In a recent episode, The Shopify Trap, I broke down the numbers on using Shopify for direct book sales. For most authors, the Shopify math doesn't work. Shopify charges a monthly fee and makes you the merchant of record, which means you have to deal with sales taxes. That isn't worth it if you're selling only dozens or even hundreds of copies a month.
Shopify can make sense for authors selling thousands of copies a month. In fact, those authors love it and recommend it to everyone, including authors for whom it makes no sense.
For most authors, particularly beginners, sticking with KDP makes financial sense, at least at first.
Could there be a middle way? Is there a way to sell direct that's cheaper than Shopify but still gives you direct-sales margins?
A new platform claims to have solved this problem for authors, so I asked one of its co-founders, Greg Keogh, to explain. He’s the co-founder of Curios, the direct sales platform thousands of authors now use to sell their books. He also helped launch his first book onto the New York Times bestseller list. Here's what Greg had to say about where Amazon is heading, what selling direct really costs, and how authors can make it work.
Has Amazon become an advertising platform?
Greg: Amazon’s KDP is the fastest, most friction-free way to get your book from a file on your computer out into the wild.
As a result, they're taking up to 70% of your sticker price, holding your customer data captive, and they've gone from being a book platform to an advertising platform.
Thomas: That's why Amazon is blocking AI agents. Many people want to use Meta's Muse (or Instinct or GrokBot) to shop Amazon, and Muse doesn't click ads. But when humans shop, Amazon makes a lot of money from ads. AI agent shopping directly threatens Amazon's business model, which is selling advertisements to merchants and authors.
Greg: It goes even further. Amazon has spent billions of dollars taking up real estate in our minds, so we think, "I can get anything I need on Amazon." Amazon used to have the best prices. Today, it's certainly not the cheapest place to get stuff, but it shows up at my door two days later.
If an agent's job is to get you a specific book, it will shop around for that item. An EPUB, MP3, and print book are the same no matter where you buy them. The agent's job isn't to find the easiest place to shop. It's very good at searching the whole web for the best price. Over time, Amazon loses its real estate in the customer’s brain.
Thomas: I was price-checking protein powder today and found the exact same brand 40% cheaper on Costco's website than on Amazon. For years, I defaulted to Amazon because it was the cheapest. It's no longer always the cheapest, but it's by far the easiest.
For an author who hasn't learned how to write a book for a reader or how to find a reader yet, the learning curve just to get published is steep. Keeping things simple helps.
Amazon doesn't always take 70%. If you stay inside its pricing window, it only takes 30% of the ebook price. Outside that window, you're either too expensive or so cheap that you might as well be giving it away.
Should authors send their marketing traffic to Amazon?
Greg: Amazon is one tool in the author toolkit, and I'm not saying you shouldn't use it. But if you do any amount of marketing yourself, paid or unpaid, you shouldn't send your traffic to Amazon.
Instead, point your marketing to a direct store. If you're doing the marketing, you should reap the rewards. Selling direct lets you keep most of the money, collect customer data, and maintain control.
What is Curios?
Thomas: What does your platform, Curios, do, and how do authors use it?
Greg: Curios is a direct sales platform, and our mission is to make selling direct as easy as possible. Our other mission is to serve the creator first and foremost, which in this context is the author. The reader is a close second, but the author is our main priority, and that drives many of our decisions.
Thomas: I’d recommend making the reader number one if you want to grow faster. It's like a dating site. If you fill it full of single women, the men will break down the door to get in. If you fill your site full of readers hungry to buy books, authors will break down the door, because they want to be where the readers are.
Greg: Our marketplace at curios.com and our app both serve the reader first.
Will selling direct help an obscure author make more sales?
Thomas: Curios doesn't take a royalty on the sale. It's a subscription-based service, so once an author covers the subscription, the sales margins are high.
Still, every author has to sell a certain number of books to break even.
For the author selling very few copies, selling direct doesn't solve the real problem, which is that readers don't know who you are yet. Selling direct solves the margin problem in that you’ll get to keep more of the money.
It doesn't solve the no-sales problem. In fact, it makes it worse, because now you've spent time and money creating another way for people not to find you. If they aren't finding you on Amazon, they won't find you on Google or curios.com either.
