Episode 197: Payhip vs Shopify For Indie Author Direct Sales

In this week's episode, we take a look at direct selling for indie authors, and compare the pros and cons of Payhip and Shopify as platforms for selling direct.

This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

00:00:00 Introduction, Writing Updates, and a Reader Question

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 197 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 19th, 2024, and today we are talking about the pros and cons of Payhip and Shopify for direct sales by authors. Before we do that, we will do Coupon of the Week and some updates on my current writing projects. I have some questions from readers and will discuss what I did to celebrate publishing my 150^th book.

First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGELVES, spelled SPRINGELVES. As always, the link and the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through May the 14th, 2024, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.

Now let's have a look at my current writing and audiobook projects. Wizard-Thief, as I mentioned in last week's episode, is done and is out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and is selling quite strongly. Thank you very much for that. Now that it is out, my main project is Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series. As of this recording, I am about 34,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 7 of 24. I think the final book length will end up being about the length of Cloak of Embers, which was about 110,000 words. Once Cloak of Titans is finished, my next project will be Shield of Darkness, so I will finally be getting to the second book in the Shield War series, which will be a follow up to Shield of Storms from back in January.

If all goes well, I think Cloak of Titans will be out in the second half of May, maybe towards the start of June. I'm hoping to have Shield of Darkness out shortly after that, probably towards the end of June. I have also started working on the sequel to Wizard Thief, which is Half-Orc Paladin. That will come out after Shield of Darkness is done, hopefully not too long after Shield of Darkness is done. So that will probably be around the middle of July or so. So that is what I'm working on for books for the next couple of months.

In audiobook news, recording is underway for Ghosts in the Veils. That will once again be recorded by Hollis McCarthy. I have Brad Wills working on the Tales of the Shield Knight anthology, which once it’s in audiobook, I’m going to sell it as a bundle on Audible and Amazon and all the other usual audiobook stores. I will also be giving away short stories individually for free from that collection in my newsletter, so that is once again a very good reason to sign up for my new release newsletter. Leanne Woodward has agreed to narrate the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, Wizard Thief. If all goes well, that will probably happen in June. And also in June, CJ McAllister will be narrating the second book of the Stealth and Spells Online Series, formerly known as Sevenfold Sword Online. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.

Now we have one question from a reader that is not connected with our other segments. It's from Robert who asks about the Half-Elven Thief series: is this series available in paperback? I'm pleased to say that yes, it is. Both Half-Elven Thief and Wizard-Thief are available in trade paperback. Probably the cheapest place to get them is on Amazon, but I have expanded distribution for them so you should be able to buy it online from a variety of other stores.

00:03:43 Celebrating Book #150

As I mentioned previously on the show, Ghost in the Veils was my 150th book. Thank you for reading, everyone. Quite a few people asked how I wanted to celebrate, the implication being that I wanted to take a trip or something like a cruise, that sort of thing. However, with all respect to the cruise industry, if I wanted to catch norovirus, I could do it much closer to home for far less expense. However, I have established a precedent for celebrating major book milestones like this. Way back in 2019, Dragontiarna: Knights was my 100th book and to celebrate that milestone, I got a Nintendo Switch, which was the first dedicated video game console I had used since 1998 or so. Given that six months later COVID started, that turned out to be a wise purchase because suddenly I had a lot more time for video games. I got to beat a bunch of games I never had time to finish otherwise back in the ‘90s, like Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, the original Castlevania trilogy for NES, the Super Nintendo Castlevania games, Super Metroid, and I finally finished Skyrim. It wasn't all a retro nostalgia trip because I did finish a few newer games on it as well, like Metroid Dread and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

I recently had one of those numerically significant birthdays that are divisible by a large number, so I commemorated that occasion by getting an Xbox. It is a fine game console, but the problem with the Xbox was unlike the Switch, using the Xbox monopolizes the television. I finished the original Halo trilogy on Xbox and Skyrim again, but the whole Xbox monopolizes the television thing was kind of a difficulty for finding time to play it. But then a new device came to my attention: portable monitors. Obviously, most monitors are portable depending on size, but this new sort of monitor is basically a laptop LCD panel with a kickstand. It runs off a USB-C connection for power and you can connect a device to it with a USB-C or mini HDMI. Overall, these portable monitors tend to weigh about as much as an iPad in a case. They were basically intended for business travelers, since they fit easily into a laptop bag and then you can have a dual monitor set up with your laptop while you're on the road.

