$19 a month. Nothing per sale.
Store and delivery in one subscription, where selling direct usually takes two. Plans are capped on what you sell in a month, so nobody pays anything before they have earned something — free stays free up to $500 a month, and one big month never pauses anything.
No plan takes a cut of a sale — not the free one either. That is the plumbing rather than a promotion: you connect your own Stripe account and readers pay you. We build the shop and open the checkout, and the money never lands anywhere we could take a share from. Paid tiers buy a higher ceiling, not a smaller percentage, because there is no percentage.
Which means this gets cheaper the better you do, in the only sense that matters: a cut grows with you forever and a flat fee does not. The ceilings are set so that is true at every volume — free below $500 where 5% would already have cost you $25, and never more than a fraction of what a percentage would take above it. There is no crossover where the other way is cheaper.
Founding authors — a free year
20 of 20 leftThe first 20 authors to open a shop here pay nothing for 12 months — every paid feature below, from the day you claim it. What we want back is the unvarnished version: what broke, what confused you, what made you nearly give up. At the end of the year we will ask what it was worth, and your shop keeps working whatever you answer.
Claim a founding placeFree
$0
A real shop, not a trial. We take nothing from what you sell.
- Our cut
- 0%
- Sales ceiling
- $500 a month
At that ceiling a 5% platform takes $25.00 a month. We take nothing.
- Up to $500 a month in sales
- Unlimited books, unlimited downloads
- Card checkout, and bitcoin if you want it — 0% to us either way
- Every copy watermarked to its buyer
- Free samples, in-browser reader, send-to-Kindle
- Your shop at a free address
Plus
Most authors$19.00 / month
or $190.00 a year
For authors with readers already arriving.
- Our cut
- 0%
- Sales ceiling
- $2,500 a month
At that ceiling a 5% platform takes $125.00 a month. We take $19.
- Everything in Free
- Up to $2,500 a month in sales
- Your own domain, with the certificate handled
- No Inkwharf line on your shop
- Still 0% of every sale — a take rate here would be $125
Pro
$49.00 / month
or $490.00 a year
For a shop that has outgrown a ceiling.
- Our cut
- 0%
- Sales ceiling
- No cap
- Everything in Plus
- No cap on what you sell
- Priority support
Yearly is ten months — two free. Payment processing is charged separately and never marked up: Stripe’s usual rate on a card, about 2.9% + 30¢, or 1% if you also switch bitcoin on. Either way it is billed to the author’s own account, because the account is the author’s.
Questions
- Really 0%? What is the catch?
- There is no mechanism for a cut, which is a stronger guarantee than a promise. Card payments are charged with your own Stripe API key on your own Stripe account, and bitcoin goes to an address derived from your own wallet. Neither passes through anything of ours, so there is no moment at which a share could be taken. We charge for the shop, not for your sales.
- What does Stripe charge on top?
- Their usual processing fee — around 2.9% + 30¢ in the US, varying by country — billed to your account, because the charge is created there. We never see it and never mark it up. A $10 card sale nets you about $9.41 on every plan.
- And on a bitcoin sale?
- Blockonomics charges 1% on their own side, with no fixed component. A $10 bitcoin sale nets about $9.90, minus whatever the network fee is when you move the coins.
- Should I offer bitcoin as well?
- Only if it suits your readers. Cards are the default and most buyers will use one, so a shop that never turns bitcoin on is a normal shop here. The one case where it changes the arithmetic is a cheap book, because the fixed 30¢ on a card is 8.9% of a $4.99 ebook where 1% is 5¢. The studio shows both numbers against your own price, and leaving it off costs you nothing.
- What counts toward the ceiling?
- Gross sales through your shop in a calendar month, both rails together, counted when the money arrives. Downloads do not count, and neither do re-downloads, free samples or reading in the browser — a reader coming back for a second device three years later is the product working, not something you should be billed for.
- What happens if I go over the ceiling?
- One big month never pauses anything. A launch, a BookBub feature or a series going free can put a normally-$300 author at $2,000 for four weeks, and that is the worst possible month to interrupt your checkout — so a first month over is a note, not a consequence. Only sales that stay far over for a second month running pause new orders. Your readers keep getting their books throughout: always, on every plan, over the ceiling or not. Someone who has paid should never meet a billing problem, and the consequence lands on the person who agreed to the plan rather than on a stranger holding a receipt.
- Who holds the money?
- Neither of us. Card payments are charged on your own Stripe account — you are the merchant of record and the funds land in your balance. Bitcoin goes straight to your wallet. The only money that ever reaches Inkwharf is a subscription, if you have one.
- What about VAT and sales tax?
- You are the merchant of record, so the obligation is yours — that is the flip side of the money never passing through us. What we do is make it collectable: switch Stripe Tax on in Shop settings and card checkouts ask for a billing address, apply the right rate for a digital book wherever the buyer is, and collect it as part of the payment. Stripe files and remits where you have registered. Registering where you cross a threshold is the part nobody can do for you, and no platform that leaves you as merchant of record can. Bitcoin sales are not covered — nothing sits between the buyer and your wallet to add a tax line — so we record the buyer's country against the order and the rest is yours.
- Are prices tax-inclusive?
- Yes. A reader anywhere pays the price on your book page; what varies by country is how much of it is tax rather than yours. Adding tax at the last step is how software is usually sold and is not allowed for consumer sales in the EU or the UK, where the displayed price has to be the price paid.
- What happens if I cancel?
- You drop to Free at the end of the period and keep everything: your shop, your books, your links, your buyers' download pages. Your ceiling goes back to $500 of sales a month and a custom domain stops resolving, so move it back to your free address first. Watermarking is on every plan, so nothing changes there. Nothing you have already sold is affected.
- Is there a listing fee or a contract?
- No, and no exclusivity either. Sell the same book on Amazon, Kobo and your own site on the same day if you like.