Our Experience Building Online Store for Books

5 min read

As you know from our last post we have been and will continue to encourage all writers to treat their writing as a business and control as much of your business as you can. Yes, it is always nice to be picked up by a big publishing house and let them worry about getting your book published and some of the marketing. However, these are your stories that you are sending out into the world and they represent you as a professional. As such you might want to consider starting out self-publishing. That way you can control how the story is presented and keep almost the entire profits for yourself. Yes, there are expenses you will need to pay out yourself and we can discuss them more a little later.

I am a handcraft artist, blog author, website designer as well as a published writer. You really need multiple streams of income these days and these are the things that I like to do. Granted, I should probably just go back to a 9 to 5 job until I can “officially” retire but that is not really possible with the health issues I have these days. So, I work as long and as hard as I can to build these three sides of my business and then I take a rest when I need to. Keeping all these balls in the air is not easy but I am stubborn and will work a problem until I have solved it to my satisfaction. Most of the writers I know have similar views and would much rather control as much as they can when they can.

Example AD from my Handcrafted Items Online Store Using WooCommerce

https://swconlinestore.com/product/variegated-black-gray-and-white-crocheted-beer-or-baby-bottle-holder-3×6/

To that end, I have tried three different Free e-Commerce plugins for my various online stores. For the eBook store I first tried Easy Digital Downloads. It was a very simple eCommerce solution and seem to work okay for a number of years but lately, I wanted more out of the software that they could not give me unless I paid for upgrade packages. Don’t get me wrong I would have paid for them had the software seem to be selling anything at all but that wasn’t to be. So I changed over to the WooCommerce plugin which I use for my Handcrafted Goods Online Store. I like it because I can sell physical as well as digital downloaded goods. It allows me to download a complete inventory to Excel which I still use after all these years to keep track of what I am selling. And it has a little better marketing features as WordPress allows me to just paste in links to projects on all of my WordPress websites and renders it as an AD without any further coding.

Example of Ad using WooCommerce on my eBook Online Store

https://jbmstore.jolenesbooksandmore.com/product/a-message-from-the-sea-by-charles-dickens

I also use WooCommerce for my new physical copies bookstore. Between what my mom has bought, friends have given us and what I have picked up over the years we will have a complete used bookstore before long. In the meantime, I am slowly adding each of the books online to sell to hopefully help pay for our eventual physical book and craft store. There is nothing better than having a business selling things you love. Used book stores are becoming rarer these days and I believe the only way they are going to survive and thrive is to put all of their inventory online so that people will know what they have to offer before they seek them out. It will take time and patience but I will get them all online eventually.

Example of Add using WooCommerce on my Physical Books Online Store

https://etceterasstore.jolenesbooksandmore.com/product/night-shift-and-night-shadow/

I recently helped out a fellow writer with her website and eCommerce store. She also chooses WooCommerce to sell autographed copies of her books in paperback format. I believe this will be a great service for readers and eventually, with my help in redesigning her website and upgrading we have done over the last week she should be getting lots more people to her site. Marketing yourself and your books are the only way people will start buying them. Together we are experimenting on seeing how to get more readers, subscribers, and purchasers to her new site. We have connected the website blog posts to her Twitter and Facebook page so that every time she posts something it will be shared on social media. She already had her website connected to her Amazon Author Profile page so those blog posts get shared there as well. She can schedule lots of posts using WordPress to be published at regular intervals over the next several months and then she can concentrate on writing her next book.

Example of Ad using WooCommerce to Sell Your Books from My Clients Website

https://www.laceydancer.com/product/truth-kills/

WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to list Services as products for sale. So I am trying out WP-Easy Cart for now. I did have my services listed using SquareUp Marketplace Widget but, again, I really wasn’t getting enough of a response to my services as I would have liked. WP-Easy Cart seems to been have created using similar techniques as WooCommerce and does allow me to post ads directly from my shop onto all of my WordPress websites by just pasting a link. However, the Featured pictures don’t show up in the ads. I will have to do some research on that. I am currently looking into how to display the ads from WooCommerce a little smaller as well. I have updated the website theme to take advantage of the ads and to try a different look and layout. You just have to keep trying different things to get people’s attention. I will post again about the software and our progress next time.

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