On the other hand, if you already have readers who will buy from you anywhere, then having a place to sell to them directly can be beneficial.
Curios is fully integrated. Authors can sell ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks in one place. For print copies, Curios connects with Bookvault for print-on-demand.
Greg: That's right. Bookvault is currently live, and we're bringing on Outlanders and Lulu as other print-on-demand options, so you have choices.
I do want to challenge your new-author point, though. Direct sales won't automatically solve a new author's problems. When you manage to get some readers, getting them to buy direct gives your author business more foundation, because you have the contact information of everyone who bought that book.
If you raise awareness through an indirect path, an aggregator like KDP, you don't get that information. If you sell direct, you capture it, which means any progress you make becomes foundational. Granted, you might only have five email addresses, but when that next book comes out, you have five emails you can send it to.
Does Curios support the Meta pixel for Facebook ads?
Thomas: If an author runs Facebook ads and a reader clicks the ad or visits the page, does that reader get pixeled so the author can target them later?
Greg: They do. We have Pixel and CAPI integration directly through the platform, so you can train your Meta ads for conversion-based marketing.
Thomas: This is powerful. Meta has a really great advertising AI, and it can find the kind of people who will complete the purchase, not just click the ad. It can only do that if it has data on who's completing the purchase.
Sending somebody to Amazon, or to a page on your website that links to Amazon, doesn't feed purchase data back to Meta. A full integration does. Shopify has one, and most selling-direct tools worth their salt offer it. It makes your ads more profitable, and not only because of the larger margin. The ad targets better over time because its machine-learning algorithm gets training data on the kind of person who clicks all the way to checkout.
Greg: Exactly right. It takes a while. We call it seasoning the pixel. Your first couple of months of ads will usually still bear fruit, but the payoff comes later, sometimes in month three, maybe as late as month five, depending on your spend. Then Meta knows the kind of people who converted, and it has a bank of 100,000 people like them, so it can start driving good traffic.
Thomas: Advertising isn't for everyone, but it's one way to solve the "nobody knows who I am" problem.
If you're curious about Facebook advertising, I have interviewed authors who have done it at various levels of success. That includes Connor Boyack, who spends millions of dollars a year on Facebook ads to make more than $10 million in sales. He grew year over year by plowing the profits back into advertising, built a powerful brand with the Tuttle Twins, and breaks it all down in great detail.
Learn more about Facebook advertising for authors:
- Facebook Advertising for Authors
- How Jason Porterfield Grew His Email List from 0 to 6,000 in One Year
- Advertising for Authors Who Don’t Like Math with Chris Fox
- How To Split Test Your Book Title Ideas With Facebook Ads
How much does Curios cost?
Thomas: Your pricing starts at $9.00 a month on the low end.
Greg: It actually starts at zero with the Trial plan, which has no end date. You can stay on it forever. It also serves as a catch-all. Say you're paying $9.00 or $29.00 a month, and your credit card changes or you have a life situation and can’t pay your bills, you automatically default to the Trial plan, and your content stays up.
On the Trial plan, you keep 100% of your first 25 sales. After that, we charge 15% plus $0.25 per sale.
That's why I challenged the new-author statement. We offer a place where you can grow in a healthy way. If you grow on Amazon, your popularity will increase, and some people might remember your name later. When you grow by selling direct, you have the customer contact information, whether it comes from ads, lead magnets, or somewhere else.
By the time you've had 25 sales at 100%, the $9.00 plan will be wonderfully affordable, and 15% plus $0.25 isn't much at all. You can stay in that gray area while you figure out your ad schedule without putting out any money until later.
Thomas: Authors who launch a book once a year and get most of their sales in a one- or two-month window could upgrade from the free tier for that window and then downgrade again.
Thomas: That free forever trial option helps you compete with Payhip. Payhip takes a percentage and doesn't charge a monthly fee. For most authors, it doesn’t make sense to pay a monthly fee for a sales platform while you’re in between books and not selling many.
Curios also offers a way to do giveaways. Authors could also sell a 99-cent book. On the forever free plan, you'd keep 70% of it. Amazon only gives you $0.07 or $0.08 on a 99-cent book.
