Launch Your Online Storefront Today!

Sell More Books. Make More Money.

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Japan
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Romania
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom (Great Britain)
United States

What You Get

Everything you need to build a strong online presence.

Your Very Own Storefront
Add Your Own Logo & Details
Customizable Storefront Banner
Sell Unlimited Products
Instant 100% Payouts on Sales
Shared Audiences & Incentives
Back-In-Stock Notifications
Abandoned Cart Recovery
Wishlist Reminder
Storefront & Product SEO
Bookable Products

Local Pickup, Delivery & Shipping
On-Demand & Customized Orders
Vendor & Product Reviews
Safe & Secure Checkout
Complete Vendor Dashboard
Sales & Tax Reporting
Customer-to-Vendor Inbox
24/7 Real-Time Monitoring
Vendor Community FB Group
Monthly Vendor Workshops
An Amazing Support Team

Spots is perfect for vendors who sell physical goods, digital downloads, professional services & bookable products.

Use Spots as your website, or use it to create an additional revenue stream for your business.

Testimonials

A whole lotta love...

Diane

The Creative Type

★★★★★ 5/5

“Since opening my shop with Spots, I am continually impressed with the level of support I am receiving! From assistance with opening my shop to the ongoing social media support, I know I’ve got a partnership!”

Patty

Studio Patty D

★★★★★ 5/5

“I was so excited to join Spots when I first heard of their idea and loved that Kiel and Ana wanted to support our community in this way. I’ve been very pleased with the results given the newness of my Studio Patty D brand.”

Francis

Classy Crafty Wife

★★★★★ 5/5

“I am excited to be part of this amazing team! The system is so easy to use and shop all in one spot. Thank you for the opportunity to help me grow as a small business!”

Cynthia

Pound Cake Lady

★★★★★ 5/5

“Spots is growing so much and they are giving people like me more exposure. The owners of Spots have never let me down on supporting me and teaching me how to use the site to help grow my business.”

Victoria

Victorious Editing Services

★★★★★ 5/5

“This is a fantastic portal that makes it convenient to shop locally yet safely from your own home. More and more vendors are joining all the time. It really is a brilliant idea.”

How It Works

We give you the tools for success.

1. Join & Get Set Up

Once you join, you will receive an email about getting logged into your Vendor Dashboard. Once you’re in, be sure to go through the First Steps Checklist! It will help you get set up and connected to Stripe.

2. Create a Shipping Method

Our team will set you up with a default Free Shipping method shortly after you join. Don’t worry… you can edit it and/or create a completely new one at any time. You easily can charge shipping based on product cost, weight, or quantity. The choice is yours!

3. Brand Your Storefront

Upload your logo, storefront banner, author details, contact information, and more. We’ve given you all the necessary tools to launch your very own storefront in our community marketplace… so have fun!

4. Add Books & Share

Add as many physical/downloadable books as you’d like. You can create special “ON SALE” items, quantity discounts, cross-sell bundles, and more. As soon as you are ready, share your storefront with your readers, author and reader groups, and keep on promoting it to new ones!

5. Track & Fulfill Orders

Create your shipping rates and track/fulfill orders from your Dashboard. All vendors must specify their own shipping rates and are responsible for determining taxes. This really is your personal online shop!

6. Support Customers & Earn Money

When a customer places an order, their payment gets processed and is automatically transferred to your connected Stripe account. Customers can even place orders with multiple authors! If they have any questions, it’s up to you to give them the best support possible.

Spots does NOT take commissions on your customer sales. That’s right! All the income goes directly to your Stripe Account... and gets paid to you instantly.

Note: Stripe charges an industry-standard fee of 2.9% + 30¢ to process sales transactions. We do NOT pad this processing fee.

Vetted Professionals

Want to take your author brand to the next level? Let us connect you with pros that can help.

Business Consultants

Get the strategy you need, designed specifically for your goals.

Branding & Design

A quality logo and branding are the foundations of your author image! Make yours great.

Content Creation

Get readers excited to buy your books by creating high-quality descriptions beyond the synopsis.

Product Photography

A picture is worth 1,000 words. Display your books in the best light possible.

SEO & Marketing

Optimize your content to be found on search engines and deploy targeted advertising.

Tax & Accounting

Connect with a CPA to keep track of your books while you focus on your business.

FAQ

You've got questions... we've got answers.

What Spots IS:

Spots is a virtual marketplace & entrepreneur community created for vendors to launch an online storefront, in an effort to share products, discover new customers, make more sales, and engage in incentives and interactive workshops. The Vendors that see the most success are the ones actively participating in the community, sharing their storefront, products, and growing engagement with customers and other Spots Vendors.

What Spots IS NOT:

Spots it NOT a “done-for-you” marketing service. Your success is a direct reflection of your own efforts in promoting and growing your own business.

Give Me the Lowdown!

Author Spots provides authors with a beautifully designed online marketplace for selling their books and getting more readers, reviews, and support nationwide. As a Spots Initiative, the platform is networked with other local and niche “spots” across the country that give the “little guys” a better chance at being competitive in the selling market. Authors Spots is a niche dedicated to authors who want to sell more books they have on hand! For a low monthly fee (and no selling fees), authors can list all the books they want, and they keep 100% of sales, paid instantly. Authors promote their personally branded book storefronts, which brings readers to their books as well as the books of others. When we all promote each other, we all win.

