If you’d like to join, we’ll be chatting at 2pm EST on Thursday, August 6. While I can never find a time that will work for everyone, hopefully this will work for some of you! And if not, don’t worry! I’ll hold more of these in the future.

Instead of creating a strict itinerary, I figured we can just chat about what we’re seeing in the market, what’s working for us, and what’s not working!🤓And it’s always nice to just chat with other authors in the trenches!

You can register for the Zoom chat here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/RU6tvPZUSUmOKeu5_HjpBg

Looking forward to seeing some of you there! Have a great rest of your week and happy selling.☀️

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

*I made a post in the Wide for the Win FB group with an update about the petition I started that asks paid newsletter sites not to require Amazon links. You can see that post here.

*If you have wide and/or direct audiobooks, I’ve set up a .99c Dollar Audio Deals promo for August. Submissions are open now but close on Sunday, so make sure to submit if you’d like to participate. Chirp & Kobo will be building a landing page for this audiobook promo, and I’ll be sharing with all of my reader-facing Substacks that have a combined total of over 120,000 subscribers, so it should be a high traffic promo!

🌟You can find the submission form here: https://indieaudiobookdeals.com/Wide-Author-Promos

Okay, now onto the main event!💃This morning I sat down for a chat with Author Ross Kinnaird, the CEO and creator of Booksky. This is a new platform built by an author that aims to put authors and readers first. You can watch our chat on YouTube and create a Booksky author account here: https://mybooksky.com

Ross also has a Booksky FB author group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/861732803211371

I hope you find the chat informative! Perhaps it will introduce you to a new site to sell your books. Have a great week ahead and happy selling!☀️

PS—I am not an affiliate for Booksky. I’m just nosy and want to know what’s going on in the wide market.😅If you’re curious too, I hope you find the video helpful.

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

When I talk about paid newsletters, I mean companies like Fussy Librarian, Written Word Media, BookBub, Indie Audiobook Deals (which I run!🤓) and others that allow you to pay to feature your discounted ebook or audiobook in a newsletter blast sent out to their robust reader lists.

First of all, did you know that I compiled a comprehensive list of paid newsletter services? You can find it here on my Indie Author Vault: https://indieauthorvault.com/listings/paid-newsletter-services-list

A lot of these services don’t allow direct store links (yet!) which is why I started this petition (which you’re welcome to sign if you haven’t!). I will say that I have had discussions with all three companies mentioned in the petition, and they are starting to test more direct sales opportunities for authors (yes, even BookBub!).

For now, I’ll be discussing how I use paid newsletter services for my wide books to drive traffic to wide sites. Even though I focus a lot on direct sales, I still want to drive traffic to other wide sites like Kobo (& Kobo Plus), Chirp and Google Play, which are my top wide retailers.

In my experience, the best ebook ROI is from Bookspry and Fussy Librarian. This is for $0.99 ebook sales, as I mostly stopped doing free ebook promotions years ago. I found that $0.99 promotions had better returns for me.

For audiobooks, the best return is Indie Audiobook Deals (IAD). Yes, I do run IAD so perhaps I’m biased, but also, there just aren’t a lot of audiobook paid newsletters out there, so it also has the advantage of being one of the first to market.😊I vary my sale price points for IAD promos between free audiobooks, $0.99 individual audiobooks or $2.99 audiobook box sets.

I do still do BookBub deals a few times per year at the $0.99 price point. They do fine but I do think their profitability has waned over the years, and I find that I make less ROI on each one.

The rest of the newsletter services on the list above are hit or miss for me. I still try many of them here or there when I have a sale, but for the most part, I stick to the ones I mentioned above.

For now, most of my marketing dollars still go toward Meta ads for my direct store.

Which paid newsletter sites do you use often and see a good ROI? Let me know in the comments! And if there’s a paid newsletter service you don’t see listed on my spreadsheet, let me know and I’ll add it.

Have a great week ahead and happy selling!☀️

🌟PS—I’m thinking of holding a live author chat session in July where authors can join and chat about all things marketing and books. Would that interest you? Let me know in the poll below. Thanks!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

Many of you have reached out since the podcast to ask me what’s working for me with Facebook ads right now. To be honest, I’ve been trying a LOT of new things with my FB ads, so I’m waiting until I have something helpful to report back to you all.🤓

However, I did do a video series on how I optimize my stores and how I choose my marketing creatives, I and highly suggest watching those if you haven’t already.

Here’s what I’m currently trying so you can get an idea:

*I’m leaving the audience broad instead of choosing interests like contemporary romance, books, etc. I’m just choosing women as the gender and letting Facebook’s algorithm do its thing.

*I’m excluding everyone who’s purchased from me for the past 365 days. This is because Facebook kept targeting people who have already bought from me, and I felt that was diluting my audience.

*I installed WeTracked (FYI, this is an affiliate link😊) on my Shopify store and I feel that I’m getting much better data in my Facebook ads dashboard. It’s $50/month with a two-week free trial if you’d like to try it. They don’t integrate with my Payhip store for my other pen name, which is a bummer, and I’ve requested they add that as an option down the road.