Greg: Right. In our early days, a musician sold his album on Curios for $1.00 apiece. He limited it to 1,000,000 copies and sold out in six days. You can't sell something for $1.00 on most platforms now, but it can work.
What does it mean that Curios is the merchant of record?
Greg: Curios is different from Payhip and Shopify in that we handle all the administrative burdens of selling direct.
Selling direct isn't as lovely as it sounds at the outset. You think, "I can keep 100% of my sale, get customer contact information, and have control. Sounds awesome." You end up making a deal, though. You'll still have to provide customer support, deliver the content, and answer questions. You're responsible for fraud and for taxes.
Curios solves all of those problems out of the box. We're the merchant of record, so readers pay Curios, we process the payment, and we pay the author 100% of their sale. We're responsible for collecting and filing any taxes. Ebooks and audiobooks sometimes carry tax and sometimes don't. Paperbacks always do.
We also handle delivery. We deliver ebooks and audiobooks, and we oversee delivery of physical books. If you're self-fulfilling, you can print your labels, and we notify the reader about the book's status and tracking.
For print-on-demand, we watch the process. Did Bookvault get the order? Did it start production? Sometimes it doesn't. Did it ship? Has the customer been notified? If you don't tell customers the book is being printed, three days later they'll ask, "Hey, where's my book?" You'll have to say, "It hasn't even shipped yet."
Thomas: Do you have a Domino's Pizza Tracker type of interface where people can watch their book go through the process?
Greg: It's not that elegant yet. It's basically a bunch of emails, starting with the order confirmation page.
Thomas: You've got to add a Domino's Pizza Tracker to the emails. Give readers a sense of progress, like "You're on step three of seven." Give them a dashboard where they can see that it's been printed, sent to the warehouse, handed to UPS, and here's the tracking number. It totally changes the way people experience waiting.
Greg: If you communicate with readers like the Domino's Pizza Tracker via email and readers have an enjoyable experience, then the wait isn't a big deal.
Can selling direct ever beat Amazon on shipping speed?
Thomas: Waiting is one downside of selling direct, and really of anything that isn't Amazon. Amazon has spent billions of dollars to figure out same-day delivery better than anybody else. Walmart is catching up quickly, but it has also spent billions.
Selling direct will always be slower for physical media. The only way to beat Amazon on speed is to sell in person, where you take cash for a physical book at a book fair.
Not every reader needs it three hours later, though. Print-on-demand takes time, even for Amazon. Amazon won't be faster for ebooks and audiobooks, though.
How is the Curios app different from BookFunnel?
Thomas: Authors don't have to use BookFunnel to deliver ebooks and audiobooks. Curios has its own BookFunnel-style app for readers, but they can also use BookFunnel if they prefer.
Greg: That's exactly right. One difference is that we handle more media types. We can play music, which is treated differently from an audiobook in playback. Audiobook placeholding is incredibly important, but with music, you usually start the song over when you return to it. We can also play video in the app.
Thomas: Can you do bundles? Could my nonfiction book on woodworking come with videos of me operating the circular saw?
Greg: Yes, 100%. That's the other place we specialize. I call it flexibility, but it's basically mixed media. Amazon says, "Upload your EPUB file or your PDF." We're an open field. Even under the book category, you could upload 10 videos, one book, one PDF, and a song.
Thomas: Mixing media is one real way to beat Amazon.
I did an episode on BookFunnel's new features where we talked about this. Particularly in nonfiction, people often want a workbook and maybe some audio or videos along with the book.
Maybe you've gotten really good with Suno and have an hour of soundtrack audio. You can offer it to readers by saying, "Listen to this dramatic background music while you read, and it will be a much better experience." With Curios or BookFunnel, you can include that as a totally optional companion. It costs you nothing extra, it potentially adds value for the reader, and it certainly doesn't add any negative value.
Greg: A common bundle on our platform is the ebook plus a special edition.
The special edition is printed on demand in the UK, so it takes about a month. The ebook can be in readers' hands right now. They get to read the book, join the online communities about it, and talk about it with their friends. Then their shelf trophy arrives later.
Thomas: Plus, their shelf trophy stays in mint condition.
Greg: Right. The spine hasn't been cracked. If you're considering this, throw the audiobook into the combo as well. If you already have the audiobook, it adds so much value without adding any cost.
