Selling ebooks directly from your own site is one of the most repeated pieces of indie publishing advice right now, usually followed by the phrase "keep more of every sale."
Per copy, that is true. What the advice tends to leave out is that direct sales replace one percentage cut with a mix of smaller percentages and fixed costs—and those fixed costs come due whether or not anyone buys.
Breakdown: Royalty Math on a $6.99 Ebook
To understand the real numbers, let’s compare a standard $6.99 epic fantasy ebook across three common setup models:
1. Amazon KDP (70% Royalty Tier)
Gross Royalty: $4.89
Delivery Fee: ~$0.15 (based on $0.15/MB for a 1 MB text-only file in the US store)
Net Revenue per Sale: ~$4.74
Upfront / Fixed Monthly Costs: $0
2. Payhip (Free Plan)
Payhip Fee (5%): ~$0.35
Payment Processing (Stripe/PayPal ~2.9% + $0.30): ~$0.50
Net Revenue per Sale: ~$6.14 (~$1.40 more per sale than Amazon)
Upfront / Fixed Monthly Costs: $0
3. Shopify + BookFunnel Stack
Shopify Basic Plan: $29/month billed annually ($348/year)
BookFunnel Mid-List Plan (required for direct sales integration): $200/year
Total Fixed Overhead: $548/year
Transaction Fees (Shopify Payments ~2.9% + $0.30): ~$0.50 per sale
Net Revenue per Sale: ~$6.49 (~$1.75 more per sale than Amazon)
Direct Sales Comparison at a Glance
Platform / Setup | Fixed Cost /Year | Net Per Sale ($6.99/bk) | Earnings vs. Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|
Amazon KDP (70%) | $0 | ~$4.74 | Baseline |
Payhip (Free Plan) | $0 | ~$6.14 | +$1.40 per copy |
Shopify + BookFunnel | $548 | ~$6.49 | +$1.75 per copy |
The Breakeven Math: When Does Shopify Pay Off?
Now, let's look at the breakeven points for the paid Shopify stack:
Against Amazon KDP: The Shopify setup earns about $1.75 more per copy. You need roughly 315 direct sales per year just to cover the $548 overhead before making a single dollar more than you would on Amazon.
Against Payhip’s Free Plan: The per-sale difference is only $0.35. That means the Shopify route needs around 1,570 sales per year (about 130 sales per month) before its lower per-copy fees actually pay for themselves.
None of this counts the cost that never appears on a pricing page: traffic.
An Amazon sale can come from organic search or recommendations to a reader who has never heard of you. A direct sale almost always comes from someone you have already reached through your newsletter, social media presence, or a crowdfunding campaign.
Direct sales reward an audience that already exists. They do not build one.
Final Recommendation
Before launching, keep in mind that sales tax and VAT handling also differ significantly by platform and require proper configuration.
For a First Book: Setting up a free storefront (like Payhip) alongside major retailers costs nothing to test.
When to Scale: The custom Shopify stack starts to make financial sense once your reader list is large enough that selling a few hundred copies direct each year is a realistic floor rather than a hope.
Map's Edge Media keeps running numbers like these because the honest version of the math is the one that helps you make the right publishing decisions.