I already have a website. Do I still need to join Author Spots?

Yep! Think about the customer experience, expanding your exposure… and CREATING AN ADDITIONAL REVENUE STREAM.

Say you know a voracious reader, and they’ve already bought all your books! Directing them here to Author Spots can introduce them to other authors in your genre. Connect with the authors they support, and that author is likely to refer their readers to you as well. That sounds much better than losing readers to random reads and maybe never coming back to you.

Need another reason to join this community? On top of the huge value that we bring you, we also help YOU promote YOUR books. Author Spots creates social media content as well as does paid advertising and more. Being a part of our platform will also allow NEW customers to discover your business… and who doesn’t love that?

I am thinking about hiring someone/making my website myself. Why should I sign up for Author Spots instead?

With Author Spots, you enjoy the benefits of getting set up quickly, having your own storefront, being on a secure and reliable platform, having the opportunity to be found by more readers being directed specifically to our online marketplace, and so much more. Best of all, you won’t need to worry about:

Hosting, maintenance, and various other fees associated with an online store
Putting in all the time and effort to create it yourself (and hoping it’s good…)
Using an online website builder that might not work the way you need it to
And the list really can go on and on…

As an Author, what types of products can I sell?

The platform is a place to sell books of all kinds! This includes every genre and every type, from signed and unsigned physical copies to downloadable PDFs. You can also sell book related swag, coloring pages. If you’re not sure, ask.

Do I get my own custom storefront?

You do! You can even add your logo, author details, contact information, and more. Best of all, you can direct readers right to your storefront, via your own URL. You can forward any purchase links on your existing website to your storefront or directly to individual books and promote it all over social media, email, and anywhere you like.

What are the benefits of being a Spots author?

There are so many, but a few benefits are:

We Support Your Promotional Efforts!
Seriously, this is a thing! We work alongside you to help grow, support, and share your storefront. We are all in this together… so let’s do this!

Discover New Customers
We give readers the power to shop all of their favorite authors in one spot from the comfort of their home.

Quickly Add Unlimited Books
Launch and expand your book sales online—no matter what genre you’re in. We give you the ability to easily add as many books as you’d like.

Sell More Books… Make More Money
Create your storefront, add your books, fulfill your orders, and get paid straight to your Stripe account. Sell books to anyone, anywhere. It’s really that easy.

How many books can I sell?

As many as you’d like.

How do you help me promote?

We support the promotion efforts of our authors and their books through Facebook pages and groups, Instagram, Google My Business, marketing campaigns, and more!

What is the cost to join?

We provide HUGE value, and we only ask for $19.99 a month, which is way cheaper than:

Hosting, maintenance, and various other fees associated with an online store
Putting in all the time and effort to create it yourself (and hoping it’s good…)
Using an online website builder that might not work the way you need it to
The list really can go on and on…
Did you notice that we used this crazy list twice? We did because it’s true!

I need help. How do you support your authors?

We use a ticketing system for our Vendor & Customer support. In addition, we also have a Knowledge Base, which can help answer questions you might have regarding how to set up and administer your storefront.

What are the responsibilities as an author?

This really IS your website, and this really IS your online shop. Because of this, you are required to provide customer service to all your customers that contact you and/or purchase books through your storefront. We also require our authors to provide great shipping of their products and report and pay all taxes required from book sales.

How do authors get paid?

You get paid for your sales INSTANTLY. How? Stripe! All authors are required to connect an existing or new Stripe account to their Spot. Why Stripe? Because Stripe is free, reliable, and extremely secure. Plus, it is extremely easy to set up and connect. Don’t have a Stripe account? No worries. All you need to do is a click a button in your Spots Dashboard and fill out a simple form. There is an industry-standard processing fee of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. The ACH transfer from Stripe to your connected bank account is 0.8%, capped at $5.

Authors can fulfill customer orders and view sales reports in their Author Spots Dashboard. All financials/refunds/etc. are administrated via the author’s personal Stripe Account. Be sure to download the FREE Stripe app! Why? Because it will notify you instantly of customer orders and more!

Can customers purchase from multiple authors in one transaction?

You know it! The funds (product sale amount + shipping cost + calculated taxes) get automatically divided between all authors, based on the specific product transaction, and deposited directly into their Stripe account.

How does Author Spots make money?

We operate through author memberships. We do not make commission off sales that happen on your marketplace. Why? Because we think that’s crazy! YOU sell the books. YOU support your awesome customers. YOU fulfill and ship your orders. WE simply provide the service that allows everything to happen.

This sounds AWEOME! I’m totally in.

Let’s do this! Open your storefront today!

Sell More Books. Make More Money.

Launch Your Online Storefront Today!

Author Spots is an initiative of Spots Initiatives. Spots Initiatives is a national network of online storefronts created in an effort to support small businesses in our local communities. Create a powerful economic engine for your community and launch your own local online marketplace today! Learn More

This website is an initiative of Spots Initiatives. Spots Initiatives is a network of online storefronts created in an effort to support small businesses in our communities.