Why is sales tax such a headache for authors who sell direct?
Thomas: That triple combo works so well on crowdfunding, which in some ways is another alternative for selling direct. In my selling direct episode, I said, "You don't have to sell direct. Do it all through Kickstarter, and only sell direct during those brief windows."
Curios ability to be the merchant of record was part of the reason I brought you on the show. Sales taxes are so complicated, particularly in the gray areas. Every state has its own rules about what's taxable and its own rates. In some states, the rate is higher in the city than in the countryside. In others, it's the same for everyone. Whether you even have to pay is complicated, and filling out the form is complicated.
It's not about the money. Every platform says, "We'll set aside 8%." That's the easy part. I can multiply a number by .08 on my calculator.
I need help with the paperwork on the back end.
Payhip has started being the merchant of record again. They turn it on and off. I think Gumroad is a merchant of record, but only for digital products. Curios may be the only one that does it for physical media.
Greg: We offer to be the merchant of record for physical books because we want to make it easy for creators. KDP is so easy that it will typically be the default, but I want selling direct to be the default. I want readers, music listeners, and film watchers to be able to buy from the person who made it, first and foremost.
In 2026, with all this cool AI stuff, it's still so hard to buy a book from the author. That's crazy to me. We said, "It can be easier," and we made it easier. Then we realized the key piece is the admin back end.
We've solved setup. If you're good, you can get a book from a file on your computer to a dedicated page on Curios in three minutes or less. The first time you do it, it may take 10 minutes for an ebook, audiobook, or multi-format book.
That's only the first part of the journey. The real journey starts when you get a sale in Germany. Now you've got VAT, tariffs, and handling it all isn't worth the money you made from that book.
The admin side, including customer support, is the crux of our mission.
If you sell direct through your website and get five sales a month, great, but you might get 20 emails from those five sales asking technical questions about downloading the files. It's worth it, because you know who your readers are and can make sure they're treated well. The burden is high, though, and it keeps you from living your life and producing more work.
Thomas: I looked it up, and Payhip does do physical products, so they're expanding there too. Simplifying delivery with a single point of purchase where you can bundle things is really helpful.
BookFunnel is great for digital media, but it doesn't play in physical media at all. Some platforms handle physical books and ebooks but don't touch audiobooks. I don't think StoryOrigin does anything with audio. That adds complexity, because now you have to bolt on another tool.
Greg: For what it's worth, BookFunnel crushes customer support. They'll take the angriest person and make them your best friend, and you're not even involved.
If we'd started in the book space, we probably would've used BookFunnel to deliver content. We started in the music world, though, so we had to deliver MP3s and music videos from the beginning. EPUBs are easy to handle compared to video. Otherwise, BookFunnel would be the solution.
Can authors sell courses and podcasts on Curios?
Greg: Podcasts are getting a nice refresh with some new RSS feeds. Essentially, you can put up an early edition by delivering an MP3 or video file. Courses work the same way. If you have PDFs and videos in a certain order, we can deliver them. We don't have a website-based course builder, but it's an easy way to distribute course material. We can handle most file types.
Thomas: It sounds like you can deliver a mini course that's a companion to a book and not an online course business with community and interactivity. It's file delivery, similar to BookFunnel.
Your app is important, because an app on the phone makes it much easier for non-tech-savvy people to engage with the material.
What if a reader wants to read a Curios ebook on their Kindle?
Greg: That's the majority of what happens. We send to Kindle all day, every day.
Thomas: You spent all this money developing an app, and everyone just sends it to Kindle?
Greg: They just send it to Kindle. There are some disadvantages to that, and we have some cool things coming that might change that behavior. We send to Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and even boutique e-readers.
How does Curios protect authors from piracy?
Greg: Our goal is always to deliver as safely as possible. I think one reason creators are being pushed toward getting paid per stream, especially in music, is piracy. Kindle Unlimited, now Kindle+, wants to pay you per tiny bit accessed. That goes back to the days of Napster.
Downloadable files are easy to share. Even if you watermark them and DRM them, sharing can be rampant. At Curios, the file goes straight to the reader, encrypted, so it can't be taken in the middle.
