How do you sell an ebook online?
·Founder, Stakk
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10 October 2026
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7 min read
You sell an ebook online in five steps: finish the file, export it as a PDF or an EPUB, choose between a marketplace like Amazon and your own checkout, set up how the buyer gets the file, and price it against books like yours. The choice that matters most is where you sell, because Amazon's KDP Select program asks for the digital version exclusively, and that rules out selling the same ebook from your own page. Everything else you can change later. Checked 5 October 2026.
Most answers to this question are a list of platforms. The platform is the last thing to decide. The order below is the order the work actually happens in, and the same steps apply to any PDF you want to sell, from a guide to a workbook.
What do you need before you can sell an ebook?
A finished file, a cover, and three sentences of description. That is the whole list.
- The file. Edited, with a contents page that links to each chapter, and page numbers if it is a PDF. Read it once on a phone before anyone pays for it.
- The cover. It is the product photo. It has to be readable as a thumbnail, because that is the size most buyers will first see it at.
- The description. Who the book is for, what they will be able to do after reading it, and how long it is. Page count sets expectations and cuts refund requests.
You do not need a website, a mailing list or a company to start. If the last one worries you, whether you need an LLC to sell digital products has its own answer. You also do not need to register anything to own what you wrote. The US Copyright Office's FAQ says a work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form, and that registration is, in general, voluntary.
Which file format should you sell, PDF or EPUB?
Sell a PDF when the layout matters, and an EPUB when the words matter. Many sellers ship both in one download.
| Format | How it behaves | Good for | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every page looks the same on every screen | Guides, workbooks, cookbooks, anything with tables or images | Small text on a phone | |
| EPUB | Text reflows to fit the screen and the reader's font size | Novels, essays, long reads | Complex layouts fall apart |
A PDF opens on almost anything without an app, which is why it is the default for books sold direct. An EPUB is what e-reader apps expect. If you write in a word processor, exporting both takes a few minutes, and putting both in the folder means nobody emails you asking for the other one.
If your "ebook" is closer to a planner or a workbook the buyer fills in, the file prep is different, and selling digital planners covers it.
Where can you sell an ebook?
In two kinds of place: a marketplace that brings its own buyers, or a checkout of your own that you send buyers to.
| Where you sell | Who brings the buyer | Who the buyer belongs to | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| A book marketplace, such as Amazon's Kindle store | The marketplace's own search | The marketplace | Its rules and its page, not yours |
| A general digital store or marketplace | Mostly you, sometimes its discovery pages | Shared | Fees vary a lot, so read the pricing page |
| Your own checkout, such as Stakk | You | You | No one browses it looking for books |
The one rule to know before you choose is about exclusivity. Amazon's KDP Select page says that when you enroll a book, you commit to making its digital format available exclusively through KDP, and that during that period you cannot distribute it digitally anywhere else, "including on your website, blogs, etc." Print is not affected. KDP Select is optional, and Amazon describes it as a free 90-day program for Kindle ebooks only. So you can sell on Amazon and on your own checkout at the same time, as long as the ebook is not enrolled in Select.
A marketplace suits a book that strangers search for by topic. Your own checkout suits a book you already have a way to tell people about: a channel, a newsletter, a profile where people ask you questions. If you have neither yet, selling with no audience is the place to start.
How do you deliver an ebook after someone pays?
Automatically, with a link that arrives the moment the payment clears. Nobody should be waiting for you to wake up and send an email.
On a marketplace, delivery is handled for you and the book lands in the buyer's library. On your own checkout, you set a delivery link once. Put the PDF and the EPUB in one folder, name the files with the book's title rather than "final-v3", and add a one-page note that says which file is for which device.
Test it as a buyer before you share the page. Pay for your own book, open the link on a phone, and check that both files download. It takes five minutes and catches the mistake that would otherwise be your first customer's problem.
How do you price an ebook without guessing?
By comparison. Find five books on the same topic, sold the same way you plan to sell, and note the price, the length and what else is in the download.
Then place yours by scope. A short guide that solves one problem belongs at the low end of what you found. A long book with worksheets, templates or a checklist belongs higher, because the buyer is paying for the extras as much as the pages.
The extras also give you a second product. The workbook that goes with the book, or a bundle with your other title, is a natural add-on at checkout.
An example checkout, not a real listing. The workbook is offered before payment and joins the same charge, so the order carries one transaction fee rather than two.
Do not price from the hours you spent writing. The buyer cannot see them. If you are not sure anyone wants the book at all, checking whether a product will sell before you make it is a cheaper test than writing 200 pages first.
How do you stop people sharing your ebook?
You mostly cannot, and it is worth knowing that before you spend a week on it. A file that can be opened can be copied.
What you can do is make the terms plain. Put one line on the copyright page and on the receipt: this copy is for the buyer's own use and may not be resold or shared. Most people follow a rule they have been told. Some sellers also stamp the buyer's email on each page, which needs a tool built for it.
Locked files cause their own problems. A buyer who cannot open a book on their own e-reader asks for a refund. A plain file and a clear license line is the trade most direct sellers choose. This is a description of common practice, not legal advice.
When is Stakk the wrong choice for selling an ebook?
When you need readers to find the book on their own. Stakk is a checkout, not a bookstore, and nobody browses it by genre. It is also the wrong choice if cost per sale is the whole decision: Systeme.io charges no transaction fees on any plan, including its free one, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card with no monthly cost. Both are less than our 10% + $0.50. And Stakk has no subscription billing, so a paid serial or a chapter-a-month club is out. It sells in US dollars only, up to $999, and it does not host files: the product is a link you paste in, to a folder you keep in your own Drive or Dropbox.
What Stakk offers instead is the shape of the checkout. The workbook rides the same charge as the book, so the order carries one fee rather than two, and the post-purchase upsell is one tap against the card already used. Both are on every account with nothing behind a tier, which fewer platforms do than you would expect, and the layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.
Ready to put your ebook behind a checkout?
If the files are exported and the folder is named, the rest is short. Paste the folder link as the delivery link, set a price, add the workbook as an optional extra on the payment screen, and share the checkout where people already ask you about the topic. Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included and no monthly fee, and the charge lands in your own Stripe account rather than a balance we hold.