With WeTracked, I feel more confident testing things and spending more. Today, I upped my spend 20%. We’ll see how that goes. As always, I will report back, but I wanted to give you all an idea of what I’m trying.

In other news, I’ve set up some wide and direct store promos at the request of many authors I work with through Buy Direct From Authors. You can see the current promo that’s running here and the future promos here if you’d like to sign up.

I also run Indie Audiobook Deals if you’d like to promote your wide and direct audiobooks: https://indieaudiobookdeals.com/for-authors

What things would you like to see me discuss here? Leave a comment below and let me know! I want to make sure I’m sharing valuable info for you all.

Have a great week ahead and happy selling!☀️

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

Recently, I’ve been having some nice success using the same formula to market my backlist to my newsletter subscribers. I’ve been using this formula across my three main pen names, all of which are wide and have direct stores, and it’s really engaged my subscribers to purchase!

I send a newsletter for each pen name every two weeks and have a dedicated list for each pen name. Although I write steamy romance, I believe this can work for any author regardless of genre. The goal is to give an excerpt that elicits emotion. So, if you’re a thriller author, you want to choose a heart-pounding scene! If you’re a suspense author, share the beginning of a scene that will make your readers gasp!🕵️

Of course, as a steamy romance author, I usually share either a spicy scene, a scene with lots of banter or a really heartfelt scene. All of those have proven to draw the reader in and cause them to purchase.

Tip 1: The newsletter’s subject always matches the excerpt I have inside

So, this can be “First Kiss Friday” if I have an excerpt of a first kiss between my main characters, or something more detailed like “When She Kept a HUGE Secret & it Gets Spicy!” When I’m including an excerpt from one of my books with a male virgin hero, the subject is “When HE’S the Virgin.” Okay, you get the idea.🤓

Tip 2: I always have a button at the top of EVERY newsletter that leads to my direct store and to Kobo Plus.

Readers can’t find you on platforms outside of Amazon if you don’t lead them there!

Tip 3: Have an intro that draws them into the excerpt you’re going to feature

Here’s an example of one of mine:

Tip 4: Post the excerpt

I always include an image between the intro and the excerpt to give subscribers a visual.

Note: even though my excerpts say “NSFW” I do make sure to keep them PG-13. The NSFW is a way for me to get them interested and draw them in!

Tip 5: Link to the book AND your bundle on your store!

At the end of the excerpt, give your subscribers the option to buy the book OR to just buy the whole bundle on your store! This gets me lots of individual AND bundle sales from each newsletter.

And that’s it! Rinse and repeat every two weeks with a different book from your backlist.

I hope this helps give you some ideas for your newsletter and helps you sell some backlist books and bundles! Let me know in the comments below if you decide to give it a try. Until next time, have a great rest of your week!🥰

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

➡️You can find these new direct store promo opportunities here: https://indieaudiobookdeals.com/Wide-Author-Promos

Some of these promos are for ebooks and some are for audiobooks, so please make sure to read carefully! Submissions for the first two promos are open, and you can submit now!✅

Creating and running these promos does take up quite a bit of time, so there is a small fee to participate. Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to help. I’m looking forward to trying these promos and growing our direct stores together! Have a great day!🥰 —Rebecca

—Rebecca Hefner

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

I run traffic Pinterest ads to my direct stores (I have a Payhip and a Shopify store for my various pen names). You can also run conversion ads, but I tested those and they didn’t work for me at the budget I want to spend on Pinterest. They might work for you!

For me, I run Pinterest traffic ads at $2-3 per day, and that sends a lot of traffic to my store. From there, my Facebook pixel can log those visitors and use that data when I run conversion Facebook ads to my store.

Here’s a walkthrough of how I set up Pinterest ads. Again, this is just the method I use, and a different method might work for you!

⬇️Setting Up Traffic Pinterest Ads to Your Direct Store

🌟I start by choosing a Consideration campaign. This is Pinterest’s traffic campaign. I also turn off “Optimize Campaign” for Pinterest Performance+. I have tested having it on and my results were worse (higher CPC).

🌟Next is the budget. I always start around $2-3 dollars per day. I’m not looking to spend a ton on Pinterest (I save that for Meta ads). This small budget generates quite a bit of traffic/clicks, so I’m happy with that.

🌟Next is the Ad group, and this is where you do your targeting. I keep this very simple. Under Demographics, I choose “female” since I’m a romance author, and “all ages.” The Location is the US. I choose “all languages” and “all devices.”

I don’t touch the “Audience Lists.” Instead, under “Interest and Keywords,” I enter a list of about 35 keywords. I have these keywords saved in my notepad on my laptop, so it’s easy for me to copy and paste these in. I use keywords like enemies to lovers, romantasy, romance books, bookworm, etc. You get the drift!

🌟For Optimization and Delivery, I choose “pin clicks” and “Pinterest Performance+ bidding.”

🌟Next, I select the pin I want to use. This is usually a 4x5 image with a couple, a quote and my book cover. You can see an example below. You want the title to say something catchy like “🔥Steamy Romance!” or “Enemies to Lovers,” or whatever your genre/hook is. You can also use a reel, and those perform well too.

