How to Sell an Ebook Online
Writing, formatting into EPUB and MOBI, cover design, and pricing, the full path from manuscript to a delivered ebook, sold from your own page with automatic delivery on purchase.
Selling an ebook directly, rather than only through a retailer’s marketplace, means keeping the full price of every sale and owning the relationship with the reader instead of a store page that could delist your book or change its cut of the sale at any time. The tradeoff is you’re responsible for the parts a marketplace normally handles: file formatting, delivery, and getting someone to your page in the first place. None of those are hard on their own. They’re just steps that don’t happen automatically.
Getting the manuscript ready
Write in whatever you’re already comfortable with, Google Docs and Word both work fine for a manuscript. The formatting that matters isn’t visual polish at this stage; it’s structural: consistent chapter breaks, a real table of contents if the book is long enough to need one, and clean paragraph styles rather than manually-spaced line breaks, which cause problems once the file gets converted.
Converting to EPUB and MOBI
Most ereaders and reading apps expect EPUB or MOBI, not a plain PDF: a PDF locks the layout to a fixed page size, which reads poorly on a phone or a small ereader screen where EPUB reflows to fit. Calibre (free, desktop) is the standard tool for this: import your manuscript, and it converts to EPUB and MOBI with proper chapter navigation. Reedsy Book Editor (free, browser-based) is a solid alternative if you’d rather write and format in one tool from the start. It exports EPUB, MOBI, and a print-ready PDF without a separate conversion pass. Either way, open the converted file in an actual reading app before selling it: chapter breaks and images are the most common things that shift during conversion, and it’s a five-minute check that saves a wave of “the formatting looks off” messages after launch.
Cover design
A cover matters more for an ebook than almost any other digital product, because it’s often the only thing a potential buyer sees before deciding whether to click. Canva has ebook cover templates sized correctly for common ereader dimensions, and the free tier is enough for a clean, professional-looking cover without hiring a designer for a first release.
Pricing
Ebook pricing varies more by genre and audience than almost any other digital product. A short, specific nonfiction guide (50–100 pages, solves one problem) often sits in the $7–$15 range. A full-length novel or a substantial nonfiction book with real research behind it can reasonably ask $15–$25 when sold directly, since there’s no retailer cut being taken out, the full price reaches you. Look at comparable direct-sale ebooks in your genre rather than pricing against marketplace listings, which factor in a platform’s cut that doesn’t apply here.
Delivering it
Host the finished EPUB and MOBI files somewhere with shareable links, Google Drive or Dropbox both work, covered in host your content privately, then set up the ebook as a product and paste the link into its Delivery step. Bundling both formats into one shared folder link means a buyer with a Kindle and a buyer with an EPUB-native app both get what they need from the same purchase, without you managing two separate deliveries.
Once it’s live, a buyer pays through your own connected Stripe account and gets the file link on their confirmation page immediately, no email to send, no manual step between the sale and the reader having the book. Keepp’s cut is 5% on the free plan, dropping to 3% on Pro and 0% at the top tier, with the full remainder settling directly to you.
Common questions
Can I sell a preview or sample chapter alongside the full ebook? Yes: a free or display-priced product can sit next to the paid one on the same page, so a sample chapter can act as a lead magnet pointing toward the full purchase.
What if I release an updated edition later? Swap the link at the same delivery step and every past buyer’s purchase page reflects the new file, useful for fixing errors or adding a bonus chapter after launch without re-contacting anyone.
Do I need both EPUB and MOBI, or is one enough? EPUB covers the widest range of apps and devices; MOBI specifically covers older Kindle devices that don’t support EPUB. Including both in the same delivery link costs nothing extra and avoids a reader having to ask which format you have.
Where to start
Get the manuscript into EPUB and MOBI with Calibre, design a cover in Canva, and sell a product with the file linked for automatic delivery.
Sell your ebook directly at keepp.link: free to start, automatic delivery included.