We do put DRM on the files, but DRM is only enforceable if the file is uploaded somewhere very public. If I share a file with my brother, nothing happens.
Thomas: Is it legit phone-home DRM, where the book breaks if your servers go down, or is it signature-based DRM?
Greg: We certainly do signature-based DRM. If a file is posted publicly, we know exactly who posted it, and Curios prosecutes. It's another admin thing we handle, because most authors won’t sue somebody over a $10.00 book.
Thomas: Well, if you have a copyright, statutory damages can run up to $150,000.
Greg: Maybe we will, then.
Thomas: I'm personally not a big fan of DRM, particularly phone-home DRM, because everything that's been DRM'd eventually breaks. It makes sense to run a server saying, "Yes, it's valid," today. It isn't worth it 20 years from now. Every DRM server eventually goes down unless a big super company runs it, and even then they shut it down half the time.
Sony famously breaks its DRM, and it's the worst. Hopefully, there's a way to turn DRM off. Even Amazon now allows it to be disabled.
Greg: We only enable DRM if the author allows downloads. If they allow downloadability, we enable DRM on the file. If they don't, we don't. Either way, we'll still get it to Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.
Thomas: If you don't know what DRM is, it stands for digital rights management. Big media companies hatched it to fight piracy, and it never worked.
The best essay on why it's a bad idea was written by none other than Steve Jobs. His long essay, "Thoughts on Music," explained why DRM was a bad idea and why Apple was moving away from it. Not everyone has listened to him, but he was right on the money.
What can’t Curios do (and what is planned)?
Thomas: I want to probe some technical limitations so people know what Curios can and can't do. Tell me whether each feature exists now, is coming, or isn't planned.
Does Curios have an MCP?
Thomas: Is there an MCP server, so people can run their selling-direct platform through GrokBot? They'd just say, "GrokBot, go put my book on Curios."
Greg: Absolutely, and we have several MCPs. There's one for the upload back end of Curios, called Studio, at studio.curios.com. There's also an MCP on the marketplace to enable agentic commerce.
Thomas: Agentic commerce is you telling Muse, "Go buy me John Smith's latest book." Muse gets blocked from Amazon, so it says, "I can buy it on curios.com and deliver it to your Kindle," and it handles everything.
You don't have to like AI. You don't have to use Muse or GrokBot or OpenClaw or any of the million agents being created, but your readers are starting to use them. Muse already has 20 million users. It's the fastest-growing product in the history of the world. The number one thing people use it for is shopping.
That means shopping is shifting away from Amazon and onto agent-friendly platforms, and every little platform is saying, "Yes, we'll take your money."
Greg: Exactly. This is a humongous open door for authors, and we're paying incredibly close attention. This door has never been open this wide.
Amazon isn't adapting to this new technology. It's blocking it, and there are strong reasons why. Agents will disintermediate its platform. Wherever the book is, whether that's Amazon, Curios, your website, or Payhip, the agent will find the best deal or the safest way to access that content. It won't buy from Amazon out of habit.
That means, when agents shop, Amazon loses the billions of dollars it spent creating habits that are deeply entrenched in our brains. It loses the advantage of the credit card saved on file, because the agent has your credit card.
Our front-end MCP is one of many processes we're enabling so the agent chooses Curios, which means it chooses you. Readers buy directly from you, and you capture an email address. You have far more control over your content and your commerce. We see it as the biggest open door ever.
Can AI agents access an author's book files on Curios?
Greg: When an agent purchases on Curios, it never touches your book file. The content is housed in a completely different system. The agent only sees the public information, like your title, metadata, author, narrator, and ISBN.
Not to besmirch anyone, but I think Payhip allows downloads, and some platforms deliver via email. If the agent is in your email, it can access the file. Curios delivers through the app, so there's no way for the agent to access it.
I want to be clear about that split, because I know there's a lot of fear, and the fear is warranted. If every author uploads their book, the AI will probably get pretty good at writing, at least at a baseline level.
Thomas: Can readers download a book from their library to their computer?
Greg: If the author toggles on "allow download."
Thomas: If you turn on "allow download," then you should realize that an agent or a human can download it.
Greg: They can share it with all their friends, too. That might be a good strategy. If it's a lead magnet or a novella that leaves readers on a cliffhanger so they've got to get book one, let it go.