🌟I send the traffic to my bundle on my store, and the Call to Action is “Shop now.”

And that’s it! Although I run traffic campaigns, I do still get some bundle sales and sales on Amazon from these Pinterest ads. But my overall objective is to send traffic to my store so my Meta pixel can have that data.

I hope you found this helpful! Let me know in the comments below what other wide and direct topics you’re interested in hearing about. Have a great rest of your week and happy selling!

—Rebecca Hefner

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or subscribe to the paid tier.

Of course, Amazon is the behemoth in the book space, and authors want the option to drive traffic to their books on Amazon.

But there are some authors who don’t publish on Amazon (I don’t publish one of my pen names on Amazon or Audible at all!). There are also plenty of authors who would rather drive traffic to their online stores or other sites like Curios instead of being forced to supply an Amazon link.

Therefore, I created this petition to urge the owners of the large paid newsletter sites to let us have the option to enter a different link besides Amazon. To be clear, I’m not asking for Amazon links to be removed. I’m just asking that they not be required.

If you agree with this, please sign the petition here and share with others who can sign as well! https://c.org/cdnMHGzH2g

Changing the market is hard, but if we all work together, I know we can do it! Have a great rest of your week and happy selling!

—Rebecca Hefner

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Just a reminder that I run conversion ads (also known as sales ads) to my direct store. If you’re looking for advice on traffic ads, I recommend following author Bink Cummings on Threads or David Gaughran on YouTube. They both have great advice on traffic ads.

If you’re running conversion ads to your direct store, here’s the setup that’s currently working for me. As always, I’ll state that what works for me might not work for everyone, but hopefully this can help you structure a winning campaign!

✍️This is the ad I’m currently running to my spicy romance pen name. I have a Payhip store for this pen name.

💸I started with a budget of $35/day and increase $5 every 3 days. I’m currently at $55/day.

🌟I do NOT have my catalog connected to my ads. I turn this off on all my Meta ads because I want to send readers to a specific landing page that has a high average order value (AOV) and not some random book on my store.

🌟I have all placements ON. I know there’s some advice out there to only do Reels and Feeds placements. I have tested this and it doesn’t work for me.

🌟Here’s my audience. I’m using the Advantage + audience, women only and added in some extra interests that I believe align with romance readers.

🎧The link I’m sending everyone to is my audiobook bundle. Why? Because this has the highest AOV on my store at $49.99. I have optomized this landing page so that readers can also easily click on my eBook bundle if they’d rather purchase that. You can find my video on how I optimize my landing pages for ads here.

✅I only have one ad set, and in that ad set I have eight ads running. Six are reels, and two are still images. You can find the ads I’m currently running for this pen name if you go to the Facebook Ads Library and look up that author name (Victoria Silk—shh, I keep it (kind of) secret. LOL). I also have some ads running under Rebecca Hefner that you can look up on the Ads Library. I just started those, so I’m still evaluating the performance, but they follow the same basic structue.

I find that this mix of reels and ads are what works best for me. Again, I always urge authors to do their own testing, as something different might work for someone else!

Okay, I hope this helps you as you set up your next round of ads to your direct store! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Have a great rest of your day and happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Hi everyone! I invited Greg from Curios to come and chat with us about some of the updates on the platform. If you’re wide, I think that Curios is a great platform to have your ebooks and audiobooks available. You can check it out here.

You can always email Greg at greg@curios.com with any questions. Hope you enjoy the chat and please leave any questions in the comments! Have a great day! —Rebeccca

Share Marketing for Wide & Direct Authors

I tried several Kobo Plus promos in December, and my Kobo Plus revenue grew by 260% over November, so I’m very happy with the results!

The first thing I did was enter two of the Kobo Plus promotions that are offered under the promotions tab in my Kobo Writing Life dashboard. These cost $50 each, and Kobo has them for individual books and box sets enrolled in Kobo Plus. I signed up for one of each, so the total cost was $100. These obviously performed well, so I’m excited to try again in a few months.

Second, I joined the Kobo Plus Fantasy promo that is an author-led promo. You can find the link to the Facebook planning group for this and several other author-led Kobo promos on my Indie Author Vault. I always find these author-led promos very lucrative for my Kobo Plus earnings, and I’m excited for the upcoming Yolo with Kobo Plus promo on February 20th that’s organized by Laramie Briscoe.

So, that’s it! Those are the two things I did to increase my Kobo Plus revenue by 260% in December! I hope this gives you the confidence and information needed to try some of these promos yourself.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead! Leave some comments to let me know what other wide & direct subjects you’d like to hear about and I’ll write some articles on those too. Happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

As discussed in my article introducing this series, I will be showcasing conversion ads (also known as sales ads). This video series will include three parts:

1. Setting your store up for success to run profitable ads (Video 1)

2. Creating the right images and reels to find excited buyers (Video 2)

3. How I set up my ads in Meta ads manager

This video is Part 3 of the series, and runs for about 40 minutes. Why so long? Because we’ve made it to the nitty gritty!🙌This is the video where I open up my Meta ads manager and show you excactly what I do to set up Meta ads to my direct store from start to finish!

