Direct sales get talked about as though the margin is the whole argument, and the margin is real, but the numbers are rarely put next to each other. So here is one £4.99 ebook, sold through five different routes, with every fee taken out.
All the sums below assume a UK buyer paying with a UK card. Cross-border cards cost more everywhere, so treat these as the best case rather than the average.
The KDP number you are trying to beat
On KDP, a £4.99 ebook sits inside the 70% band, and the 70% band charges a delivery cost of £0.10 per megabyte in the UK store. A 2MB file therefore returns £3.49 minus £0.20, so £3.29. Push the same book to £10.99 or drop it below the band's floor and you fall to 35%, which is £1.75 with no delivery cost deducted. The 35% band is also what you get in territories where the 70% option is not offered.
So £3.29 is the figure a direct sale has to clear.
What each route takes out of one sale
Payhip's free plan charges 5% and lets you connect your own Stripe or PayPal account, so you pay their card fees directly. Stripe's published UK rate is 1.5% plus 20p on UK cards, rising to 2.5% plus 20p on EEA cards and 3.25% plus 20p on cards from further afield. On £4.99 that is 25p to Payhip and 27p to Stripe, leaving £4.47. Payhip's paid tiers cut the platform fee to 2% at $29 a month and to zero at $99 a month, which take the same sale to £4.62 and £4.72 before the subscription.
Shopify Basic is £25 a month in the UK, and Shopify Payments charges 2% plus 25p on that tier, so you keep £4.64 per sale. Digital delivery needs an app on top, either Shopify's own free downloads app or something like BookFunnel.
Gumroad charges 10% plus $0.50 and, as merchant of record since January 2025, adds its own processing of roughly 2.9% plus $0.30. That stacks to about £1.23 on a £4.99 sale, leaving around £3.76, and currency conversion on payout shaves that further. Gumroad also holds your balance until it hits a minimum before paying out, reported at $100 for unverified accounts as of 2026, so low-volume sellers may wait months to see the money. Payhip, by contrast, pushes each sale straight into your connected account.
BookFunnel is not a checkout, so it takes no cut. It delivers the file after a sale you have processed elsewhere. Worth clearing up a common mix-up: direct sales delivery is included in BookFunnel's plans, and the $50 a year Direct Integration add-on covers mailing list integrations on the Mid-List tier, taking that plan to $150 a year in total. BookFunnel repriced in February 2026, so check the tier you are actually being quoted.
Five, twenty and a hundred sales a month
At five sales a month, Payhip's free plan nets £22.33 against £16.46 on KDP's 70% band and £8.73 on the 35% band. Payhip Plus at $29 nets about eight pence. Shopify Basic loses you £1.80.
At twenty sales, Payhip free returns £89.31, Payhip Plus £69.31, Shopify Basic £67.80, Gumroad £75.13 and KDP £65.86.
At a hundred sales, Payhip free returns £446.56, Shopify Basic £439.02, Payhip Plus £438.54, Gumroad £375.63 and KDP £329.30.
Where the monthly fee starts earning its keep
Moving from Payhip's free plan to Plus saves 15p a sale, so the $29 fee needs roughly 154 sales a month at this price to pay for itself. Pro needs about 313. Shopify Basic keeps 17.5p more per sale than Payhip free, so £25 a month needs about 143 sales, and adding £10 a month of delivery tooling pushes that past 200.
The pattern holds at any price point: percentage plans win until volume is high, and volume is the thing most authors do not have on day one. Start on the free tier and let the sales move you up.
The costs the per-sale maths misses
UK ebooks have been zero-rated for VAT since May 2020, so £4.99 from a UK buyer is £4.99 gross. Sell to EU consumers and VAT applies from the first sale, which is why merchant-of-record platforms charge what they charge. Check whose name is on the tax obligation before you build a shop around it.
KDP's terms also expect your book not to be cheaper elsewhere, so most authors match the Amazon price direct and compete on bonus content rather than discount.
The fees decide what a sale is worth. They do not decide whether anyone arrives to buy, and that part sits with your mailing list, your back matter and your author site. •BulletPoint Publishing's Toolchest puts the site, the list, direct sales, ARC delivery and the press kit on one flat monthly fee, so the maths above stops being a stack of separate subscriptions. Have a look at what is in it.