Thomas: For most authors, the bigger problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity, and sometimes being pirated solves the obscurity problem. I don't know any widely pirated author who's poor, but I know many authors who have things locked down really well and are poor.
Being pirate-able doesn't make people want to pirate you, though. Nobody even wants to pirate most authors, because readers don't know they exist.
Does Curios work with WordPress and other author websites?
Thomas: What's the status of your WordPress integration?
Greg: It's not your standard plugin or JavaScript snippet. A humongous percentage of our sales come from external websites. Y
You get a direct checkout link. Whether you build your website with Claude or GrokBot, or on WordPress or Squarespace, you use that link for the Buy Now button. It goes straight to the Curios Stripe page, which processes the payment and lets us be the merchant of record and handle file delivery, customer support, PCI compliance, and fraud prevention. You offload the admin portion of direct sales to us while keeping your creativity on your own website.
If you let us know, we'll match that Stripe page to your website's look, feel, and brand. It carries a little "Powered by Curios" branding, so readers aren't shocked when they see Curios on their bank statement.
Then the order confirmation page handles the handoff from "Thank you for supporting me" to "From here, Curios handles delivery and support."
Does Curios charge readers extra fees at checkout?
Thomas: If a reader buys my book for $10.00, how much do they actually pay?
Greg: Right now, a buyer pays something like $10.70. They cover the credit card fee and a very small Curios fee that ensures we can deliver their content in perpetuity.
Because of our push into agentic commerce, we're switching that up so the buyer sees the actual price, with no increases in the cart. We're not sure yet when that will go live. There will probably be an email to our entire author base tomorrow asking for feedback, so we can make the right decision for the author community.
We're leaning toward showing the fees when you set your price. What will Stripe charge? What does Curios require for this content? An EPUB is super cheap. A super-long audiobook might be 1% or 2% of the transaction. Video might be 3% or 4%. You'll set the amount you want to receive per sale, and we'll display the total to the buyer on curios.com.
Thomas: There's a lot of research on what motivates buyers, including a massive natural experiment in Europe. All of it points the same way. Any fees added during checkout dramatically reduce the number of people who check out.
You make far more money if the first price readers see is the final price. The one exception is sales tax in places where people are used to it being added. Europeans get very offended at added fees. For them, it's a moral issue.
Greg: I believe we could also get in legal trouble for doing that in Europe.
Thomas: It's a very big deal there. Amazon wanted to offer free shipping, but in one country, a court case meant it had to charge one euro. Sales got a massive boost in every free-shipping country, but almost none in the one-euro country. One euro is really cheap, since shipping usually costs much more. It may have been one penny, but I think it was one euro.
The result was so decisive that the whole industry moved to free shipping. The author may want to feel like they're getting 100%, but it's bad business.
I realize your whole promise is that authors keep 100%, and that's what authors want. It's not what readers want, and making readers happy is what makes authors rich. Readers want to see $10.00, click to buy, and pay $10.00. Once you add fees, it starts to feel like a GoFundMe. "Help the poor author out." That's the wrong vibe.
Greg: It is. It can also feel like Ticketmaster, with all the frustration.
Thomas: I'd stop promising authors 100% and just say 90%, or 95%, or 85%. Whatever it is, it's still better than Amazon's 70%. The real advantage of selling direct is the email address and the relationship with readers.
Authors focus on percentages because they aren't focused on dollars. Getting 85% of a watermelon is way more than 100% of a grape, and it's the authors who have never even tasted a grape who focus on the 100%. Once authors start making money, they care about the dollars more than the percentage. The people who care about percentages are the ones with no money.
Greg: Authors have told us from the start that they don't need 100%. They want control and email capture. They want to make a book free or change the price whenever they want.
Thomas: Free as in freedom, not free as in beer. People are willing to pay for freedom. It's about being free from Amazon, not about paying nothing. The credit card companies will always get their cut, and you pay every time somebody downloads an audiobook. Even an ebook has some cost.
When you survey your authors, you'll find more authors making no money than authors making money. The ones making no money treasure the percentage because that's all they have, so you'll get flooded with authors saying, "I must have 100%." Take them with a grain of salt. Once they start making money, they'll care about the dollars.