Here are the important time stamps:

*Introduction

*1:11: setting up the ad campaign (including the budget)

*3:27: setting up the ad set (including the audience/targets)

*14:30: setting up image ads

*31:46: setting up reel ads

As a reminder, here is the Google folder where you can see all the images, reels and ad copy text I reference in this video.

I hope you find it helpful and please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below. If you’d like to buy me a coffee, you can do so below as well.🥰

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back with more wide/direct helpful content soon!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

As discussed in my article introducing this series, I will be showcasing conversion ads (also known as sales ads). This video series will include three parts:

1. Setting your store up for success to run profitable ads (Video 1)

2. Creating the right images and reels to find excited buyers

3. How I set up my ads in Meta ads manager

This video is Part 2 of the series, and runs for about 18 minutes. Here are the important time stamps:

*Introduction

*2:16: crafting primary text for your ads

*7:30: creating compelling images for ads

*12:20: creating compelling reels for ads

As mentioned in the video, I subscribe to Spellbound Book Marketing on Patreon to get templates for still images. I use the Author/PA Meet & Greet group on FB to find PAs who can make reels, and I also have found some great PAs by posting requests on Threads.

Here is the Google folder where you can see all the images, reels and ad copy text I reference in this video.

I hope you find it helpful and please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below. I’ll be back with Video #3 soon. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great weekend!🥰

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

As discussed in my article introducing this series, I will be showcasing conversion ads (also known as sales ads). This video series will include three parts:

1. Setting your store up for success to run profitable ads

2. Creating the right images and reels to find excited buyers

3. How I set up my ads in Meta ads manager

This video is Part 1 of the series, and runs for 33 minutes. Here are the important time stamps:

*I begin by giving some history about me, why I’m wide and why I love direct selling.

*10:37: how I set up my Shopify store for success

*22:22: how I set up my Payhip store for success

*30:51: final thoughts

The apps that I mention in the Shopify section are LinkedOption, SellEasy and Frequently Bought Together.

I hope you find it helpful and please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below. I’ll be back with Video #2 soon. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great rest of your day!🥰

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Okay, okay, I know. Facebooks ads are the worst. The oligarch-in-charge and his minions are always changing things, and what the heck is Andromeda anyway?

The truth is: Andromeda is just a name for what FB already was. FB runs on an algorithim, like all other marketing platforms, and if you can figure out how the algorithm finds your buyers, you’ll have successful ads.

🌟Facebook Ads for Direct Stores

Since opening my direct stores in 2023, I now only run FB ads to my stores. Therefore, if you’re looking for advice on running FB ads to Amazon, I’m not your ideal guide. For that, I’d suggest checking out The Writing Wives, David Gaughran or other authors out there who are proficient in traffic ads.

For my direct stores, I run conversion ads (aka purchase ads) and that’s what I’ll be addressing on this Substack. Now that I’ve spent all of this time building my direct stores, why would I run ads to Amazon, a platform that will take 30% of each sale? Instead, I’ve taught myself how to run conversion ads and that works well to drive traffic (and sales) on my store.

HUGE DISCLAIMER: let me be VERY clear—I am NOT a Facebook ads expert. Far from it. I also run pretty small-spend ads compared to other authors who talk about direct sales often. I like to start my ads at $35/day and scale, and once I get up to about $200/day, I usually turn them off, duplicate and start over at $35/day. Will this pattern continue? I’m not sure. I’d love to figure out how to scale to $500 or $1,000 per day. But for now, that’s my comfort zone.

So, I’m not a FB ads expert, BUT I now make the majority of revenue in my author business on my direct store, so I see that as evidence that I’ve figured it out enough to at least give some tips to other authors.🤓I use lots of marketing platforms including Pinterest, BookBub, Buy Direct From Authors and others, but for now, Facebook has my highest ROI for ads. So, I’m going to use this Substack to give you tips on what’s working for me, and hopefully it will help some of you gain the confidence to start running more ads to your direct store.

🌟Running Ads to Your Store is Different than Amazon

The most important thing that authors must realize (in my opinion!) is that your direct store is an e-commerce site. It is NOT a distributer/retailer like Amazon, Kobo, etc. Therefore you must learn how to run ads like an e-commerce owner, NOT like an author.

I watch a LOT of YouTube videos, and credit that with how I keep up on the latest FB ads info and changes. My favorite channels for this are Dr. Matt Shiver, Jon Loomer and Ben Heath, but there are many more.

Since we’re thinking like e-commerce owners, it’s important to drive up the AOV (average order value) which is not always easy with low-priced products like ebooks and audiobooks. This is why we need to create bundles and drive traffic there!

Not only is it important to create bundles, but you want to make sure you also have upsells ready to go so readers and listeners can purchase multiple bundles!📚

And how do we get readers to that point where they’re excited to purchase? This is done by using the right mix of image and video creatives. I’ve discovered that reels that perform best on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other places also perform well as ad creatives, so don’t reinvent the wheel. Take your best 3-5 performing reels and start with those, and then you can work from there.

