Merchandising 101
Your Introduction to Expanding Your Author Business to Include Products
As their backlist grows, many authors consider expanding sales beyond their books. And merchandise related to their backlist, or bookish merchandise in general, is often at the top of their list, as a way to both increase sales opportunities and advertise their books.
Merchandising is another cog in the marketing wheel. As authors delve deeper into transmedia, crowdfunding platforms, and direct sales from their author websites, they often look for other products they can sell to expand their storefronts. If a Kickstarter had purchasable add-ons or book-related merchandise, those items can then be added to their website as a sellable item. If they’ve expanded into comic books, custom character art, or recordings or virtual meet-and-greets for fans, those can be made available for purchase. If fans are looking for bookmarks, pins, pens, signed bookplates, stickers, or other items to celebrate their favorite stories and characters, authors have a starting place for a store.
Author Jynafer Yañez said that when she began merchandising, she had to shift her mindset and understand that selling merch isn’t just about making money. “Sometimes we intentionally give up a little margin to make the merch more accessible because if someone loves us enough to wear our logo or carry our tote bag, that’s a win. That’s brand loyalty you can’t buy.”
Whether you’re considering branching into merchandising or have already taken the plunge and are looking to expand your products, there are many factors to consider to be successful: tested strategies for creating, promoting, and distributing products; copyright laws that can affect your ability to sell merch; and ways your merch may play into your author business in the long run.
A Note about Licensing
To sell merchandise based on your covers, logo designs, or other designs that aren’t drawn by you, first note that you need to have extended licensing that allows for commercial use for each part of a design. If multiple images are used to create a cover, logo, or other product design, each image used has to be licensed for commercial use. You also have to license your fonts for commercial use.
Beyond licensing your images and fonts correctly before you begin selling merchandise, it is important to keep track of how many items you sell once you’ve started, especially if you have multiple types of products. Each license you purchase will be good for a certain number of items sold and must be re-purchased once that limit is reached. For example, if a license is good for one thousand physical product sales, and you offer both mugs and T-shirts that include the image, you’ll need to tally both product’s sales to determine when to renew your licenses.
It is a good idea to purchase and maintain all your licenses on your own and to make sure your designer tells you which images in your cover need to be purchased. If your cover designer allows it, you should also purchase the copyright of your cover design from your designer or, at minimum, have a contract that says they have provided you with all the images you need to purchase and that you have the right to use the final product for merchandising, and that you will maintain the licenses needed to do so.
Pro Tip: This licensing is also true when it comes to use of your ebook and paperback covers. For each design you purchase, you are given a set limit for the number of times you may use the image—in this case, the number of books you can sell with that image as the cover. Once you reach that limit, you are supposed to buy the elements again to renew the sales license. Licensing varies according to each stock photo site and fonts, so read requirements closely when purchasing a design element for your business.
If you use AI to generate your images, be sure to verify you are on the appropriate paid plan that doesn’t share your designs with everyone and allows for commercial use. Each AI platform is different when it comes to which plan you’ll need in order to use its generated images commercially, so be sure to check this each time you change platforms.
Integrating with Your Platform
Once you have the ability to sell products, you’ll need to decide where to sell them. Whether you decide to use WooCommerce, Shopify, WordPress, or another content management system (CMS), it is important to decide whether you want to integrate your shop with your existing author website or create a second website just for your shop. Many authors opt to have one site dedicated to their books and a subdomain or second domain linked to their main site for their shop. Some authors have chosen to integrate their shop directly into their main site. What you decide to do can depend on several factors.
If you are looking to create a new website that integrates everything because you only want to maintain one site, you may choose to create a new domain and use Shopify, Wix, or another service to create your new shop and build your presence there.
If you are looking to integrate with an existing site, you will want to see what integrates best with your current web-hosting platform. For example, you can purchase WooCommerce and the appropriate plugins needed to integrate with a print-on-demand (POD) provider, or you can look into setting up Shopify and integrating it with WordPress through WP Shop.
Pro Tip: Print-on-demand functions the same way for merchandise as it does for books, allowing you to offer a range of products in your store without needing to stock them beforehand. Shopify and WordPress using WooCommerce have many plugins that make it easier to integrate POD with the shop. However, they don’t all integrate, so it’s a good idea to verify before you set up products with a POD provider.
Consider costs involved, who acts as the merchant of record, and whether they deal with potential fraudulent charges or taxes—or if you are the merchant of record, how easy it is to integrate your POD provider and shop, as well as which provides the best services to meet what you need for your store.
Pro Tip: A “merchant of record” is a service provided by some companies that process credit cards. The merchant of record is the name that appears on credit card statements when an item is purchased and handles all aspects of payment processing and fraud claims; calculates, collecting, filing, and remitting applicable sales tax, Value Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST) to the relevant local and international tax authorities; and handles refunds and chargebacks.
