Gumroad or BooksOasis for Selling Ebooks

The Upshot

Gumroad is a checkout tool for creators. It lets you sell an ebook, a course, templates or a membership from a simple product page, with no monthly fee, and takes a percentage of each sale. BooksOasis is a bookstore built for books, where you pay a flat plan, keep the full ebook price and can sell paperbacks and hardcovers too. Gumroad suits authors who sell many kinds of digital products to an audience they already have. BooksOasis suits authors who want their books on a real bookstore shelf with a higher payout per copy.

Two Kinds of Tool

Gumroad is a general platform for selling digital products. You create a product, upload your files, set a price and share a link. Buyers pay through Gumroad and download what they bought. It is popular with writers, illustrators, educators and software makers, and it handles sales tax as merchant of record. Because it is not book-specific, there are no genre shelves or series pages, and most sales come from the links you share.

BooksOasis is an online bookstore for independent authors and small presses. Readers browse genre shelves, series pages, new releases and sales, and each book page can carry ebook, paperback and hardcover editions. Authors pay a flat listing plan with no commission on sales.

Overview Table

Fees on Each Sale

Gumroad charges nothing until you sell. On sales through your own profile or links, it takes 10% plus $0.50 per transaction. On sales that come through its Discover marketplace, it takes 30%. Check Gumroad's current pricing for whether payment processing is added on top in your situation.

The flat $0.50 matters most on cheap ebooks. On a $2.99 ebook sold directly, Gumroad's fee of about $0.80 is more than a quarter of the price. On a $19.99 bundle, the same structure takes about $2.50, closer to an eighth.

BooksOasis takes no fee per ebook sale, so the price you set is what you earn. The cost is moved into the plan instead: $29.99 a year or $9.99 a month for up to 10 books on Starter, with larger plans for 100 and 500 books, and a pay-as-you-go option for a single title. If you sell a few copies a year, Gumroad's no-monthly-fee model is cheaper. If you sell steadily, a flat plan usually wins.

Finding Buyers

Gumroad is strongest when you already have an audience. You share the product link with your newsletter, social followers or website visitors, and they buy in a couple of clicks. Its Discover marketplace can bring some new buyers, but it covers every kind of digital product, so books compete with design assets, courses and software for attention, and marketplace sales carry the higher 30% fee.

BooksOasis is a store people visit to find books. Readers can browse by genre, follow series, check new releases and pick up discounted titles, and promotional prices you schedule show the original price crossed out and can appear in the store's sale banners. Its audience is smaller than the big retailers, but it is made entirely of book buyers. You can also send your own readers there, where every ebook sale pays the full price.

How Readers Get the Book

Gumroad delivers files. A buyer downloads the EPUB or PDF you uploaded and opens it in whatever reading app they use. That flexibility suits tech-comfortable readers, but some buyers are unsure how to get an EPUB onto a Kindle or phone, and authors end up answering those questions.

On BooksOasis, ebook buyers read in the store's own reading app. It works offline, keeps their place and syncs highlights and notes across devices, so a reader can buy and start reading in moments without moving files around. For less technical readers, that can mean fewer support emails and fewer refund requests.

Beyond Single Ebooks

Gumroad's flexibility is a real advantage for authors who sell more than books. You can sell a workbook with templates, a writing course, a paid newsletter, a bundle of audio files, or offer pay-what-you-want pricing and discount codes. If your author business includes coaching, courses or other digital products, Gumroad can hold all of it in one place.

BooksOasis is focused on books. It offers unlimited author names and imprints from one account, series pages that group every volume, per-format promotional pricing and an optional ISBN for every edition. If books are your whole business, that focus keeps setup simple.

Print Editions

Gumroad does not print or ship books. Authors who want to sell paperbacks through their own channels need a separate print-on-demand service connected to a different store.

BooksOasis sells print editions next to the ebook on the same book page. Paperbacks and hardcovers come in five common trims, the dashboard checks your print files and shows the exact cover size and spine width, and readers pay shipping at checkout. You earn the price minus the printing cost and a handling fee of 30% of that cost.

Pricing Direct Ebook Sales

Selling direct gives you more control over price than the big retailers do, and the fee structure of each platform should shape how you use it.

• Avoid very low prices on Gumroad. The fixed $0.50 per transaction eats into $0.99 and $1.99 ebooks. Bundles and higher-priced editions suit it better.
• Use bundles. A three-book bundle at a single price reduces the per-transaction charge on Gumroad, and on BooksOasis a series page lets readers find every volume in one place.
• Reward your most loyal readers. A short-term sale announced only to your newsletter makes direct buying feel worthwhile and gives readers a reason to choose your preferred store.
• Match your retail prices. Undercutting Amazon on a direct store can trigger price matching there, which lowers your Amazon earnings too.

On BooksOasis, the scheduled sale price is the easiest lever: set a start and end date, and the store shows the regular price crossed out for the length of the promotion. On Gumroad, discount codes and pay-what-you-want pricing give you similar flexibility for audiences you reach yourself.

Using Both

1. List your books on BooksOasis with ebook, paperback and hardcover editions for readers who want a bookstore experience.
2. Use Gumroad for products that are not books, such as workbooks with templates, courses or bonus material.
3. Link the two in your back matter and newsletter, pointing book buyers to BooksOasis and extras to Gumroad.
4. Price consistently so readers never feel they paid more in one place.
5. Review your sales every few months and focus on whichever channel your readers actually use.

For more ways to reach readers without relying on big platforms, see our guide to selling books without social media.

Picking One

Frequently Asked Questions