❓How many ad creatives do I use? Lately, I’ve been using 2 Square Images, 5-7 4x5 Images and 5 Reels. These are the ads that I used on my December FB ads campaign (which I just turned off because it was Christmas-based and that’s over now). But this campaign did well and it will give you an idea of the creatives I’m using.

To get other ideas, I suggest going to the Meta Ads Library and looking up other authors in your genre to see what ads they’re running to their direct stores to give you some ideas.

I also talk more about creatives and bundles/upsells this in my “Things I Wish I’d Known Before Going Direct” article on my Indie Author Vault, so definitely give that a read!

🌟More to Come (Including Videos!)

There’s honestly SO MUCH to talk about with Meta ads (and ads in general) so I’m going to make some videos on this topic as well. Just a note that these videos will fall under the paid potion of this Substack since they are very-time intensive and take away from my writing. Also, I want to pack them with lots of information so people can truly learn from them, so stay tuned for those!

In the meantime, look over the resources I listed above to get into the “e-commerce mindset” if you want to think about growing your direct store in 2026. Thanks for reading!

Leave some comments to let me know what other wide & direct subjects you’d like to hear about and I’ll write some articles on those too. Happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Hello, author friends!👋Today we’re diving into a topic that can be exciting AND overwhelming for indie authors: direct selling! As someone with two direct stores (one on Payhip and one on Shopify), I completely understand how intimidating the thought of direct selling can be. However, as someone who’s been wide for my whole career, direct selling was a natural step to enhance my author business.

🌟To start, let me address the concerns I hear the most:

*Selling direct is difficult and time-consuming. Well, yes, it is! Especially when you’re setting up your store and starting out. However, now that both of my stores are up-and-running, they pretty much run on autopilot. So, my experience is that direct selling is tough at first—I won’t sugarcoat it! But once you get set up, it just becomes another place where you upload and sell books, just like KDP, Kobo and everywhere else.

*I have no idea how to collect sales tax. Neither did I! But there are these great things called the internet and YouTube where I combed through resourses, did research and learned!🙂I also found a great accountant who was well-versed in all things e-commerce, and I went for it. There are thousands upon thousands of small e-commerce businesses in the US, and if those business owners can figure it out, so can we. I mean, we write books, which is more than most people will ever do, so we can absolutely figure out sales tax, friends!

To expand a bit more on this, I’ll tell you my process. Disclaimer: I am NOT an accountant and this is NOT official advice. This is just my sales tax process. Please find a tax professional who can help you (there are so many online now who can help you virtually!).

I registered my publishing LLC to collect sales tax in my home state of New Jersey. After that, I set up my Payhip and Shopify stores to collect sales tax on every sale in NJ (this can easily be done on the back end of both stores). I currently only have nexus in NJ, so that’s the only state I have to collect sales tax in now. I might hit nexus in some other states in 2026. If so, I’ll just register my LLC in those states to collect sales tax. I then just go to the State of New Jersey website every quarter and pay the sales tax I collected the previous quarter to NJ (all of which is easy to find/calculate from my back end store reports). It’s a very simple, easy process.

For EU/UK VAT, Payhip is the seller of record so they collect and remit that, which makes things so easy. For Shopify, I use EAS to collect VAT. That’s a longer process, and you can find more info in my direct selling guide on my Indie Author Vault if you’re intersted.

*Readers won’t buy direct. This year, over 50% of my income will be from my direct stores, so friends, that’s just not true. You do have to market your direct store, and you need to learn how to market like an e-commerce business owner, which is different than how you market on Amazon, Kobo and others. But if I can do it, you can too!

I’ll write a separate article on direct store marketing, but here are the basics that help me: selling ebook/audiobook bundles, joining marketing co-ops like Buy Direct From Authors, and learning FB, Pinterest, BookBub and other ad platforms. Those have been the most effective drivers of my direct sales. Again, more on this to come!

📚So, which direct store platform should you choose as a beginner?

There are lots of great platforms out there like FourthWall, Shopify, Gumroad, WooCommerce and others, but for new authors just starting out, I personally always recommend Payhip. Here’s a breakdown of why I think this is the easiest place for authors new to direct sales to start:

*Payhip doesn’t have a monthly fee. It’s free to set up, and Payhip just takes a percentage of everything sold on your store. You’ll also need to connect Payhip to a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal, and they’ll take their cut too. Otherwise, I think Payhip is the easiest, cheapest way to set up a new store.

*Payhip is the seller of record and collects/remits EU/UK VAT for you. This saves so many headaches and makes things much easier.

*Payhip is pretty easy to use. I’m not tech-savvy, friends. I’m firmly GenX and learned computers by playing Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe, so to say I’m lost in our technological world is an understatement.😆But I also like making money and paying my mortgage, so I have to figure these things out in order to function in today’s world. Payhip has a very easy backend setup and I find it pretty intuitive and user-friendly.

*Payhip integrates with BookFunnel. In my opinion, authors must use a store that integrates with BookFunnel. Not only do they have seamless delivery to a platform that most readers are already familiar with, but they handle ALL customer service when your readers can’t figure out how to download their book/audiobooks. No, BookFunnel is not free, but it absolutely pays for itself with the customer service aspect alone (in my opinion!). You can find a list of online store platforms that integrate with BookFunnel here.