However, it also connects just fine to an Xbox. If you can hold a laptop comfortably in your lap, then a portable monitor is about one third of that total weight. I moved my Xbox over next to the couch, connected it to a portable monitor, and have been using the Xbox that way. It is really quite exceedingly comfortable.

Since I've beaten Skyrim a couple of times now, I need to decide on a new long-term game, which is why Question of the Week will be what it is shortly. So the “too long; didn't listen” version was celebrated my 150th book with a sub-100 dollar portable monitor off Amazon. It's really quite enjoyable and thank you for coming along for all 150 books.

00:06:35 Question of the Week

It quite naturally segues into our Question of the Week. This week's question: what Xbox Game should I play next? No wrong answers, obviously. The reason I asked this particular question is because I keep defaulting to Skyrim or Halo when I play an Xbox game and would like to try something different. My leading candidates so far are Starfield, Witcher 3, and Dragon's Dogma 1. As you might have expected, this inspired many comments.

LG says: I'm glad to hear you’re an Xbox player, too. I like to separate my work/study computer from my gaming space, so having the controller plus TV in another room works well for me. Revenant 2 is my new favorite game. It jumped forward in my “to play” list when Halo Infinite's campaign wasn't personally feeling right. This game has got fantastic narratives, brilliant variety, exciting exploration, and frequent boss fights, it’s souls-like but forgiving, the level/combat/gear systems are great, and there's a totally viable offline/single player mode.

Justin says: We are a Nintendo family. Not quite 30 years ago, the PlayStation came out. Amid whining, I had the kids vote on what platform we would stick with. There is no way our entertainment budget could handle more than one. The most complaints have been missing out on the Metal Gear franchise, so that's my vote.

Malcolm says 150 books. What an amazing feat. Congratulations. I feel like I've been on the journey with you, having read every book you have written and every series. I particularly enjoyed any book with Ridmark and Calliande and like Dragonskull, the next generation of Arbans. I also thoroughly enjoyed all the Demonsouled books, wasn't so keen on the Cloak and Ghost crossovers, but still a good read. Whatever you do, enjoy this landmark. Have fun. To answer the question, I do not usually play video games, but one that did catch my attention and play through all of them is the Dragon Age games.

MacKenzie suggests Red Dead Redemption. The graphics hold up remarkably well. It's astoundingly clear for a Rockstar game and has an amazingly authentic feel to it. I'm not even a huge Western fan, but there's something extremely relaxing about riding out of town into the desert to hunt varmints.

I think that is probably why so many people will go hunting in real life.

Michael says: Starfield is a great game, but no modding yet on Xbox.

Perry says: I haven't owned a console in over a decade, nor have I played any of those games, but my preference would be for Witcher 3.

James says: How does Baldur’s Gate 3 not make the list? Best game I've played maybe ever.

David says: Fallout 4 was fun.

Mark says Witcher. Starfield, I found to be slow to start with. I play Skyrim over and over again. I kind of do that as well. You can always mod Skyrim if you have the anniversary edition and haven't already.

Robb says any car racing game.

Juana says Witcher 3. Martin says Witcher 3. Becca says Witcher 3. So there are many votes there for Witcher 3.

William says Hogwarts Legacy.

Jake says: I honestly can't recommend any games, no matter what platform they come in. Xbox, PlayStation, Atari…just not worth it anymore. So I'd skip the games and write a book, maybe continuation of the Silent Order series. That's my vote. Thank you for that advice, Jake, I suspect it might be a little self-interested, but I appreciate that.

