Selling Books on Amazon v. Your Own Site

A Literal Literary Loser Assesses Both

In addition to my traditionally published novels, I have written two self-published titles about getting into NYC schools. The first, “Getting into NYC Kindergarten” came out in April 2015. I sold it on Amazon and BN.com, but the former outsold the latter about 10 to 1 so, for the purpose of this post, I will stick exclusively to Amazon’s sales numbers.

In mid-August of 2024, I updated my school consultant website and, for the first time, I was able to sell my self-published books directly to consumers without going through a third party system.

Now, with five months worth of data, I am back to report on whether I made more money on Amazon, where I have to give a cut of the sales to them, versus on my own site, where the cut to the payment system is much smaller.

From August 8, 2024 to January 8, 2025 I sold 64 copies of “Getting into NYC Kindergarten” on Amazon. The book retails for $9.99 of which I keep about $6.50. This means that, in five months, “Getting into NYC Kindergarten” earned me about $416.

During the same time period, I sold 54 copies of “Getting into NYC Kindergarten” via my personal website, of which I kept about $9.50. This means that my total profit there was about $513.

I sold fewer books myself than on Amazon, but I made more money.

The books are not the profit driver in my school consulting business. The books serve two purposes: They direct potential customers to my consults and workshops (which are the profit drivers), or they provide a $9.99 summary for those who can’t afford the workshops and consults. (Making both options available is extremely important to me.)

As a result, my question becomes, which is more important, getting the most amount of profit from my books, which means selling through my site, or having them available on Amazon, where more potential customers are likely to discover them, and thus learn about me and my workshops and consulting services?

Do I make less money in the short run, pushing the books on Amazon as a way to make more money in the long run via workshops and consults, or do I focus on selling through my website, to my already established customer base, making more money with each sale but not expanding my reach to new customers as much? (I suppose there are people who come to my website who aren’t already customers, but I suspect the number of people finding my books via general web search is lower than those who find them via Amazon.)

Do you have an opinion on that? Let me know in the comments!