The WE WRITE FOR KIDS Bookstore
If you write books for kids, and are looking for another option for selling your autographed print books directly to your buyers, then we need to talk!
Let’s face it. Whether you are traditionally published or self-published, there are occasions when you want the ability to sell autographed copies of your books directly to your buyer, via an online website.
So, you look into setting up a store on your own website. But that comes with its own set of headaches:
Paying for you own website and hosting
Paying for someone to set up your website and store OR poring over hundreds of YouTube videos—trying to figure it out for yourself.
Figuring out how to collect sales tax and remit those taxes to those states.
And, of course, once the sale is made, shipping the book—which means heading to the post office to purchase shipping labels, and in my town, that usually means standing in line for 15 - 30 minutes.
Hi, I’m Nancy, aka N. L. Sharp. I’m a writer, a teacher of writing, and recently, I created a cooperative online bookstore for authors of kids’ books called WE WRITE FOR KIDS. I did so because I needed an easy solution to sell my own autographed picture books and middle grade novels directly to my buyers. And when I went searching the internet for that solution, I really didn’t find it. So I just decided to create it—for myself and for others who might have the same problem.
If you write books for kids (preschool through 8th grade) AND if my bookstore sounds like a good fit for you and your books, I hope you will consider applying to be a seller in the WE WRITE FOR KIDS bookstore, housed on the district.net platform.
The bookstore works on a consignment basis, much like you might find with a brick and mortar store—except we won’t be asking for 40% of the retail price of the book. It doesn’t cost anything to apply to be a seller, and if sellers are accepted, they can list their books for free in the store. Then, if a book sells, district.net will deduct about 13% of the sale proceeds, and will deposit the rest of the proceeds into an author’s “wallet” (located on his / her sales dashboard.) 10% of that is split between the district.net folks and myself as the creators and owners of the store and platform, and the other 3% (approximately) covers the credit card / PayPal transaction fees.
As you can see—right now, most of the books on the WE WRITE FOR KIDS bookstore are my books. And if I wanted, I could just use the shop to sell my own books. As I said, it solves all of the problems that I personally encountered when I was researching starting a bookstore on my own website—including collecting and submitting sales tax throughout the US and allowing me to purchase and print postage labels right from the site (so I can avoid the line at the post office.)
But, the Motto for district.net is: Buying and Selling is Better as a Community. And I truly believe that! It is one of the reasons that I want to open this store to other writers of children’s authors who want to sell their books directly to buyers and need a platform to do so.
If this sounds like something you’re interested in, you can check out the store and apply to be a seller here.