Why I Still Love E-junkie for E-book Sales From My Websites

In traditional e-book publishing, authors sell their e-books predominantly on their own websites (mostly in .pdf format, although you aren't limited by that).

Despite changes in the publishing world and Amazon's perceived takeover attempt of all things e-publishing, selling your e-books on your own site can still be important. That's especially true when you have an existing author platform with a built-in audience interested in what you have to offer.

I don't want to get into the benefits of including your own website sales in your release strategy today. That will definitely be a topic for another day. Instead, I'd like to share the e-commerce platform I use for selling my own digital products -- E-junkie.

I've talked about E-junkie here in the past, but a recent discussion with colleagues about e-commerce and delivery options made me reassess my options. And it turns out E-junkie is still a fantastic choice.

Why Use E-junkie?

Here are some of the most important features and benefits of E-junkie to me, and some reasons you might want to consider it.

  • E-junkie lets you run and manage your own affiliate program to increase sales. (While I stopped offering an affiliate program years ago, I do plan to reinstate it for some future e-book releases.)
  • You can set up discount codes to run special promotions.
  • Want to know how your readers really value your e-books? With E-junkie, you can opt to let readers pay what they want instead of setting a specific price (something many indie musicians do with their songs and albums).
  • E-junkie offers built-in autoresponder services and the ability to stay in touch with buyers on your list (offering you basic email marketing abilities without you having to get a separate service -- though that's still a good idea in the long run).
  • You can choose to paste their "buy now" button code on your website if you only have one e-book for sale, or you can embed their shopping cart into your site if you offer more than one product instead of sending them to a third party's site.
  • If you're concerned about piracy, you set limits on your download links. For example, they might expire after a certain number of clicks (letting the reader redownload a set number of times, but not pass their download link around to others). This isn't mandatory, and you can re-activate any download link at a customer's request if they use them all for some reason.
  • Another anti-piracy feature is e-book stamping (available for .pdf versions). Basically e-books each get a custom watermark with the buyer's name, making it less likely that they'll publish your files or distribute them too freely.
  • E-junkie hosts the file securely for you, so you don't have to worry about protecting it on your own site. You might not believe how easy it is to leave your e-book files vulnerable (and sometimes even indexable by search engines, making premium files publicly-available).
  • The service offers Google Analytics support, helping you better track conversions. (This is something I'm personally looking forward to exploring further with my next e-book release.)
  • You can use E-junkie whether you're selling e-books or physical books, or both.
  • You can send free download links to any email address, making it easy to send out review copies while tracking that distribution in your sales platform.
  • You can set up package deals (such as offering a discounted price if someone buys all e-books in a series together).
  • You can even make sure previous buyers automatically get e-book updates if you plan to make updates free (such as new editions of your nonfiction e-book or minor edits you make if you discover errors).

There are two other important benefits E-junkie offers over some of its competitors. First, you receive your payments immediately (not bi-weekly, monthly, months after a sale, etc.). E-junkie also can be much more affordable than some similar services.

For example, you can sell up to ten products for just $5 per month. While some of the other services I looked at didn't have monthly fees, they had transaction fees instead. One of them also had a set up fee with your first product, making E-junkie immediately the more profitable option. The other was cheaper than E-junkie, but only if you sold fewer than seven e-books in a month (based on a $10 price -- you could sell a few more if you're selling fiction which is often priced lower). But if you're putting any serious effort into your book marketing, that isn't a difficult threshold to cross. Even if it took you a few months to get there, you could end up paying much less in the long run as your sales increase.

These aren't the only benefits of E-junkie if you plan to sell e-books from your own website. But there are plenty of good reasons there to consider their service.

Next week we'll talk about some of the reasons you might want to sell versions of your e-book directly from your own website.

Do you already sell e-books from your own site? Have you used E-junkie or a similar service for this? Do any of the features I've mentioned here appeal to you? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Profile image for Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern is a professional blogger, freelance business writer, consultant, and indie author. She runs numerous websites & blogs including All Freelance Writing, Freelance Writing Pros, NakedPR, and Kiss My Biz.