*Payhip has great customer service. It’s available through email and they always get back to me within a few hours.

So, there are the basic reasons why I recommend Payhip to new authors. If you would rather use one of the other platforms, that’s absolutely fine! You do you! The great news is that there are so many great direct selling options for authors to try.

In the future, I’ll write an article about Shopify and why I use that for my main two author names. I use Payhip for my third spicy romance pen name. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and I like both platforms. But for now, I hope this article has been helpful.

Leave some comments to let me know what other wide & direct subjects you’d like to hear about and I’ll write some articles on those too. Happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Now, this all sounds great, so why aren’t readers and authors flocking to Kobo Plus?

🤔I believe there are a few barriers that have limited Kobo Plus adoption in the US:

*The Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the US, and most people want to read on the Kindles they bought, which they can’t do with Kobo Plus. Completely understandable.

*Kobo’s search features are terrible, and they recently implemented these new cookies that don’t allow authors’ books to be searchable once the cookies are registered to your desktop/laptop browser. WHY KOBO???🤔Here’s hoping they improve these things in 2026. (Also, this is why it’s very important to share universal links that drive traffic to your books on each retailer & your store so readers don’t have to rely on search. I’ll write an article on universal links soon, but I use BookFunnel for my universal links and this works well for me!)

*Since KU requires exclusivity, the selection of books/authors on Kobo Plus is smaller than Amazon’s selection.

🌟In summary, no retail platform is perfect. However, Kobo’s barriers can actually present some opportunities for authors, especially those who enroll their books and audiobooks in Kobo Plus.

*First of all, if there are less Romantasy books on the platform, let’s say, then my Romantasy series is going to be more discoverable rather than drowning in the sea of Romantasy series on KU.

*Second, Kobo is HUGE internationally. It’s bigger than Amazon in several markets, and international readers/listeners are more apt to try a different platform. Amazon’s monopoly is really US-based, so you have a fantastic chance to grow your international readership with Kobo Plus.

With that being said, just enrolling your ebooks and audiobooks in Kobo Plus won’t find you new readers or listeners. Just like Amazon, you have to market and drive traffic to your Kobo Plus books. Otherwise, the platform won’t perform for you, and you’ll walk away with the belief that “being wide doesn’t work” or “I don’t make any money on Kobo.”

Also, as with anything, you do need time to grow on any new platform. I wouldn’t suggest pulling your books completely from Amazon if you want to go wide. I see a lot of authors ask about this, and honestly, it’s not a great idea—at first, at least. If you want to pull your ebooks from KU and go wide, though, that’s a great way to start. I do have one pen name that I don’t publish on Amazon or Audible at all (and that pen name does GREAT on Kobo!), but I do still publish my other two author names on Amazon (just not in KU). It’s important to have the right expectations when you go wide, and to also set yourself up for success as you make the transition.✅

💸So, how DO you make money on Kobo and Kobo Plus?

There are several methods I employ to drive traffic and readers to my Kobo Plus books and audiobooks. Kobo and Kobo Plus perform very well for me, but like anything, it does take work and creativity. By employing these methods below, you’ll set yourself up for some fantastic results at Kobo!

*Sign up for Kobo promotions. There is a promotions tab in your Kobo Writing Life dashboard that has tons of new ebook promos every month. Some are free and some are paid, but I find them all well worth it. Note: there is no promotions tab for audiobooks BUT they do have a monthly Kobo Audiobook Promo Author Newsletter. Just email writinglife@kobo.com and ask them to add you to their list to be notified of audiobook promos.

*Join Kobo Plus author group promos. There are TONS of author-organized Kobo Plus promos that drive so much traffic to my books/audiobooks and help me rack up those minutes read and listened! Some of my favorites are Yolo with Kobo Plus which is organized by Laramie Briscoe, and the Fantasy Kobo Promo, which is perfect for my Romantasy and paranormal romance books. For audiobooks, you can drive traffic by putting one of your audiobooks on sale and featuring it in a paid newsletter like Indie Audiobook Deals, Swoony Reads, BookCave and others. This usually leads to lots of listen-through for me on the rest of the series once somone has finished the audiobook I put on sale. There are several other Kobo Plus promos I have listed on my Indie Author Vault, so make sure to check that out (look under “Group Cross-Promo Opportunities” on the Google sheet).

*Get Creative with Box Sets! Kobo LOVES box sets (and Kobo readers do too!). Kobo has several promos each month under the promo tab that are ONLY for box sets. I create lots of ebook box sets on Kobo that I ONLY publish on Kobo. I make sure to enroll these box sets in Kobo Plus and then I apply for promos. This has dramatically increased my revenue there, especially considering that box sets are longer, so people spend more time reading them (and we get paid for minutes read!). If I have a short series, I’ll package two ebooks into a box set. If I have a longer series, I’ll do three ebook box sets. This creates more inventory for me on the Kobo platform that I can enroll in Kobo Plus and get those minutes read!

