How to Sell Direct
How to Sell Direct
A complete walkthrough of setting up a direct sales business, running it day to day, and getting it ready for marketing, whether you sell on Curios, on your own website, or both.
Two ways to sell direct
Every direct sales business has two layers: the storefront your readers and fans see, and the operations behind it that take payment, deliver the product, handle taxes, and look after customers. How you set up those two layers decides how much work your business takes to run.
Sell from a direct sales platform like Curios
Upload your work to Curios and you get dedicated pages for you and every product you sell, a secure checkout, and all of the operations handled for you. You keep 100% of your list price on every Curios plan, and you get the email address of every buyer. This is the fastest way to start, and most creators are live the same day.
Sell from your own website
Your own website gives you total control over your brand and the experience. The catch is that a website on its own is only the storefront. Payments, file delivery, shipping, taxes, fraud, and customer support all still need to be solved, and if you build those yourself, you are responsible for every one of them.
Or both: your website, powered by Curios
You don't have to choose. You can build any website you like and point its buy buttons to Curios checkout. Your readers shop on your site, and Curios runs everything behind it: checkout, payments, delivery, fulfillment, taxes, and customer support. You still keep 100% of your list price and every customer's email.
That means everything Curios handles for you on curios.com, it also handles for you on your own website. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this guide.
Setup: selling direct on Curios
Setting up on Curios is mostly a matter of uploading your work. Once it's published, you have a working direct sales store.
Create your account and profile
Log in at studio.curios.com with your email address and enter the code we send you. Then fill out your profile: your pen name or creator name, a clear photo, and a description that tells readers who you are and what you make. Your profile becomes your home page on Curios.
Upload your work in every format
Click Publish / Add New Product in Creator Studio and follow the steps. You can sell ebooks, audiobooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, special editions, merchandise, and combo packs, and set up a whole series at once. Each format gets its own listing, price, and checkout link.
For each product you choose a listing type: Buy Now at your price, Pre-order to take orders before release day, or Free (Claim) to give it away in exchange for the reader's email address.
Get your dedicated pages and links
As soon as you publish, Curios hosts the pages for you. There is nothing to build, host, or maintain:
- Your creator profile, which shows all of your work in one place.
- A product page for every title, with your cover, description, preview, and every format you offer.
- A direct checkout link for every format, which takes a reader straight to checkout. Use these in your newsletter, your social posts, your ads, and your own website.
- A listing on the Curios marketplace, where new readers can discover you alongside similar titles.
Custom domains for Curios pages are coming soon.
Set up payouts
Verify your identity and connect your bank so you can be paid. Paid plans include automatic payouts, monthly on Lite and weekly on Plus and Pro.
Setup: selling direct from your own website
If you want your own website, start by choosing how to build it. Then make sure it does the three things every store has to do well: help people find your work, make it obvious how to buy, and make it clear how they'll get what they bought.
Choose how to build your site
There are good options at every level of time, budget, and technical skill. Any of them can sit in front of Curios checkout.
- Curios: build the whole site on Curios. Describe the site you want in plain language and refine it by chatting, then publish it on a domain Curios hosts for you. Every page is connected to your catalog from the start, so checkout, delivery, payments, taxes, customer support, and your sales admin are already wired up with nothing to connect.
- Curios pages: your Curios profile and product pages are hosted for you and already connected to checkout. If you don't need a separate site, this is all you need.
- Lovable: an AI website builder. Describe the site you want in plain English and refine it by chatting. No coding needed.
- Claude: Claude can design and build a complete custom website from a conversation, which you can then publish for free on a host like Netlify.
- WordPress: the most widely used website platform, with endless themes and plugins. Very flexible, but you'll manage hosting, updates, and plugins.
- Squarespace and Wix: drag-and-drop builders with polished templates and hosting included.
- Webflow and Framer: design-focused builders for creators who want precise control over the look of their site.
- Carrd: simple, low-cost one-page sites. Great for a single landing page or link-in-bio page.
- Shopify: a full ecommerce platform. Powerful, but you become the merchant of record, and you'll still need separate tools to deliver ebooks and audiobooks.
If you do not see these options, it is likely in private beta. Reach out to [email protected] to request access.