Using a platform that acts as your merchant of record means you don’t have to deal with many of the legal things that can cause headaches for small businesses. Fourthwall and Curios are merchants of record, but Shopify is not. WooCommerce is not a merchant of record unless you use their WooCommerce payments option, though they integrate with other plugins that will act as a merchant of record.
Platforms for Creating and Selling Merchandise
Etsy
Website: https://etsy.com
Some authors have used Etsy to sell not only ebooks and paperbacks but also POD products. It is easy to distribute electronic files through Etsy, and many POD providers integrate with the site, allowing products to be ordered on demand without requiring they be stocked ahead of time.
You can, via a plugin, integrate Etsy with a WordPress website as well.
Fourthwall
Website: https://fourthwall.com
Fourthwall is a unique option for authors because not only can you set up products through Fourthwall’s POD provider and distribute ebooks, but you can also set up a subscription service similar to Patreon or Ream Stories. It offers a free plan and a $15-a-month plan. The free plan includes designing and selling products, monthly subscriptions, customer support, promo codes, discounts, and giveaways, as well as the ability to sell products elsewhere. The $15 a month plan, in addition to the free tier’s perks, provides you with $120 worth of samples a year, a free .store domain, and other additional benefits.
Fourthwall is easy to set up and allows you to add team members to help you create your store. It is a great option for authors starting out with merchandising or who are interested in having subscriptions as well as selling merchandise. If you are looking for affordability, Fourthwall is by far the cheapest option that provides the most functionality upfront.
Printify
Website: https://printify.com
Printify has an impressive catalog of items through a variety of printers in its network. They offer a free plan as well as a paid plan, allowing you to receive products at a lower cost.
Printify integrates with Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, eBay, Wix, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and PrestaShop. It also connects with Amazon and TikTok Shop, and it offers an API for custom integrations.
This provider works with print facilities all around the world and includes local shipping options for many of their products. If you are looking for a provider that ships internationally, this could be a good option. In addition, if you want to order products in bulk to sell at conventions or to ship from your business, they provide a bulk order discount.
Printful
Website: https://www.printful.com
Printful is a POD provider with more than 430 customizable products, with global facilities that allow for products to reach customers in more than 190 countries.
It can integrate with Shopify, Etsy, Squarespace, Wix, WooCommerce, Big Cartel, Amazon, Square Online, eBay, TikTok Shop, and many other places. They also offer the option of setting up a Quick Store through Printful to sell directly through it.
Printful doesn’t charge a monthly fee and offers access to all its tools on its free plan. Without an account, however, it’s difficult to see whether there is a paid plan or what it offers.
Redbubble
Website: https://www.redbubble.com
Redbubble is a POD provider designed for artists, with global printing and shipping, as well as anti-piracy measures, in place. It offers three tiers for creators, including reduced fees, advanced notice of sitewide sales, and more.
Unlike some of the other POD providers mentioned, Redbubble does not integrate with other platforms; instead, customers purchase directly from an artist’s Redbubble store. There are, however, automations you can use with bridge platforms such as Zapier to allow you to integrate Redbubble with your website.
Pro Tip: Several changes to Redbubble account tiers went into effect September 1. If you are considering Redbubble, be sure to read up on these changes: https://blog.redbubble.com/2025/08/artist-account-tiers-and-fees.
Redbubble seems to be more crowded than other sites, so it’s more challenging to stand out from others on the site and make sales. Unfortunately, that can be difficult to accomplish unless you have a strong fanbase already.
Shopify
Website: https://shopify.com
Shopify has become the go-to for many authors who are selling books and merchandise direct to their readers. Shopify integrates well with several electronic delivery options for ebooks, including Bookfunnel, and integrates with a variety of POD providers.
Shopify not only has a monthly fee, but it also has fees for every additional plugin you use to improve your store, plus fees for each sale. Research what integrations you want to use and determine how much your site will cost you monthly before making a decision.
Shopify allows you to set up shipping fees as well as prevent orders from countries you specify by product. If you don’t want to ship paperbacks internationally, for example, but want to allow people to purchase products that are printed through local POD providers, you can do that.
There are more than five million stores on Shopify and many courses to teach you how to set up your author store, how to advertise, and more. “It’s a long set-up process … but don’t let it daunt you,” says author Catherine Banks. “Once it’s set up, it pretty much runs itself with only updates or additions needing to be done.” If you are considering Shopify as an option, look at other authors’ stores to see what has worked for them.
WordPress with WooCommerce or Other Plugins
Website: https://wordpress.org
Running a WordPress site with WooCommerce or other programs isn’t a free endeavor. Whether you’re using WordPress.com on a higher-paid tier or are self-hosting WordPress, there are costs involved. WooCommerce has put together an article breaking down the cost of managing a store through the platform at https://woocommerce.com/posts/woocommerce-pricing.
These costs are also true for custom themes or other plugins for your store. You may choose to integrate Shopify with WordPress, in which case you’ll pay the Shopify cost and the plugin cost to sync everything between your sites. If your store is on Etsy, there are free plugins you can use to integrate with your website.