Next one is from Michael, who says next Xbox game is called: buy a PlayStation.

Barton says: only played Witcher 3 out of those, but it was engrossing.

Bobby says Starfield and Hogwarts Legacy are both enjoyable as well as Jedi Survivor.

And finally, Jim says: Child of the Ghost. Wait…not a game….yet.

Thank you everyone, for all the suggestions. I think what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to try Starfield because that comes with Game Pass and I have Game Pass already. If I don't like that, I will I probably start Witcher 3 because I got that one was on super sale like last year for something like 10 bucks and so it's been sitting in my account and I haven't played it. But if I try Starfield and don't like it, I will switch over to Witcher 3. If I don't like Witcher 3, maybe it'll be time for Baldur’s Gate 3.

00:10:40 Main Topic: Shopify vs. Payhip for Direct Sales for Writers

But as much as I enjoy video games, I enjoy writing more and this is not a video game podcast. This is The Pulp Writer Show, so I think we should segue over into talking about an actual writing topic. This week's topic is comparing Shopify and Payhip for direct sales or as a direct sales platform for indie authors. And before we dig in, I should have a disclaimer. As you may know from my frequent mention of it on this show, I use Payhip quite a bit and that's how I do my direct sales. That said, I am not sponsored by Payhip. I don't get any stuff from this, whether financial benefits or an affiliate program, that kind of thing. I haven't used Shopify, but we did look into it quite a bit for the show and any opinion I express on this podcast is my own and not influenced by either Shopify or Payhip in any way.

All right with that out of the way, let's dig into the topic. First off, why do direct sales? We should probably define that first. Direct sales is when an indie author sells a book using an ecommerce platform like Payhip or Shopify or Gum Road or a bunch of others without going through one of the big stores like Amazon or Apple or Google Play. So why do this? You get a greater cut of the profit than through ebook stores, whereas on a platform like Amazon, you max out at 70% of the sale price is what you get as the author. On direct sales platforms, you can potentially get nearly everything minus credit card fees and platform fees, which is higher than any of the other stores offer. You get paid faster. If you make a direct sale from the author, the author gets the money almost instantaneously, depending on their payment setup.

Freedom/control. This is the big one. There is a lot of freedom in doing your own direct sales. It is a lot of work, but then like all forms of freedom, it is often quite worth it. It's much easier to run sales or issue coupon codes, as you know if you listen to the show regularly. Every week I give out a different coupon code for a discount on my Payhip store. It's also very good for people who want to sell online courses or memberships, which is not something I'm interested in doing. People who are interested in doing that usually need to employ an online sales platform such as Shopify or Payhip rather than trying to sell it on something like Amazon or eBay.

There are a couple of things to note about trying direct sales. There is quite a bit of learning curve since you have to set up the store yourself and that involves a lot of clicking and uploading and so forth. You also need to learn about things about like Value Added Tax, shipping, file delivery services, etcetera. And if you are selling in the United States, you also have to be careful you comply with whatever these sales tax laws are for your jurisdiction or for where you're selling in the United States.

Direct sales don't count towards ranking on other platforms, if that's something that's important to you, if you want your book to be a number one category bestseller on Amazon, direct sales will not help with that. It does take a bit of time to set up and maintain, and it also takes time for readers to get used to it and will not likely be a large portion of your sales, especially at first, since users tend to stick to the platform where they already have built up a library. This is one of the reasons why the Steam game platform is so dominant, because it's been around for a long time and a lot of the users have very big Steam libraries, so they're not super keen on jumping to a different distributor.

Readers will need a carrot not a stick to get them to try a new platform, which is one of the reasons why I do those coupon codes all the time. So now to the actual nitty gritty of Payhip versus Shopify. We can sum it up quite neatly by saying it this way: Payhip is primarily designed for digital products. Shopify is primarily designed for physical products, but both are capable of selling either physical or digital products. Shopify allows for greater analytics and customization, while Payhip has a great basic service that keeps the costs low.