*BookBub ads. BookBub already has readers separated by which retailer they prefer. You can set up some ads just for Kobo readers (by providing ONLY the Kobo link) and make sure your ad graphic shows that the book is “Free to Read with Kobo Plus!”

So there you go! Those are some of the best tactics I use to make money on Kobo and with Kobo Plus. Hope it helps! I’ll publish some more articles on tips to grow revenue on B&N, Google Play & Apple soon.

Leave some comments to let me know what other wide & direct subjects you’d like to hear about and I’ll write some articles on those too. Happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

☕If you’re enjoying these articles & find them useful, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee.

Hello, author friends!👋Today we’re diving into setting up publishing accounts on wide platforms (and I’ll also have a recommendation below for an easy, cheap direct store setup).

First of all, my opinion is that it’s important to publish direct where you can if the retailer makes it easy for you to distribute there. Why? Because that means you don’t have to give an aggregator like Draft2Digital a cut of every sale.🚫Of course, that’s up to you as an author, but I like getting as much of my revenue as I can.😃It really does add up over time, and as authors, every bit of extra revenue can go to additional marketing or other avenues to help get your books seen!

You might be asking, but Rebecca, isn’t it a pain in the butt to upload your manuscript to each site? Honestly? In the beginning, it was a bit annoying, but now, I’ve done it with over 40 books, and I’m just so used to it, I could probably do it in my sleep.🤓This is something I think people will find a lot with wide publishing: it’s cumbersome at first, but like anything, once you get used to it, you figure out a fluid system like you do with everything else.👍

I’m going to focus on setting up eBook publishing accounts in this article. If you’d like to know more about setting up wide audiobook publishing accounts, I explain that in detail in my Wide Audiobook Guide.

Setting Up Wide eBook Publishing Accounts Direct with Retailers

📘Kobo Writing Life

We’ll start with Kobo, because they’re so author friendly and awesome. You’ll want to go to Kobo Writing Life to set up your author account. It’s pretty straightforward, and very similar to setting up your KDP account. Once you set up the account, you’ll want to email writinglife@kobo.com and ask for access to the Promotions tab, which will allow you to submit for promotions and get extra eyes on your books on the Kobo platform!

📘Barnes & Noble Press

For B&N, you go to Barnes & Noble Press to set up your account. Once your account is approved, you then want to request the Promotions tab. It’s something you need to request through your dashboard, and B&N might reject your request at first. Just keep requesting every few weeks until it’s approved.

📘Google Play

Google Play has a similar setup to the others. As you’re probably seeing by now, all of this is very similar to KDP.

📘Apple Books

I publish to Apple through Draft2Digital for my main two pen names, and publish direct to Apple Books for my third pen name. I will say that Apple’s direct publishing platform is very cumbersome, so if you want to go through D2D for this one, that’s a good choice.

If you want to go direct, you need to set up an iTunes Connect account. Once you have that set up, you would then go to the Apple eBook Publishing Portal and upload your eBook. Then, the Portal pushes your eBook to your iTunes Connect account, and you set the pricing from there. Again, very cumbersome, so you might want to go through D2D for this retailer!

📘Draft2Digital

I use Draft2Digital to get to libraries and other small retailers other than the ones listed above. They do take a cut of every sale, which is why I recommend publishing direct to Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Google Play.

Setting Up Your Direct Store

📚This can an overwhelming concept for authors, and I get it! You have to think about taxes, shipping (if you sell signed books on your store), eBook/audiobook delivery and more! But as someone who has two stores (I have too many pen names😅), direct selling is now my favorite AND most lucrative part of my business!

Did I have a huge learning curve? YES! Was it worth it in the end? ABSOLUTELY. I love direct selling! It soothes something in my entreprenural soul.

I wrote a whole guide about my process of learning direct selling, and you can find it here. Since I go over lots of things in that guide, I won’t repeat them here. BUT, if you’re looking for a recommendation for a store to start with, I think Payhip is a great first store option.

Payhip is free in that they don’t charge any monthly or site fees. They just take a percentage of each sale on your store. You also need to connect Payhip to a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal. Payhip is the seller of record, so they collect EU/UK VAT, which is awesome. For US sales tax, I would recommend finding a great accountant who’s well-versed in e-commerce stores.

I have more info about this in the guide linked above, but registering to collect sales tax in my home state was very easy. Again, a great accountant is your friend!

Payhip also integrates seamlessly with BookFunnel for smooth eBook & audiobook delivery. Yes, BookFunnel is an extra fee, but I find it SO worth it! BookFunnel takes care of ALL customer service issues for my direct store buyers, and that right there is worth the cost for me.

*There are other direct store platform options out there like FourthWall, Gumroad, Shopify and more. I just recommend Payhip because I really like it for first-time direct sellers and think it’s the most cost-effective. I think it’s the least overwhelming option out there, but the others all have advantages too!

Lastly, if you have a direct store, just a reminder that I organize Buy Direct From Authors. It’s a collective marketing initiative with over 85 authors who have direct stores. We send out a monthly newsletter with new releases and sales on authors’ stores. You can find more info in the FAQs.

