The ebook tier, priced like an ebook
A flat subscription and no cut of a sale on any plan, so a $4.99 file does not pay a percentage designed for a $45 one. Free until you are selling $500 a month.
Keep the Shopify store. This is the ebook half.
Sprayed edges, a case laminate, a stretch goal and a pallet of stock in the spare room — none of that is what this is for, and a store built to ship a hardback is the right tool for shipping a hardback. The ebook is the tier underneath it: no weight, no customs, no fulfilment, and a margin that a shipping-shaped platform charges you for anyway.
I already have a store. Why would I run a second checkout?
You would not, if the ebook were doing well inside the first one. Two things usually say it is not. Shopify charges 2% of a sale on Basic when the payment runs through a gateway that is not Shopify Payments, and it charges that on a $5.99 digital file exactly as it does on a $45 hardback — the file that costs nothing to fulfil pays the same tax as the one that costs a pallet. And digital delivery there is a third-party app with its own monthly fee and its own download limits, which is a second bill for the half of the order that has no logistics in it. So the split is not tidiness for its own sake: it is putting the thing with no shipping in it somewhere that is not priced for shipping. Everything physical stays exactly where it is.
What you get
One link, dropped into what you already run
Every title has a payment link that works inside a Shopify product description, a backer update, a launch email or a link-in-bio. Readers never see this site's name, and this site never lists your shop.
Delivery that is not an app subscription
A permanent download page with the EPUB, an in-browser reader and send-to-Kindle. No download quota, so a reader who changes phones in 2029 does not hit a wall and you do not get the email.
The buyer's address is yours
Every sale hands you the email, and the ones who ticked the box go into your list on their own. That is the asset the next campaign is launched to, and it is the reason the ebook tier is worth running properly rather than as an afterthought.
Signed, not locked
Every copy carries the buyer's name and a licence code, so a file on a piracy site leads back to one purchase. No DRM: it opens anywhere, forever, and it is theirs — which is the same promise the physical edition makes.
What this does not do
No print, no shipping, no inventory, no bundling a file with a physical tier in one cart. If the ebook has to be inside the same order as the hardback, keep it where the hardback is — that is a real answer and the comparison page says so too.
Bring the file you already have
Nothing about how the special edition gets made or shipped changes. Keep Shopify, keep the printer, keep the fulfilment partner. This takes the EPUB — the same file you send to retailers — and sells it from a page of its own, with a link you can drop into a product page, a backer update or a launch email.
Coming from Shopify?
Shopify 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.