When an author is selling thousands of books a month, they're happy to pay for Shopify and its huge suite of powerful tools. In fact, many of the authors featured on your website run Shopify stores, with Curios offered as another way to buy the book. When you're big, big, big, Shopify becomes cheap, cheap, cheap. When you're little, it's insurmountably expensive.
Greg: When you're big, big, big on Shopify, you usually have to pay a couple of admins. In the romance writing world, that's often the husband. He becomes your first hire and runs the admin side.
In the direct sales world, when you blow up, you'll have the funds to hire.
I personally consider anything at 90% or more to be direct sales. I think Kickstarter takes something like a 6% cut, and I consider Kickstarter direct.
Thomas: For me, the definition of direct sales is whether you get the contact info. It's about who owns the customer. If Amazon gave me a 90% cut, I still wouldn't consider it direct sales, because those are Amazon's customers, not mine.
If a competitor gave me the email but took 50%, I'd say, "Wow, you're expensive," but it would still be direct sales. Still, the 90% mark puts you in the same group as Kickstarter, Payhip, and Gumroad, which are all good ways to sell direct in that 10% range.
Greg: Gumroad has a double system. If Gumroad drives the sale, they take 30%. If you drive it, it's less. I forget the exact number.
Thomas: They basically give themselves an affiliate commission for bringing you a customer. I've never seen anyone complain, because everyone says, "More customers, please."
Can authors offer discounts on Curios?
Greg: You can do discount codes, and we're adding some unique ones, like a permanent discount that applies only when an AI agent is shopping. Amazon blocks agents now, but it will likely switch back at some point, because it will want the funds.
If you've price matched with Amazon and it's apples to apples, the agent will likely choose Amazon because of the safety associated with a giant company. If you have a permanent 10% discount, the agent will choose you, because its unwritten duty is "I'm going to get you the best deal on that book." You can bake in codes that show only to agents and not to regular shoppers, if you'd like.
Can authors use Curios for in-person book sales?
Thomas: If I'm selling at a homeschool book fair, can I run those sales through Curios?
Greg: Not really. We don't have a point-of-sale reader like Square. We have seen plenty of people sell audiobooks or ebooks on-site with a QR code or a little tablet. Others use vouchers and deliver the content after the fact.
Thomas: Authors want to collect the money for the physical book without Bookvault triggering a shipping event. They'd rather sign the book and hand it over. You'd need a product type that isn't publicly available, where the only way to reach it is through a QR code. With your percentages, that could be comparable to or better than Square.
Greg: We have that, and it's largely what people use. They set up a public or private physical product with a flat rate, even a higher price for a signed copy. Buyers pay on their phone on-site and show you the receipt. Then you hand them the book. It's a flat-rate delivery of zero.
Thomas: There's no terminal experience, then, but nowadays people would rather pay on their own phone anyway. Do you support Apple Pay?
Greg: Apple Pay and Google Pay. I used to think, "No way am I scanning a QR code," and I've changed.
Thomas: Do you have a QR code generator?
Greg: We have them for things like author pages, but not for specific products. I can add that really fast.
Thomas: Until you do, we have a free QR Code Generator in the Patron Toolbox. Authors can turn any URL into a QR code, including an unlisted product like your in-person bundle.
Which email platforms does Curios integrate with?
Thomas: You can also use Curios as an email list-building tool. List a book for free and grow your list. It's even better than permafree. The first book in the series is free, but you're getting the email. A week later, you can say, "Did you enjoy book one? You're going to love book two. Here's a link to buy."
Which email platforms do you integrate with?
Greg: Currently, it's MailerLite, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Kit, Flodesk, and maybe one more I'm forgetting. If we don't have yours, email support@curios.com. It's about a one- to two-day turnaround, because they're all the same from our perspective. You add an API key and your groups.
Thomas: We're starting to see new email programs built specifically for authors. Building an email-sending platform has gotten much cheaper and easier in this AI world.
Greg: It has, and it's cooler. You can do some boutique stuff without building 1,000 automations. Curios can also take your lead magnet example further. If readers listen or read in our app, we know their progress, so you can set up a special offer the moment they finish or reach a certain point in your book.
Can authors see where readers stop reading?
