Print Your Book with Shopify

How to Sell Books on Your Website: Shopify Lulu Xpress Setup

Do you want to sell print books on your website? Well, you can do that through the Shopify Lulu Express app. This video is exclusively sponsored by Lulu, and if you want to order print on demand books through them, you can use my affiliate link and get 20% off your order.

Why sell through your website?

There are traditional ways of self-publishing through avenues like Amazon or IngramSpark, but you can also use dropshipping. Shopify sets up a store on your website, and you fulfill any orders for people through your site. You get to keep all the profit, except for the amount that it costs to run your shop through Shopify.

Setting up Shopify Lulu Express:

1. Go to Shopify.com and create an account.

2. Select apps and visit the Shopify app store.

3. Search for Lulu Express and install the app.

4. Select products and add a new product.

5. Enter your book title, description, and price.

6. Enter the cost of the item, quantity, weight, and customs info.

7. Select the product type and upload your PDF interior.

8. Choose the interior color, paper type, and binding.

9. Select the cover finish and upload your book cover.

10. Go back to the product overview and add the front cover and any 3D images.

11. Copy the code and paste it on your website.

Congratulations, you have set up print on demand books through your website. You can sell your books at a lower price point and still profit even better. Use Shopify Lulu Express to fulfill print on demand orders through your website.

How to Set Up Your Bookstore with Lulu Direct and Shopify

Selling your books through an online platform like Shopify can be a great way to reach a wider audience. With the help of Lulu Direct app, you can easily connect your Shopify products to your Lulu project and set up shipping options for your customers. Here's how to get started.

Step-by-step guide:

1. Sign up for Shopify and start your two-week trial or choose a plan that works for you.

2. Follow the prompts to create your profile.

3. To start selling your books through your Shopify store, create a product by clicking on Products and then Add product.

4. Give your product a title, description, and add product photos under Media.

5. Add the price in the pricing box and leave the Charge tax on this product box checked.

6. Under Inventory, uncheck the Track quantity box.

7. Under Shipping, set the weight of your product as one pound (this will be used later when setting up shipping options).

8. Click Save at the bottom, then change the status of the product to Active at the top of the page.

9. Navigate to the Shopify app store by clicking Apps on the left side of the page.

10. Click Customize your store, then search for Lulu Direct.

11. Locate the app from the search results and click on it, then click Add app.

12. Follow the prompts to add the Lulu Direct app to your store.

13. If you do not have a Lulu.com account, click Register and create one now.

14. Once you're signed into the Lulu Direct app, navigate back to your Shopify products and click into the product you created earlier.

15. At the top right, click on More actions, then Connect with Lulu Direct. This will drop you into the product configurator.

16. In this instance, we will be creating a book project. Leave Book as the product type and drag your interior PDF into the Interior upload box.

17. Once your interior PDF is uploaded and approved, you will be able to choose the specs of your project.

18. Continue choosing your book options, then upload your cover by dragging your cover PDF into the Cover upload box.

19. After your cover PDF is uploaded and approved, you can review your print-ready PDFs and view a live preview of your book.

20. Once you've completed your project configuration, the Save button will be clickable at the bottom of the page. Click Save.

21. Now you have your Shopify product connected to a Lulu project.

22. The next step is to set up your shipping options.

23. Lulu now offers the option to automatically pass our shipping costs directly to your customers if you have Shopify Plus, the advanced Shopify plan, or would like to pay an additional fee to enable this feature. It can be found on the Lulu Direct settings page.

24. If you would like to set up your shipping options manually, navigate to Shopify settings at the bottom left corner, then click on Shipping and delivery.

25. Now you'll create a shipping profile that only includes the products that are connected to your Lulu Direct projects.

26. Next to Custom shipping rates, click Create new profile.

27. Name it something like Lulu Books, then click Add products.

28. Add all of your Lulu-connected products, then click Done.

29. Click Save on this page.

30. Once you have your profile set up and products added, you'll then create your shipping zones.

31. Click Manage rates next to the custom shipping option you just created.

32. Click Create shipping zone.

33. Each shipping zone will correspond with the country to which your products are shipped. For this example, I will set up a United States shipping zone.

