemon Squeezy and Itch.io. Note that ThriveCart also integrates with BookFunnel, but they won’t give you a website – only a single page to sell a single book or bundle.

Right. Let’s get into this.

I got my teeth into direct sales on Payhip, where I maintained a presence until late summer 2025. I mostly migrated to Shopify in 2023. In 2025, I decided to move again. I tried out Fourthwall and Gumroad, but rejected them both quickly. I looked at Itch-io, Presta-shop, LemonSqueezy and Ecwid.

Over the summer, I spent hundreds of £££ and hundreds of hours migrating everything over to Woocommerce. And then I spent the last two weeks of 2025 moving everything back to Shopify.

Below, I rate the various platforms (in alphabetical order) according to costs, tech skills required, integrations, taxes, currencies, and (for want of a better word) other.

Fourthwall

I took Fourthwall for a test drive. I signed up and started setting my site up, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t for me, so I never did launch or make sales.

Costs: No monthly fee, just per-transaction charges.
Tech skills needed: 2/10 Fourthwall offers limited customisation. They have multiple templates to choose from, but there’s not much flexibility within each one.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ✅
- BookVault: ❌
- Email/ecommerce: ✅ They integrate with Klayvio, Kit, and Mailchimp – presumably others too, but those are the ones mentioned on their site.
Taxes: ✅ As the merchant of record, they handle all sales taxes and VAT.
Currency choices: ⚠️ Kind of. All transactions are actually in USD; however, they do real-time conversions to other currencies, so that buyers see prices in their own currencies. But you can’t customise this. Right now, I’m looking at an author’s website. I’m looking at a book with a price of 5.99 USD – so what it shows me is 4.51 GBP.

Other notes: Fourthwall is VERY American. If a UK author sells a book to a buyer in the UK, Fourthwall calls that an international sale. All your T&Cs will refer to non-US buyers as international buyers.

Who is Fourthwall best for?

US-based authors who want something easy to provide an alternative to the retailers.

Gumroad

I took Gumroad for a test drive. I signed up and started setting my site up, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t for me, so I never did launch or make sales.

Costs: No monthly fee, just per-transaction charges.
Tech skills needed: 2/10 There’s not much you can do in the way of customisation. You have to fit your shop to their format rather than the other way around.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ✅
- BookVault: ❌
- Email/ecommerce: ⚠️ It looks like they force you to use their own in-house system.
Taxes: ✅ As the merchant of record, they handle all sales taxes and VAT.
Currency choices: ❌ All transactions are in USD.

Other notes: I’m told that Gumroad has very strict policies around both queer and spicy content, so if you write books with either or both of these elements, please do your full due diligence before committing to them.

Who is Gumroad best for?

Authors who want a basic storefront to provide an alternative to the retailers with low levels of tech requirements.

Itch.io

I have looked at Itch.io, but never tried setting anything up.

Costs: No monthly fee, just per-transaction charges.
Tech skills needed: 2/10 There’s not much you can do in the way of customisation. You have to fit your shop to their format rather than the other way around.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ❌ No, they have their own delivery system. You’re on your own for tech support if your readers can’t figure out how to get your books onto their devices. I'm not sure wheth
- BookVault: ❌
- Email/ecommerce: ❌ They don’t appear to integrate with any email marketing or ecommerce platforms.
Taxes: ⚠️ As the merchant of record, they handle all sales taxes and VAT. But Itch charges VAT on ebooks in the UK. VAT is not applicable to ebooks in the UK, so what are they doing with those funds? I have asked them several times; they do not answer. This feels dodgy to me.
Currency choices: ⚠️ Several to choose from – but you can only have one. The reason most authors choose USD is because most people from most countries will buy in any major currency – but most Americans will only buy in USD.

Other notes: There are three key reasons authors choose Itch. One is that they support multi-author bundles. You can group together with other authors to put together a time-limited bundle of your books and promote them jointly. Secondly, Itch has a huge community of geeks. So if your audience is geeky, they’re probably comfortable buying on Itch. And finally, there’s a huge community of queer and trans people on Itch. If that’s you and/or your audience, Itch might be a good fit.

Who is Itch.io best for?

Queer/trans authors of geeky fiction who want a simple, low-effort way to reach their target audience and who don’t mind that the company collects taxes that aren’t owed (and who isn't bothered by what they’re doing with those funds).

LemonSqueezy

I looked at LemonSqueezy, but I never actually started setting anything up with them, because at the time they integrated with StoryOrigin only (not BookFunnel), so this info is based on what I found online.

Costs: No monthly fee, just per-transaction charges.
Tech skills needed: 2/10 LemonSqueezy offers limited customisation.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ✅ Yes or you can integrate with StoryOrigin. There are two key differences between SO and BF. BF has a team of customer support specialists, who’ll respond to your customers’ tech queries and get them up and running in no time; SO is a one-man band. One person does all the dev work and the tech support for both you and your customers. Secondly, SO doesn’t support audiobooks.
- BookVault: ❌
- Email/ecommerce: ⚠️ They integrate with Kit and Mailchimp
Taxes: ✅ As the merchant of record, they handle all sales taxes and VAT.
Currency choices: ⚠️ Kind of. Their setup is halfway between Payhip’s and Fourthwall’s. You can choose your currency and then all transactions will be in that currency; however, they do real-time conversions to other currencies, so that buyers see prices in their own currencies. On the backend, though, everything is actually in USD and all payouts will be in USD.