Thomas: Do I get analytics? Can I see that half my readers stop after chapter seven?
Greg: That's exactly right.
Thomas: Oh my goodness. You should lead with that. I don't think Bookvault or BookFunnel does that.
Greg: Nobody does it. What we hide is who stopped. You can set up an automation to trigger something for that specific reader, but we don't show you their email. Our legal team advised against it. At first, we said, "Let the authors know everything." I understand, though. If your dad says, "I loved the book," and you can see he didn't read it, you'll think, "My dad's lying to me."
Thomas: Sure, but the real advantage is insight into how many people completed the book. Amazon has always had that information and doesn't do anything with it. There are conspiracy theories that the algorithm features books based on completion, but I haven't seen any evidence to support that.
Greg: We use completion data a lot, including velocity of reading. How fast did someone buy and then open the book or send it to Kindle? Those readers have high intent to read.
Thomas: You only get that insight if they read or listen in the Curios app. Even if a small percentage of readers feed in that data, it can help you realize, "Right around here in book three of my series, something isn't working. With a rewrite, my read-through rate could go way up." You might also learn, "Readers don't like what I'm doing in the second act. I need to rework the middle of my story."
Greg: Exactly. Since so many people send to Kindle, we tally that for you. "Out of 300 sales, 200 went to Kindle, and here's where the other 100 are in their progress."
The same mechanism lets you send an offer at completion. When readers finish book two, you can say, "Here are books three through six as a bundle, 25% off." If book one is a free lead magnet, book two can be heavily discounted the moment they finish, so you get them over the hump from free to purchase. We've noticed that's the biggest hump.
You can trigger things at certain points in the book too. When readers finally meet a character, you can fire off an email with a digital collectible card of that character, so their card deck grows. When a bard plays in the book, you can deliver a music file. You can't do that on Amazon or in any closed world.
Thomas: Do you sync the text and the audio? If I've read chapter one but want to listen to chapter two, can I go back and forth?
Greg: Not yet. About a week ago, I realized how easy that would be. I won't promise dates, because I know how long our list is, but someday.
Thomas: You'd just run Whisper on the audio and sync it, since it only has to match about 99%. I'm architecting software for you. This is not good radio.
Greg: Lost everybody. If we're watching the analytics, we'll see the drop-off here.
Thomas: I do get that kind of analytics on our YouTube show. The intro, thumbnail, and title have a huge impact on whether somebody sticks around. The YouTube business is all about thumbnails and titles, while podcasting is more about delivering on promises and building a long-term relationship. I get much better data from YouTube than from the podcast world, which only tells me how many people downloaded an episode.
Next time you talk about this platform, lead with the ability to see which books readers actually finish. Authors who learn from readers what readers want will improve faster than authors who are guessing. That's a real competitive advantage and a whole new reason to sell direct. Nobody else is doing it.
Greg: It comes full circle. I always include new authors, because I want everyone to go direct. In your first two or three books, you're refining your craft, and any information helps, even from five readers.
Your friends and family are buying to support you. First, give them a way to actually support you. Second, you can learn things about your book they might not tell you. They'll say, "I loved it," and you'll know, "You didn't finish it."
How should authors think about their content in the age of AI?
Greg: There's a lot of change happening in the industry. Agentic commerce is one small piece of the change coming from AI and digitization, and there's been a huge push toward digital since COVID.
Authors are accustomed to change, but in this moment, be very conscious of what you're doing with your content. Are you giving up your IP? That IP could become incredibly valuable. We're seeing people buy IP for crazy rates.
This is a different time, and doors are open to you that might not have been open before. Keep an open mind and think about your content holistically, which can be very hard in the beginning. At first, you think, "I just want someone to read my book."
When you think holistically and build a foundational business, that compounds, and compounding transforms careers. Try something different. It's a new era, and different things will work.
Connect with Greg Keogh
- Curios.com
- Curios Studio
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Kathy Brasby, author of Beyond the Last Breath
In the toxic ruins of Ridgehaven, where chemical warfare has poisoned the air, survival seems victory enough for 16-year-old Raven Ashcroft, who meets a man who promised a protected paradise and the ultimate question remains: What are you willing to sacrifice to protect the soul?