So in terms of pricing, which costs more? Payhip pricing has three tiers. There is the free tier, which you pay obviously $0 per month and then Payhip takes 5% of each transaction. There is the middle tier, where you pay $29 USD per month and Payhip takes 2% of the transaction. Then there is the top, most expensive tier, which costs $99 USD per month and Payhip takes 0% of the transaction fee. Obviously, you would only consider that tier if you were making more than $1,200 USD a year in direct sales.

Shopify does not have a free tier. At the basic tier, it costs $39 USD per month and Shopify takes 2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction. At $105 USD per month, Shopify takes 2.6% + $0.30 USD per transaction. At $399 USD per month, Shopify takes 2.4% + $0.30 USD per transaction. We can see that with Shopify, you are already going to be paying more out the door. If you're just starting with direct sales, it might make more sense to start with the free tier on Payhip and then look at more costly options on either service as your needs grow and if you need the additional, more expensive features.

So let's look at the pros on Payhip. The biggest pro on Payhip is low bar to entry in both terms of cost and in terms of technology needed to create a basic storefront. I've been doing direct sales on Payhip since 2021, and it's a very simple platform to use. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but it's not a huge one compared to something like WordPress or Adobe Photoshop. As we mentioned, the lowest tier plan is free but with a 5% cut of sales. The Pro plan, the top tier that we mentioned earlier, is $99 USD but then there are no transaction fees. It can handle UK/EU Value Added Tax automatically unlike Shopify because Payhip is based out of the UK, so that is built into their platform.

Payhip also has some handy features that Shopify doesn't or that Shopify doesn't offer without like a plug-in app, that kind of thing that Shopify offers: settings for selling online courses, memberships, affiliate marketing, and a referral system. When I have had to contact Payhip about some sort of tech issue, I've always found their customer support to be very fast and responsive. As I mentioned before, I'm not being paid to say that. That is just my own personal experience.

The pros for Shopify are basically for more advanced users, I think. $29 USD a month for the lowest pricing plan and then plus a cut and plus a transaction fee, that can add up if you have a lot of transactions. I think Shopify is really aimed more toward more advanced users than someone starting out with the basic ebook store on Payhip. However, to be fair, you do get a lot of stuff for that money. Shopify has an advanced website builder feature with more customization options on the pages. It has much more advanced SEO and analytics tools than anything Payhip offers. It is very useful if you're selling physical products. It also offers features to support delivery of physical items, such as customized shopping options based on location. More third-party apps or third-party payment options are available through Shopify (for example, Amazon Pay or Apple Pay). Shopify does offer a lot of customization and it does have a pretty good app store, where if there's a feature that Shopify doesn't have, there's a pretty good chance you can find one of the apps in their store that will sort of offer bolt on functionality for the new feature that you are looking for.

So, in conclusion, if you want to do direct sales as an indie author, should you use Payhip or should you use Shopify? And as so often in these cases there is no right answer, there is merely the tool that is best suited for your needs as an indie author and a small businessperson. If you want to be able to heavily customize the site, Shopify offers more options for that than Payhip. If you are primarily selling digital products like I am, then Payhip offers better value, because you can just go with the free tier and still make more money than you would selling for the same price off Amazon. Since I don't really at this time have any interest in selling physical products online, Payhip it is. That said, if you do want to sell printed books or your own merchandise direct, then Shopify is the way to go. But if you don't have any of that kind of stuff and you still want to keep your shop costs low, then Payhip is probably the better option for you since you can use their free tier. So that is a look at Shopify versus Payhip and if you are thinking about direct selling as an indie author, I hope you have found that helpful.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a word of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to pull together all the research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes of the show on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

SPRINGELVES

The coupon code is valid through May 14th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we’ve got you covered!

TRANSCRIPT