Other notes: LemonSqueezy is broadly similar to Fourthwall.

Who is LemonSqueezy best for?

Authors who wants something easy to provide an alternative to the retailers.

Payhip

My first experience of direct selling was with Payhip. I pivoted my strategy from focusing on retailers to focusing on my own website while I was with them. I maintained a presence with them until December 2025.

Costs: No monthly fee, just per-transaction charges.
Tech skills needed: 3/10+ Requires some tech skills if you want to customise it, but you can get up and running fairly simply.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ⚠️ They do, integrate with Bookfunnel, but regardless of whether you integrate or not, Payhip will still send every customer a ‘click here to download’ button. You can load it with the actual book or with a text file that tells readers their book will be delivered by BookFunnel. Either way, you will get (angry) emails from people who can’t figure out how to load their books onto their devices.
- BookVault: ✅
- Email/ecommerce: ⚠️ They used to integrate with various email marketing and ecommerce platforms, but I don’t think they do anymore. If you still have it set up, it may still work. But if you try to set up a new integration, I don’t think you can. They now want you to use their email platform. Just don’t. The emails don’t come from you. They come from Payhip. I was on the email list of an author using their service – I had absolutely no way of telling who those emails were from except for a first name in the signature (which isn’t even the same as the author’s pen name).
Taxes: ⚠️ They handle VAT digital products sold in EU and the UK (but not physical goods).
Currencies: ⚠️ Dozens to choose from – but you can only have one. The reason most authors choose USD is because most people from most countries will buy in any major currency – but most Americans will only buy in USD.

Other notes: The biggest downside to Payhip is the company itself. They have zero interest in what their customers (i.e. you as an author) actually want.

Who is Payhip best for?

Once upon a time, I’d have suggested it to anyone who focused on direct sales but wasn’t yet at the level where they could justify Shopify prices. Now, I won’t suggest them to anyone.

Shopify

I migrated to Shopify in 2023 but maintained Payhup for EU customers until 2025. In summer 2025 I moved from Shopify to Woocommerce (because Shopify management supports fascists). But the hard reality is that they really do make the best platform out there. I ended up moving everything back to them in December 2025.

Costs: The monthly fee is relatively high (25 GBP per month or 19 GBP per month if you pay for a year up front). And then there are the plugins. You’ll need at least a few and most of them aren’t free. You still have to pay card/Paypal fees, but there’s no other transaction fee on top of that.
Tech skills needed: 4/10+ Shopify gives you good flexibility over your site, but the more customisation you want, the higher the level of tech skills required.
Integrations
- BookFunnel: ✅
- BookVault: ✅
- Email/ecommerce: ✅ Pretty much any platform out there will integrate with Shopify.
Taxes: ⚠️ This is entirely on you. You are your own merchant of record and you’ll need to take care of taxes yourself. There are apps you can use to take some of the burden off you for a price. But you’ll definitely need to do your due diligence.
Currencies: ✅ In Shopify, you can choose your base currency and you can also set prices for other currencies. And you can choose which currencies to support. All without needing any extra plugins.

Other notes: I intensely dislike what Shopify stands for. They support fascists. Their senior management team are bad people. However, the Shopify platform really is best in class. If you want to make a go of direct sales and if you have more than a handful of books and if you don’t like giving Amazon all of your money, they really are the only way to go. I don’t like it, but it’s true.

Who is Shopify best for?

People who have a decent number of books and who require extensive customisation but who don’t want to spend endless hours babysitting their site to make sure it hasn’t broken itself again.

Woocommerce (Wordpress)

I migrated from Shopify to Woo in summer 2025, but it proved so buggy and infuriating that I ended up moving back to Shopify at Christmas the same year.

Costs: Varies. Woocommerce itself only charges transaction fees. If you use WP hosting, the costs are similar to Shopify, but other hosting services are available. And then there are the plugins. Most of the ones you’ll need are free, but not all of them.
Tech skills needed: 6/10+ Wordpress gives you full flexibility over your site, but the flip side of that is that you need deep tech skills to take advantage of more complex. Tools like Divi or Elementor can reduce some of the tech burden, but they definitely don’t eliminate it.
Integrations:
- BookFunnel: ✅
- BookVault: ✅
- Email/ecommerce: ✅ Pretty much any platform out there will integrate with Wordpress.
Taxes: ⚠️ This is entirely on you. You are your own merchant of record and you’ll need to take care of taxes yourself. There are apps you can use to take some of the burden off you for a price. But you’ll definitely need to do your due diligence.
Currencies: ⚠️ In Woo itself, you can choose from all currencies – but you can only have one. However, there are plugins you can choose from that will enable you to offer multiple-currency support. I tried a few. CURCY had unreliable geolocation. The one that worked best for me was YayCurrency – but the plugin caused conflicts with other plugins (I never figured out which one). As a result, I was forever having to switch it off and on again.

Other notes: In 2025, I invested hundreds of pounds and hundreds of hours migrating my site to Woo. I’m no tech rookie and I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole. Every time I fixed on problem, another cropped up. The most frequent was that the header and footer rows would double themselves at random. No matter what problem you encounter, the solution will be the same: switch all your plugins off and then turn them back on one at a time (and you will probably need 20–30 plugins).