Connect your site to Curios checkout
Upload your work to Curios first, then copy the direct checkout link for each format and use it as the link on the matching buy button on your site. One link per button: one for the ebook, one for the audiobook, one for the hardcover, and so on.
When a reader clicks, they land on a secure Curios checkout that can be cobranded to match your site. From there Curios takes care of everything that follows. On a Plus or Pro plan, our team can help make sure your site, checkout, and delivery work together seamlessly.
Make your work easy to find
A visitor should be able to find any of your books within a click or two of landing on your site.
- Feature your newest or best-selling book at the top of your home page.
- Give every book its own page with its cover, description, and reviews.
- Group series together and show the reading order clearly, so a new reader knows where to start.
- Keep navigation simple: books, series, about, and newsletter are usually enough.
- Make sure every page works well on a phone, since that's where most of your visitors will be.
Make it obvious how to buy
Every book page should have a clear buy button near the top, with the price and format on it, such as "Buy the ebook" or "Get the signed hardcover." If you offer several formats, show each one with its own button so readers can pick without hunting.
Remove anything that makes readers wonder where to click. One clear button beats a page full of options.
Make it clear how readers get what they buy
Many readers have only ever bought ebooks from a big retailer, so tell them what happens after they pay. A short line near your buy buttons goes a long way, for example: "Read instantly in the Curios app or send it to your Kindle, Kobo, or NOOK."
Answering this question before someone buys removes one of the biggest reasons readers hesitate to buy direct, and it heads off support questions afterward.
Operations: running your business day to day
Setup gets you open. Operations keep you open. These are the jobs that happen every time someone buys from you. Work through each one and make sure you have an answer.
Are you selling digital, physical, or both?
Digital products like ebooks and audiobooks need secure delivery. Physical products like paperbacks, hardcovers, special editions, and merch need printing, packing, and shipping. Many creators sell both, often bundled together, which means solving for both.
With Curios: sell digital and physical products side by side, and combine them in a single combo pack.
How are you delivering digital content?
On your own: you need a service to deliver files securely, help readers get them onto their devices, and resend access when someone loses it. That is usually another monthly subscription.
With Curios: delivery is instant and built in. Readers read or listen in the Curios app on web and mobile, or send ebooks to Kindle, Kobo, or NOOK, and access is emailed to them and saved to their library. If you already use BookFunnel, you can connect it, and audiobooks can be delivered to the BookFunnel app too.
How are you shipping physical orders?
There are three common ways to fulfill physical orders:
- Ship it yourself: you keep stock at home and pack each order. Best for signed copies, special editions, and merch.
- Print on demand: a printer prints and ships each book as it's ordered, so you never hold inventory.
- A warehouse (3PL): a third-party logistics company stores your stock and ships for you. Useful at higher volumes.
On your own: you connect each of these to your store, keep shipping rates accurate, and pass every order to the right place.
With Curios: choose fulfillment per format. Ship it yourself with calculated or flat-rate shipping, or connect BookVault for print on demand and have each order printed and shipped for you. Third-party warehouse and logistics support is coming soon.
How are you handling taxes?
On your own: when you sell from your own store, you are usually the merchant of record. That makes you responsible for charging the right sales tax or VAT for each buyer's location, keeping records, and filing returns in every place you owe them. Ebooks and audiobooks sold into the EU and UK, for example, are taxed at the buyer's local VAT rate, even on small sales.
With Curios: Curios is the merchant of record, so we collect and file sales tax and VAT on every sale, worldwide. That's true on curios.com and on your own website when your buy buttons use Curios checkout.
How are you handling payments and fraud?
On your own: you set up a payment processor, pay its fees out of each sale, and deal with fraudulent orders and chargebacks, each of which can cost you a penalty fee on top of the lost sale.
With Curios: secure checkout, fraud prevention, and chargeback protection are built in. The checkout fee is paid by the buyer, so you keep 100% of your list price on every Curios plan.
How are you handling customer support?
On your own: you are the support team. Wrong email addresses, files that won't open, devices that won't sync, and refund requests all land in your inbox, and they can eat hours of your week.
With Curios: the Curios customer support team handles buyer questions about access, delivery, and orders, so those requests don't land in your inbox.
How are you capturing emails?
Your customer list is the engine of repeat sales. Every launch is easier when you can email people who have already bought from you.
