Day: September 30, 2026

An online store for a publisher costs between €2,970 and €6,860 + VAT, depending on the catalog and how far you want to go. At Mister Mikel we build online stores for publishers, bookshops, foundations and cultural centers from Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, and these are our published prices — not a “request a quote” that forces you into three calls to find out one figure.

This article breaks down what each plan includes, what costs exist beyond the project (the ones almost nobody mentions) and, with the same frankness, when it’s not worth building one.

What are the exact prices?

We work with three plans. The difference between one and the next isn’t “more of the same”: each plan solves a different need.

All of them include the same foundation: we hand over the store with the catalog loaded and show you how to use it in ten minutes. From then on you run it yourself, without calling anyone to change a price.

Why that range and not €600 or €20,000?

Because the market has two extremes and a gap in the middle. Below are the €300–800 templates: a generic store where your books look like sneakers, with empty product pages and nobody who has thought about your catalog. Above, five-figure custom builds, designed for companies with their own technical department.

A publisher needs neither. It needs a store on a solid platform, with the catalog well organized by collection, book pages that say something more than the page count, and an admin panel anyone on the team can understand. That’s what the €2,970 to €6,860 range covers.

What costs are there beyond the project?

Almost nobody mentions this on their website, and then the surprises arrive. Beyond the project, an online store has three recurring costs that you pay directly, not to us:

• The platform subscription. Shopify works on a monthly subscription, contracted directly with them. It’s what saves you servers, updates and security scares.
• The payment gateway fee. A small percentage per transaction, as in any business that accepts cards. You only pay when you sell.
• The domain. A few euros a year.

And monthly maintenance with us? It’s not mandatory, and that’s exactly the idea: we build the store so you don’t need us day to day. If you get stuck, we’re still a message away.

Which plan does your project need?

Two real cases help you place yourself, one at each end:

Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker is an independent publisher in Madrid with almost two decades publishing poetry and fiction and more than a hundred titles in collections. Its store shows that a small imprint can have a store worthy of its catalog without a multinational’s budget.

The Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada is at the other end: an institution with a distinctive cultural catalog that also sells outside Spain, including sales in dollars. There we’re already talking about multi-currency and a large catalog — Expand territory.

The quick rule: if you’re starting from scratch with your catalog, Basic. If you have a community, a bilingual audience or want preorders, Grow. If you’re an institution or you’re migrating a catalog of hundreds of titles, Expand. And if in doubt, tell us about your case and we’ll tell you which one fits — we reply within 24 hours.

What if I have a grant or subsidy?

We adapt the project. If you’ve been awarded a grant or are going to apply for one, we adjust the scope and the budget so it fits what the grant covers or reaches the amount you need to justify. We don’t handle the application for you, but we do structure the project to fit it — that’s what flexible-scope plans are for.

When is it NOT worth building one?

Let’s be frank; there are others for selling smoke. A store of your own isn’t worth it if:

• You publish one title every two years and sell at launches. With that volume, a simple payment link and your newsletter do the job, with no project involved.
• Nobody on the team is going to give it even an hour a month. We leave the store ready, but you upload the new books. If there’s nobody for that, the problem isn’t the website.
• Your only motivation is “we have to be on the internet”. Being there doesn’t sell. Selling sells.

If you’ve recognized yourself in any of these, save your money — and if things change a year from now, we’ll still be here. For everyone else, the math is different: every sale that goes through an intermediary today leaves margin and readers there. We talk about that in how to sell books online without depending on Amazon.

FAQ

In short

An online store for a publisher costs between €2,970 and €6,860 + VAT depending on the plan: Basic to start selling, Grow to reach your whole community, Expand for large, international catalogs. On top of that come three recurring costs paid to the provider (platform, gateway and domain), and no mandatory maintenance: you run the store yourself. And if your volume doesn’t justify it yet, we’ll tell you just as plainly.

Keep reading

• How to sell books online without depending on Amazon
• Online stores for publishers and cultural projects

Selling books online without depending on Amazon is possible, legal and less expensive than it seems: an online store of your own for a publisher starts at €2,970 + VAT and is usually up and running in a few weeks. At Mister Mikel we build online stores for publishers, bookshops, foundations and cultural centers from Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, and this article shares what we’ve learned doing it.