34. Before continuing, open up a new tab in your browser and navigate to the Lulu pricing calculator.

35. Enter your book details in the calculator, then scroll down to Book shipping estimator. We'll use this estimator to set our Shopify shipping prices according to what Lulu charges for shipping.

36. Back to Shopify, you will now add your customer-facing shipping rates for each shipping zone we created earlier.

37. Under the shipping zone you created, click the Add rate button and choose Set up your own rates.

38. Let's set up a mail option within the US. For the shipping speed, select Custom flat rate.

39. Under Rate name, we'll title the first option Mail.

40. Navigate back to the Lulu shipping estimator tab. The calculator indicates that shipping one copy of any book via mail in the US will currently cost $4.94.

41. Back to Shopify, now that you know what your cost will be, you can decide what you would like to charge your customers for one copy shipped to the US. In this example, I simply want to pass on Lulu's cost to my customer, so I will put $4.94 in the price field.

42. Next, we want the shipping price to correspond with the number of copies the customer purchases. You can do this with rate conditions.

43. Click on Add condition below the rate name and price fields. The easiest way to do this is to base your shipping prices on the item weight. Remember that we have set our Shopify product to weigh one pound. Therefore, in the minimum weight field, leave it as zero. In the maximum weight field, put one pound. This will ensure that whenever a customer has one book in their cart, they will be charged $4.94 if they choose mail shipping.

44. Click Done.

45. It can get tedious to add a shipping rate for every possible quantity. One way to get around this is to group quantities together. For example, let's set up our next shipping rate for two to five copies.

46. Click Add rate, choose Custom flat rate, and enter Mail again.

47. In the Lulu shipping estimator, we see that the price to ship five books is $7.94. Enter this price into the price field, then click Add conditions.

48. Enter two pounds for the minimum weight and five pounds for the maximum weight. This will ensure that the user is charged $7.94 for shipping if they have between two and five copies of the book in their cart.

49. Continue to set up a rate for 6 to 10 copies, then 11 to 20, and so on.

50. You will repeat these steps for all of the shipping options you would like to offer. In most cases, it is helpful to have at least one other shipping method besides mail, such as ground or express. The process is the same for setting up those options.

51. Click Save when you are finished setting up your shipping rates.

52. After you set up all of your customer-facing shipping options in Shopify, you will want to make sure those options are mapped correctly in the Lulu Direct app to ensure Lulu ships your order with the correct shipping method.

53. Navigate to the Lulu Direct app and click More actions and then Settings.

54. Scroll all the way to the bottom of this page, and you'll see the shipping options you've set up in Shopify. They will default to automatic mapping; however, we recommend clicking into each option and mapping it directly to the Lulu shipping method you would like to use.

55. Click Save.

56. Now that you have your product connected and shipping options created, let's test to make sure everything is set up correctly by placing a test order within Shopify.

57. Navigate to the Shopify orders dashboard.

58. Click Create order.

59. Click the search box under Find or create a customer, then click Create a new customer.

60. Enter your shipping details or any address you choose, then click Save customer.

61. Search for the Shopify product you would like to order by using the search bar or clicking Browse products and selecting the product from there.

62. Once you have selected your book, choose a shipping option, then click Mark as paid near the bottom of the page, then Create order.

63. Next, click back into the Lulu Direct app and click Orders near the top of the page. The order you just created should show a status of Unpaid.

64. If the order arrives in the Direct app as Invalid, you may have some troubleshooting to do. Go over these steps once more and ensure everything is connected properly.

65. From here, you can either pay for the order in the Lulu Direct app and let it print and ship to you as a test copy of your book, or you can cancel it.

66. Congratulations! You should now have everything you need to begin selling with the Lulu Direct app.

The SAD Truth About Shopify Print On Demand (Beginners Beware)

- In this video, the speaker will show real print-on-demand stores and highlight some things to avoid in order to be successful.

