Books.by alternatives
Books.by is a direct-sales bookstore with print-on-demand. Here is everything worth moving to if it is not working for you, what each one takes, and — first, since it is the part most of these lists skip — when the answer is to stay put.
When Books.by is still the right answer
- They print your book and we do not. Paperback print-on-demand with free ISBNs, printing and shipping handled, sold from the same page as the ebook. 97% of indie authors sell paperbacks. If a physical book is any part of what you sell, that is not a feature gap here — it is the whole product, and this one does not have it.
- One store for both formats. A reader who wants the paperback and a reader who wants the file are the same order on the same listing. Selling ebooks here and print there means two storefronts and two links in your back matter, and you should count that cost honestly before moving anything.
- They are not new and we are. They say 50,000 authors and $4.4M paid out. This is a young product with no such number to quote, and no amount of architecture makes up for that on the day you are deciding who to trust with a launch.
- Cheaper if print is the point. Their Core tier is $99 a year. If you want a paperback storefront and the ebook is an afterthought, nothing here competes with that — we cannot sell the paperback at any price.
We make this page and we sell one of the options on it. If the three paragraphs above describe you, none of the rest is an upgrade.
The alternatives
1. Inkwharf — a shop you own, at 0% of every sale
$0–19/mo, no cutStorefront, checkout and EPUB delivery in one subscription, on your own domain. Cards are charged on your own Stripe account and the funds land in your balance, so nothing takes a percentage — there is no percentage, because the money never passes through here. Readers buy with an email address and no account, and every book comes with a real chapter sample, an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle.
The catch: ebooks only, no writing toolchain, and no marketplace sending you traffic. You bring the readers; it does everything after that.
2. Payhip — a storefront for digital products
5% cutPayhip sells anything digital and charges a percentage until you pay enough to stop it — 5% free, 2% at $29 a month, 0% at $99. Inkwharf sells ebooks only, takes nothing at any tier, and knows what an EPUB is. Below roughly $380 a month in sales their free plan is genuinely the cheaper deal, and we say so.
Pick it for: Under about $380 a month in sales, their percentage costs less than $19 — the arithmetic is on this page rather than left for you to discover. Our free tier answers most of it by covering you to $500 a month at 0% with no subscription, but if your catalogue is broader than books, that window is real.
3. Curios — a creator marketplace with a storefront attached
flat feeThe same sentence as this product — sell direct, keep 100% — arranged the opposite way. Their fee is real and is charged to your reader at checkout, at 1–10% of the price plus the card fee; ours is charged to you, at $0 or $19 a month. Then the split widens: they are a marketplace with an app, an account and an NFT receipt, and this is a shop on your own domain handing over a file.
Pick it for: A marketplace with 27,100+ creators and 259,000+ transactions puts your book in front of people who did not come from your newsletter. This site deliberately lists nothing, so every visitor to your shop is one you brought. If discovery is what you are shopping for, that is the whole argument and it is theirs.
4. Shopify — a general ecommerce platform
flat feeShopify is a store for physical goods that can be made to deliver a file. It bills $19 a month before the first sale, adds 2% to every sale taken through a provider that is not Shopify Payments, and knows nothing about EPUB — no spec check, no chapter sample, no reader, no send-to-Kindle, no watermark. Inkwharf is free until you are selling $500 a month and is built around the file. The moment you sell anything physical, Shopify wins outright and this does not compete.
Pick it for: Signed paperbacks, a print run, box sets, merch at a convention table. Inventory, shipping rates, and a card reader that shares a catalogue with the website. Nothing here touches a physical object, and an author whose direct sales are half print should not be reading this page for a verdict.
5. BookFunnel — ebook delivery for indie authors
flat feeBookFunnel is delivery without a checkout, so selling direct with it means pairing it with a store and paying two bills. Inkwharf is both halves in one subscription. BookFunnel still wins outright on ARCs and group promos, which are not selling at all.
Pick it for: A large share of what BookFunnel moves was never sold: advance copies, newsletter magnets, cross-author promo swaps. Their tooling for handing a file to a list of people who did not pay is better than ours, and it is most of the reason authors keep them.
Sources
Every figure quoted above, and the page it was read from. Each platform carries the date it was last checked. These pages are re-read against those claims rather than trusted — if one of them changes, this comparison is wrong until it is updated, and you should be able to tell that for yourself.
Books.by · checked September 7, 2026
- $99 Core and $299 Pro a year; ebooks are a Pro feature; card fee 2.9% + 30¢ books.by
Payhip · checked August 28, 2026
- Free 5%, Plus $29/mo at 2%, Pro $99/mo at 0% help.payhip.com
- Payhip subscribes buyers to a mailing list automatically, Mailchimp among the providers help.payhip.com
- Payhip collects and remits EU/UK VAT on digital sales help.payhip.com
Curios · checked September 7, 2026
- Free, then 15% + 25¢ after 25 sales; Lite $9, Plus $29, Pro $69 a month studio.curios.com
- The platform fee and the card fee are both billed to the buyer, at 1–10% of the listing price content.curios.com
Shopify · checked September 1, 2026
- Basic $19/mo billed annually, $25 monthly; 2% charged only where the sale is taken through a payment provider other than Shopify Payments shopify.com
- Shopify's own Digital Downloads app is free apps.shopify.com
BookFunnel · checked August 28, 2026
- $30/$200/$300 a year; 500/5,000/unlimited downloads; 1/4/6 pen names bookfunnel.com