The reason to take the step is simple. When Amazon sells your book, you supply the catalog and they keep the margin, the data and — this is the serious part — the relationship with your reader.

It’s not that Amazon is the devil. It’s that it doesn’t work for you.

What do you lose on every Amazon sale?

On every marketplace sale you lose three things: part of the margin, the buyer’s data and the chance to talk to them again. The discount is the least of it. The serious part is that this reader is recorded in Amazon’s database, not in yours. You can’t write to them when you release the next title in the series. You can’t invite them to the launch. For you, they don’t exist.

The difference, in a table:

A publisher lives on two things: its catalog and its community. Giving away the second to move the first is a bad deal, especially when the alternative costs less than it seems.

What mistakes do publishers make when selling online?

We’ve been building stores for cultural projects for years, and the pattern almost always repeats:

• Confusing “being on the internet” with “selling on the internet”. A pretty website with a PDF catalog doesn’t sell. It informs, at most.
• The hijacked website. Someone built it years ago and today changing a price means calling, waiting and paying. The result: nobody touches it and the catalog goes stale.
• Handling orders by hand. Emails, bank transfers, a spreadsheet and half a Saturday. It works until it stops working — usually in the middle of a preorder campaign.
• Five tools that don’t talk to each other. The store on one side, the newsletter on another, the catalog in a third. And you in the middle, acting as the glue.

How do you know if this is you?

Three quick questions. If you answer no to any of them, you have homework:

1. Can you change the price of a title right now, yourself, without calling anyone?
2. Do you know the name and email of your last twenty buyers?
3. Could you open a preorder this week if you sign off an edition tomorrow?

A well-built store of your own answers yes to all three. And we’re not talking about a pharaonic project: we’re talking about a store with your catalog in book pages that make people want to buy, payments and shipping configured, and an admin panel anyone on your team can understand.

And the fixed book price?

In Spain, the retail price of a book is set by the publisher and is the same in every channel, with a maximum discount of 5% (Ley 10/2007, the law on reading, books and libraries). This, sometimes seen as a drawback, actually plays in your favor: Amazon can’t sell your book cheaper than you do. The reader pays the same in your store as there — the difference is who keeps the margin and the contact. In your store, you do.

How do you build a store you can run yourself?

Our philosophy at Mister Mikel is short: we build it, you keep it, you run it. We build the store, leave the catalog loaded, and on handover day we show you how to use it in ten minutes. From then on you don’t need us for the day-to-day — and that, which sounds like a detail, is the heart of the matter.

A real example: Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker, an independent publisher in Madrid with almost two decades publishing poetry and fiction and a catalog of more than a hundred titles spread across collections. We built them a store where the catalog looks after itself: new releases, backlist, collections. No intermediary platforms, no marketplace commissions, and every reader recorded in their own house, not someone else’s.

And if you’re wondering whether this also works for something bigger: the Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada sells its cultural catalog from its own store, including international sales in dollars. Same method, different scale.

What does it cost and how long does it take?

Straight to the point: a store ready to sell starts at €2,970 + VAT, and a simple store is usually up and running in a few weeks. There are three plans — €2,970, €4,985 and €6,860 — covering everything from the small imprint to the institution with a large catalog. The details are on our page about online stores for publishers and cultural projects.

An honest caveat before we finish

Leaving Amazon doesn’t mean deleting yourself from Amazon. For many publishers it makes sense to stay there as a shop window — some readers only buy there. The difference lies in where you put the center: if your main channel is your store, Amazon is an add-on that brings extra sales. If your main channel is Amazon, you are the add-on. And that position costs dearly over the years.

FAQ

In short

Selling books online without depending on Amazon means having a store of your own where the catalog, the margin and — above all — the reader are yours. Thanks to Spain’s fixed book price, your price is the same as Amazon’s; what changes is who keeps the value of each sale. It doesn’t require tech skills or a multinational’s budget: a well-built store starts at €2,970 and you run it yourself.

Keep reading

• Online stores for publishers and cultural projects
• Where to sell your publishing house’s books: every channel, with numbers