It is important to research the options that will work best for your business before making a decision. Alternatively, you can hire a website designer who has worked with stores like these and can set them up for you, though this option can cost a premium.
Designing Your Merchandise
Most POD sites have downloadable templates you or your designer can use to create the products you want. Often, different-sized mugs and tumblers will have different templates for each size, whereas T-shirts will all use the same template. However, you can always test and see if you can expand a smaller template to a bigger one within a site’s design platform. Each site is different, so flexibility depends on the system.
As with cover design, be sure to pay attention to the crop and bleed lines of your product design, as well as whether the site you use requires RGB or CMYK for printing, or whether it changes depending on the product.
Pro Tip: If you can order samples of products, design some and test the quality and color quality before you put the products up for sale on your site. “It doesn’t always look the way you’ve hoped, and especially with greens. They always come out darker and less clear than you’d hope,” says Talia Beckett, Urban Fantasy author. You may have to adjust your designs or use a different POD provider depending on the colors used in your designs.
International Shipping
Whether you are a US author shipping internationally or an international author shipping to the US or elsewhere, monitor the changes to tariffs and customs around the world when it comes time to sell your products.
While some POD providers can print and ship locally, thus avoiding the hassle of international shipping and tariffs, not all POD providers do. If you have a large fan base outside of your country, verify that your chosen platform prints in other countries.
If you’re shipping products to countries where tariffs could be an issue, such as signed paperbacks, hardcovers, or other items you have on hand, you may want to disclose on your website that the purchaser may have to pay a tariff based on where they live when they receive the product. You may also choose not to ship to certain countries, though be sure you have that set up in the settings on your shop.
Pro Tip: Before deciding to ship internationally, calculate the cost of shipping to a given country. You can do this by weighing the books and other products, plus packaging, and putting the information into a shipping site, such as Pirate Ship. Shipping to some countries can be more expensive than the book itself, in which case, you may decide not to ship there.
Lessons Learned
It may seem like there are a lot of authors out there selling their own merchandise already, but there are also plenty of authors who are just starting out—and established authors willing to offer guidance.
“The biggest lesson for anyone starting the process: don’t overcomplicate it,” Yañez says. “Start simple. Use what you already have—book art, logos, series titles—and test a few designs using POD platforms like Printful or Printify. New items are added all the time, and you can upgrade designs as you grow. Poll your readers. Ask what they want. Don’t hesitate to scope out adjacent brands for inspiration.”
Banks also reminds everyone that their store may not take off immediately unless they have a voracious reader base. “Just like with your books, you have to get the word out there about your items and drive traffic to your site. I recommend checking out well-known authors’ sites to get an idea what type of merchandise and pricing is used.”
Julia Huni started her store in 2023 and has learned a lot since then. She’s changed where her store was set up, reevaluated her best options for sales platforms, and learned a lot as she’s continued. She echoes Banks’s advice. “No one buys merch from a store they don’t know about,” she says. “And I wasn’t very good at telling people. You have to be willing to advertise if you want to sell products.”
Huni recommends starting small and asking your readers what they want. “You don’t need to have a full store set up to launch. Add one or two items you think your readers will really want and start with them. Add more items as you go.”
Beckett, who has been running a store for ten months, also recommends starting small and simple, though for a different reason. “Don’t overwhelm people with products,” she says. If you’re selling the products yourself rather than using a POD platform, she recommends starting with things like stickers and bookmarks—“small things you can store in bulk but [that] don’t take up a lot of space if you are doing the distribution yourself, so you don’t suddenly need a whole warehouse just for merch.” She also says it can take some trial and error to find products that sell. “Quotes and book-world-themed merch does a lot better than things like logos, unless the logo is super cool.”
Huni suggests building merch ideas into your story as you’re writing it. “If your characters go to a bar or theme park or restaurant, come up with a clever name, and think about logos. Items based on those places could be super popular if your series takes off. You could also partner with a local company for things like tea, candles, et cetera. That kind of collaboration could benefit you both.”
Final Thoughts
Banks advises authors who are just starting out to find a mentor who has already set up a store who would be willing to answer questions. She remembers her first questions when setting up her store focused on delivery, pricing, and advertising. She compared her products with those on other authors’ sites to determine her pricing, though when it comes to advertising, she says, “I’m still trying to get the hang of this.”
Huni wished she had known about sales taxes: when to start charging them, how to pay individual state and country taxes, and more. While some places will pay the taxes on your behalf, sites like Shopify do not. You should talk with your accountant to learn what steps to take before launching your store.
She was also overwhelmed trying to figure out which companies to use and how to set up everything at the start, but doing your research and asking other authors for advice can ease some of that stress.
Merchandise doesn’t need to be a mystery, Yañez points out. “Listen to your readers,” she advises. “In the beginning, I wondered what would actually sell; what readers would care enough about to wear, gift, or display. Watch what they respond to, what they ask for, and even what they joke about in comments or emails. Your audience will tell you what they want if you’re paying attention.”