Jenn has 25 years' experience as a professional writer and editor and over 20 years' experience in marketing and PR (working heavily in digital PR, online marketing, social media, SEO, new media, and thought leadership publication). She also has 19 years' professional blogging and web publishing experience (including web development) and around 18 years of experience as an indie author / publisher.

Jenn also writes fiction under multiple pen names and is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association.

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16 thoughts on “Why I Still Love E-junkie for E-book Sales From My Websites”

    • LOL No need as long as what you’re using is working for you. 🙂 And with you running a membership site, there’s always that extra consideration of whether or not you want to use multiple platforms (since most others won’t handle that kind of order well).

      Reply
  1. Just birefly looked at my calendar, is it really 2014? yes. Then why does the e-junkie website look like it’s 2006? If I used considerable energy and resources on building my own author platform, I would think twice before deciding which company website my readers would see while ourchasing my book. Some of them might think it’s not safe, some may just be thrown away by the design quality. I have used Sellfy for this very reason. I’m sure you’ve come across it while doing your research. I’m curious why you decided to stick with e-junkie.

    Reply
    • Dig a little deeper before jumping to conclusions please. Your buyers would never see the E-junkie website. That’s not how it works. E-junkie hosts and protects your files and manages delivery for you, all behind the scenes. So that shouldn’t be an issue for buyers. 🙂

      As for Sellfy, no, I’d never heard of them before and I’d never seen them recommended before. Thanks for pointing it out. I always like hearing about new resources. I took a look at their site, but it’s not for me (just as E-junkie isn’t for you). As I explained in the article, I prefer not to work with %-based services that charge per-transaction fees. They work out to significantly higher fees in my case than E-junkie does on a per-product / unlimited sales model. But that isn’t the case for everyone. A colleague mentioned a little while back that E-junkie actually ended up being more expensive for her because of the way her sales were distributed across a greater number of files. If you’re in a similar position, then a transaction fee service might be much better for you.

      Another issue I would personally have with Sellfy is the fact that they don’t have a very robust feature list (or at least they’re not promoting their features effectively right now). The vast majority of features I love with E-junkie aren’t mentioned there at all — package deals, discount codes, automatic buyer updates if you update an e-book, the ability to sell both hard copy and digital products together, watermarks / stamping, the ability to set download limits, etc. They don’t even provide any details about how they secure your downloadable files, or if they do at all.

      So their site is extremely light on information, and I noticed at least three typos in the very small amount of website copy they had (though in their defense, I’ve seen plenty of copywriting issues on E-junkie’s site too over the years). My point is that these things could lead people to jump to negative conclusions about Sellfy just as you did with E-junkie based on their site design. There’s room for improvement all around.

      Sellfy might be a great service. If you use them and you love them and they have all of the features you want and need, you should absolutely stick with them. We all need to choose the best distribution tools based on what we’re selling, how we want to sell it, and who we’re trying to sell to. For me that just happens to be E-junkie. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Hi, I would like to ask if selling ebooks online requires me to add extra for the taxes sold outside our country (Philippines)? Thanks.

    Reply
    • I have no idea Harold. Sales tax is generally based on where your company is located. I can’t imagine you’d have to collect sales tax for items sold in other countries, but I’m not a tax professional and I don’t know what tax treaties exist between your country and your customers’ countries. Best idea is to talk to a tax professional in your home country.

      Reply
  3. I guess, you have to have experiences with certain tools before you have found the right tool. Same happened with me, until i found the one which i am using right now.
    Anyhow, if something goes wrong, I know which tool I am gonna try next 😉
    I prefer less complexity and from your blog I can see e-junkie is a good one!

    Reply
  4. Hi Jenn,
    What an interesting article it is. Just wondering, since there are too many tools available now beside e-junkie; do you still stick to e-junkie or you switched to others? I am planning to sell ebook on my website and so confused with too many options. Thanks in advance for your comments

    Reply
  5. Jennifer,

    I have my eBook ready to go, but I’m concerned about sales tax. Is there a platform that will sell the eBook, collect and pay the state sales tax?

    Thank you for your advice.

    Reply
    • Hi David,

      If you’re required to collect it where you live (not all states require you to charge sales tax on digital goods, and if that’s the only place you have a “nexus” you might not have to at all), you would have to sell through a service like Amazon. They handle the commerce side for you, including sales tax, in that case.

      Reply

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