# Inkwharf vs Curios

Canonical page: https://www.inkwharf.com/vs/curios
Figures verified against Curios's published pricing on 2026-09-07.

Curios is a creator marketplace with a storefront attached.

## Verdict

The 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.

## Cost

- Curios charges a flat fee — $9 a month on Lite, $29 on Plus, $69 on Pro. The free tier keeps 100% for twenty-five sales and then charges 15% + 25¢. None of those figures is what the sale costs — the platform's own fee is billed to your reader — and 0% of a sale.
- The table above cannot show their real cost, and that is not an oversight: their fee is billed to your reader rather than to you, so it never appears in a column of what the author pays. Read the two together. Their $9 a month is the true cost to you and it is genuinely less than $19 — while every reader you send them pays 1–10% more than the price you set, plus the card fee, on the page where they are deciding whether to buy at all. Whether that trade is good depends on something no calculator knows: how a $10.99 total on a $9.99 book reads to a reader who came from your newsletter.
- Inkwharf charges $19 a month and 0% of any sale, with a free tier to $500 of sales a month.

| Monthly sales | Curios per year | Inkwharf per year | Difference |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $500/mo | $108 | $0 | $108 |
| $2,000/mo | $108 | $228 | — |
| $5,000/mo | $108 | $228 | — |

## What Curios sells on top of its cut

- **Free** — $0/month: 100% on the first 25 sales, then 15% + 25¢ per sale; monthly payouts
- **Lite** — $9/month: $9/mo — unlimited products, monthly payouts, eligible for recommendations
- **Plus** — $29/month: $29/mo — weekly payouts, advanced listings
- **Pro** — $69/month: $69/mo — daily payouts, advanced analytics, verified badge

## Where Curios is the better choice

- **They have readers and we have none** — 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.
- **The fee does not come out of your money** — Their platform fee and the card fee are added to the buyer's total, so a $9.99 book pays you $9.99. Set against a subscription that is due whether or not you sell anything, that is genuinely better for a small or seasonal catalogue — and it is why their free tier can exist at all.
- **Cheaper on the sticker** — $9 a month against $19. If you are comparing rate cards and nothing else, Lite wins and it is worth saying so before the rest of this page argues about where the money actually comes from.
- **An app, and audio** — iOS and Android apps, and any format rather than EPUB only — audiobooks included. If you sell audio, this product cannot help you at any price.
- **They will handle a reader who cannot open a file** — Content lives inside their account and app, so a reader who changed phones is their support problem rather than yours. A file you hand over is a file you may have to explain.

## Where Inkwharf is

- **Their 100% is paid by your reader** — Their support page says it plainly: the fee is charged to the buyer, 1–10% of the listing price, and the card fee is billed to the buyer as well. So a $9.99 book is not a $9.99 book at their checkout. The fee did not disappear — it moved to the person deciding whether to buy, on the same page where they are deciding. Here the reader pays the price you set, and the $19 lands on you.
- **The buyer gets a file, not a licence** — Their proof of purchase is an NFT and downloading is off unless the author switches it on. Every sale here is a DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer, that opens in any reader forever with no account and no app. Two positions on what a reader is buying — theirs is defensible, and it is not the one this product holds.
- **Your shop is at your address** — A marketplace listing lives on their domain, next to other people's books, under their brand. This is your domain, your name in the receipt, and nothing on the page selling anybody else.
- **The money never lands with them** — They take the payment and release it to you monthly, weekly or daily depending on which tier you bought — payout speed is a paid feature there. Cards here are charged on your own Stripe key, so the money is yours at the moment of sale and there is no balance of ours for a fee or a delay to be applied to.
- **The free tier does not become a take rate** — Theirs keeps 100% for twenty-five sales and then charges 15% + 25¢, which is a percentage that starts the month your list finally converts. The free tier here runs to $500 of sales a month and the plan above it is $19 flat — there is no volume at which a share of a sale appears.

## Side by side

| | Inkwharf | Curios |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Who pays the platform's fee | You do — $0 or $19 a month | Your reader, at 1–10% of the price |
| Cut of each sale | Nothing, on every plan including free | None from you; 15% + 25¢ on the free tier after 25 sales |
| Cheapest paid plan | $19 a month | $9 a month |
| Free tier | Yes, to $500 of sales a month, permanently | Yes, for the first 25 sales |
| Who takes the payment | Your own Stripe account. We never hold a cent | They do, and pay out on a schedule set by your plan |
| Merchant of record | You are the merchant of record | Their platform processes the sale |
| Where your shop lives | Your own domain, or a free address on Inkwharf | Their marketplace, under their brand |
| Discovery | None. Your shop is not listed anywhere on this site | A marketplace with 27,100+ creators |
| Buyer email addresses | Every buyer's email address is yours | Given to the creator |
| What the buyer receives | DRM-free EPUB, watermarked to the buyer | An NFT receipt; downloads only if the creator enables them |
| Reader needs an account | None. An email address and a card | Yes, plus an app for the best experience |
| Formats | EPUB only | Any — ebooks, audio, video, anything |
| Reading experience | In-browser reader and send-to-Kindle on every book | Their app, or the marketplace in a browser |
| Track record | New, and small | 27,100+ creators, 259,000+ transactions |

## Questions

### They say 100% and you say 0%. Which is it?

Both, and they mean different things. Their 100% is of the listing price, with the platform fee and the card fee added to what the buyer pays — their support page gives the range as 1–10% of the listing price. The 0% here is of the whole transaction: the reader pays the price you set, the card fee is Stripe's ordinary one on your own account, and the subscription is the only money this platform ever sees. Neither is a trick. They are two answers to the question of who absorbs the cost, and only one of them changes the number on your buy button.

### Is the marketplace worth the fee?

It might well be. Their discovery is real and this site has none by design — no directory, no listings, no author storefronts in the sitemap. If a meaningful share of your sales would come from people browsing rather than from your own list, their arrangement is the better one and you should take it. The ICP for this product is the author whose readers already know her name and arrive from her newsletter, for whom a marketplace is a fee paid for traffic she brought herself.

### What is the NFT for?

It is their receipt — proof of purchase, so the platform can check that the person reading is the person who paid. That is a coherent way to run a store and it is the opposite of what happens here: the buyer gets an EPUB carrying their name and a licence code, no DRM, readable in any app on any device for as long as they keep the file. Their model protects the book from the reader; this one identifies the copy and then hands it over.

### Can I use both?

Yes, and it is a reasonable thing to do — their marketplace for discovery, your own shop for the readers who already follow you. Neither side asks for exclusivity. Just price the same book the same way in both places, and remember that your reader's total is not the same in both.

### Can I move my books over?

The files, yes — upload the same EPUBs and set the same prices. What does not move is a past buyer's access, because their copies live in a Curios account rather than in a file they hold. Keep the old listings alive for the people who already bought, and point new readers here.

## Sources

Every claim above about Curios's pricing, checked 2026-09-07:

- Free, then 15% + 25¢ after 25 sales; Lite $9, Plus $29, Pro $69 a month — <https://studio.curios.com/>
- The platform fee and the card fee are both billed to the buyer, at 1–10% of the listing price — <https://content.curios.com/support/creators/>