That’s it for now! Leave some comments to let me know what other wide & direct subjects you’d like to hear about and I’ll write some articles on those too. Happy selling!

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

Creator & Admin, Buy Direct From Authors

Admin, Marketing Audiobooks Wide

Organizer, Indie Audiobook Deals & Stuff Your Earbuds

🌟Find more resources on my Indie Author Vault

You can find them all on my Indie Author Vault, and I hope you find them helpful! There’s tons to digest there including tips on wide audio, my guide on going direct, a list of paid newsletter sites that accept wide and direct audiobook links, and much MORE!

If you have any questions once you look over the resources, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Have a great holiday season and happy selling!📚

—Rebecca

USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Hefner

So, let’s embark on this new Substack, one of several I already run.

This one is different though, because this one is designed to truly help authors. A common theme I see a lot on Threads, FB groups and other author spaces is that authors would like to go wide and/or start their own direct store, but they’re overwhelmed with how much they need to learn. And this is completely understandable.

Going wide and starting a direct store are both BEASTS. Some authors will tell you being wide is easy, but I won’t be one of them, my friends. If being wide is easy for you, that’s fantastic and I’m so happy to hear it.💞For me, it required an intense learning curve and still requires constant tweaking and learning as the market inevitably changes.

Who Am I?

Some of you might have met me through the Marketing Audiobooks Wide group, which I admin on Facebook. In this group, I share all of my tips and tricks for finding success with wide audiobooks. I’m kind of an anomaly in the author world in that I actually found more success early on with audiobooks instead of ebooks. My ebooks are still workhorses that chug along and make solid revenue, but I’m also a really big audiobook consumer, so perhaps my love of that format on the listener side fueled my need to succeed with wide audio.

I understood early on that although the ebook market was pretty much owned by Amazon (in the US at least), the audiobook market was still able to be conquered. Yes, Audible is the market share leader, but that’s quickly changing due to the fact that listeners have been quick to adopt other sites like Kobo (and Kobo Plus), Chirp, Spotify, direct store purchases through BookFunnel, etc.

After my intensely painful learning curve with wide audio, I achieved success and set out to teach other authors. I knew that we could only shift the market if more authors felt comfortable breaking free of Audible exclusivity.

I admire authors CD Reiss (who currently has a legal case against Audible) and Susan May (Audiblegate organizer), both of whom decided to fight Audible in their own ways. My way was a bit different: I knew that if enough authors left Audible exclusivity and began to educate their listeners on how to purchase on other sites, the listeners would follow. And that’s exactly what we see happening in the market.

For anyone interested, I created a free wide audio guide which you can download by clicking on the image below or find in the Featured Posts of the Marketing Audiobooks Wide group.

I also created other promos and marketing avenues for authors and readers/listeners like Indie Audiobook Deals, Buy Direct From Authors, Stuff Your Earbuds (the audiobook offshoot of Stuff Your E-Reader—thanks to Zoe York for her help with that!), and Audiobook Review Haven where authors can connect with listeners to garner wide audiobook reviews.

I also went on the SPA Girls for two podcasts (here and here) and began speaking at conferences to further author education. At this point, my wide audiobook efforts are chugging along and it’s time to help authors even more.

So, I’ve created this Substack to continue to educate authors on wide and direct platforms for ALL formats including ebooks, audiobooks and physical books. I’ve pretty much been a wide author my whole career, and have two stores (one with Shopify and one with Payhip) where I sell direct (too many pen names—don’t ask!😆) so this Substack is my effort to continue to help authors and share what I’ve learned.

I will use this Substack to share important tips and tricks for going wide and direct for any author who wants to learn more about breaking free of the Amazon-exclusive ecosystem. I’m not here to bash Amazon, although anyone who knows me knows I’m not a fan of the KU exclusivity clause. Instead, I’m here to educate and offer knowledge that I’ve learned in the wide author trenches. If you like being in KU, by all means, stay there! I’m not here to tell you how to run your business. But I do want to dispel the narrative that I often see that “Amazon exclusivity is the only option for indie authors.” I’m an indie author, and I assure you, it is not.

Yes, being wide is harder than being on one platform, especially the one platform that owns the market. BUT, can you imagine what it would be like if authors didn’t have other publishing options? Amazon could drop page reads to .0000003 cents per page, and there would be nowhere else to go. I firmly believe we need other options to keep Amazon in check, so I’m thankful that other wide and direct platforms exist. Many years ago, Amazon only started paying authors a 70% royalty on ebook sales because Apple did it first. We need this competition to keep things fair for authors. Audible recently announced a roll out of higher royalties for (some) authors and the ability to “suggest” a price for your audiobook. I believe this directly correlated to the fact that they understand authors enjoy much more publishing flexibility on other sites.

So, sit back, relax and enjoy the tips I’ll be sending your way. I also plan to do a podcast which I’ll publish here, as well as other sites, and bring on other wide and direct authors to share their knowledge too. Together, we can change the market!

Thanks for joining me on this journey and I’m excited to grow together!

—Rebecca Hefner

USA Today bestselling author