- The speaker defines success as making consistent sales every day, and shares his experience with print-on-demand stores.

Things to Avoid:

- Creating a store with a generic name and logo and putting it on a variety of products.

- Creating stores with abstract designs on different products without a specific niche.

The Sad Truth:

- Print-on-demand is best done with direct response marketing.

- Successful stores are using social media and paid advertisements with specific niche designs.

- A niche is a specialized subsection of the population that shares a common interest, passion, or identity.

- Creating niche-specific designs that represent specific niches is the key to making consistent sales every day.

- Print-on-demand is all about creating impulse purchases with people on social media to buy tacky niche designs.

- Print-on-demand is an amazing business model that requires choosing a niche and creating niche-specific designs.

- Join the Peyote Ninjas Facebook group for trainings, and use the free step-by-step course in the video description to get started.

- Print-on-demand is not about selling art or creating abstract designs, but about creating niche-specific designs that represent specific niches.

Selling Books Direct On Shopify With Morgana Best

Welcome to the Creative Pen podcast, hosted by Joanna Penn, a thriller author and creative entrepreneur. This episode (#639) features an interview with Morgana Best, author of Stop Making Others Rich: How Authors Can Make Bank by Selling Direct, which discusses selling books directly on Shopify. The episode also includes updates on the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger trial, as well as Pearson's use of NFTs to benefit from second-hand sales of digital textbooks.

- Joanna Penn introduces the podcast and announces the interview with Morgana Best on selling books directly on Shopify.

- She also provides updates on the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger trial, as well as Pearson's use of NFTs for digital textbooks.

Interview with Morgana Best:

- Morgana Best discusses

Selling Low Content Books On Shopify - How To Set Up A Shopify Store, Shopify Tutorial For Beginners

In this video, Caroline introduces her plan to set up a Shopify store to sell low content books. She discusses the lack of control over a business that is run solely on KDP or Amazon and the potential need for other streams of income. Caroline has chosen to partner with Lulu for printing and will be using Shopify due to its easy set-up and integration with Lulu. She shares the basic initial set-up of a Shopify store, including choosing a domain name, selecting a plan, and connecting an existing domain. Caroline also discusses the importance of a functional and easy-to-use theme for the customer's order process. In the next video, she plans to customize a theme, create a brand, and set up basic pages such as shipping and returns policies. Caroline invites others to share their progress and store URL in the comments.

Lulu Xpress & Shopify | How to Setup Print on Demand | Self Publishing | Journals, Books, Planners

In today's video, we'll be discussing how to install the Lulu Direct app onto a Shopify website. This app is a print-on-demand publishing tool that allows customers to purchase books, planners, or journals directly from your website, with orders automatically processed, printed, and shipped from Lulu. Please note that we will not be covering how to create a Shopify website in this tutorial, only how to install the Lulu Direct app onto an existing website.

To install the Lulu Direct app, navigate to Apps on your Shopify website and search for Lulu Direct. Select Add App and agree to the terms and conditions before logging into your Lulu account or registering as a new user. Once registered, you can access the Lulu Direct main page, where you can navigate to your orders and pricing calculator, view your listed books, and more.

To create a product listing linked to Lulu, navigate to Products and select Create a Listing for My Own Product. Enter basic information, such as the product title, description, images, and pricing. Once the product is active, select More Actions and Connect with Lulu Direct. From there, the Lulu Book Designer will populate, allowing you to select preferences for your book, including paper type, binding, and cover specifications.

Next, set up shipping by adding locations and creating a shipping profile. Lulu's carrier rates will automatically populate for use in your shipping profile. Note that Shopify's shipping features may come at an additional cost, depending on your subscription plan.

To test your shipping profile, add a product to your cart and proceed to checkout, where you should see Lulu's shipping rates automatically populate.

In conclusion, installing the Lulu Direct app onto a Shopify website is a simple process that can greatly benefit self-publishers and authors. By utilizing Lulu's print-on-demand services, authors can easily sell their books and other products directly from their website, with orders automatically processed and shipped.