On your own: you connect your store and signup forms to your email provider and make sure every buyer actually lands on your list.
With Curios: the email address of everyone who buys or claims your work is captured automatically and shown in your statement page in Creator Studio, ready to add to your newsletter. Free claims are a great way to grow your list: give away a first-in-series, a sample, or a bonus scene, and every reader who claims it becomes a contact.
Do you have follow-up emails and automations?
The moments right after someone buys, claims, or finishes your book are when they are most likely to want more. A nurture sequence makes sure you show up at those moments without having to remember to.
On your own: you build sequences in your email provider and connect them to purchase events from your store.
With Curios: Automations let you set a rule once, like sending a thank-you email after a purchase or offering book two when a reader finishes book one. Messages can be written by you, or written by AI in your own voice from examples you provide. Automations are included on the Plus and Pro plans.
Did you set up upsells and special offers?
Making more from each customer is often easier than finding a new one. Upgrades, bundles, and discounts on the next book all raise the value of every order.
On your own: each of these is usually a separate plugin or app with its own monthly fee.
With Curios: offer an upgrade when someone adds a product to their cart, such as swapping an ebook for an ebook and audiobook bundle, or show the next book in the series after a purchase. You can also create coupon codes and run pre-orders.
Did you set up Meta Pixel and the Conversions API?
If you run Facebook or Instagram ads, you need to know which ads actually produce sales. The Meta Pixel tracks visits and purchases in the browser, and the Conversions API (CAPI) reports purchases from the server, so sales still count when a browser blocks tracking.
On your own: you install the pixel on your site and checkout, and set up a server connection for CAPI, which often takes a developer or a paid plugin.
With Curios: paste your Pixel ID and a Conversions API token into Integrations in Creator Studio. Curios sends every completed purchase to Meta with the order value, so you can optimize ads for purchases and see your return on ad spend. It takes about five minutes and no developer.
Curios handles all of this out of the box
Look back over the list: delivery, shipping, print on demand, taxes, payments, fraud, customer support, email capture, automations, upsells, and ad tracking. Built yourself, that is a stack of separate tools and subscriptions, plus the time to keep them all working.
With Curios, every one of them is handled in one place. That's true when you sell on curios.com, and it's just as true when you sell from your own website and use Curios to power everything behind your buy buttons. You keep 100% of your list price and every customer's email either way.
Is your store ready for marketing?
Before you spend time or money sending people to your store, make sure your store will turn that attention into sales. Marketing can only bring people to the door. Your store has to do the rest.
Do you know where you're sending people?
Every promotion should point to one specific place. If you're promoting a book, send people to that book's page or straight to its checkout, not to your home page where they have to go looking for it.
Does the page match the promotion?
The page someone lands on should look like and say the same thing as the ad, post, or email they clicked. Same book, same cover, same offer, same price. Any mismatch makes people hesitate, and hesitation costs sales.
How many clicks is it from the ad to the sale?
Count the steps between the click and the purchase, and remove every one you can. Direct checkout links let you skip steps entirely, sending a reader from your email or ad straight to checkout for the exact format you're promoting.
Will your efforts convert?
Ask yourself honestly: if a stranger landed on your page right now, would they understand what the book is, why they'd love it, what it costs, and how to get it, within a few seconds? Strong covers, a hooky description, reviews, and a sample all help a new reader say yes.
Are you catching the people who don't buy?
Most visitors won't buy on their first visit. Give them another way in: a free first-in-series or bonus scene as a claim captures their email so you can follow up. With Meta Pixel connected, you can also retarget people who visited but didn't buy.
Are you making the most of every buyer?
Paid marketing gets much easier when each customer is worth more. Upsells, bundles, and next-in-series offers raise the value of every order, which gives you more room to spend on ads and still come out ahead.
Can you measure what's working?
Before a big push, make sure you'll be able to tell what worked. Connect Meta Pixel and the Conversions API for ads, and check your Curios analytics and statements to see where sales came from.
Have you tested it yourself?
Walk through your store like a reader would, on your phone. Click every buy button, go through checkout, and check what happens after the purchase. Fixing a broken link before a launch is much cheaper than finding it after.
Where to go from here
Your store is set up and ready. Next, learn how to bring people to it and how to turn them into a customer list you own.
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