In Spain, for every book a publisher sells through the traditional channel, between 55% and 60% of the price before VAT stays with the distributor and the bookshop, according to the breakdown published by Mariana Eguaras (2024). In direct sales, the publisher keeps around 95%. Between one end and the other there are four or five routes, and almost nobody compares them with the same math. Here they all are with a €20 book: how much you keep, what you pay as a fixed cost and who each one makes sense for.
Quick summary
The figures are for a book with a €20 cover price (€19.23 before VAT), before paying the author, the printer and shipping.
| Channel | Who sells | What you keep per book | Fixed cost | The reader belongs to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bookshops via distributor | The bookshop | €7.70 to €8.65 | None | The bookshop |
| Todostuslibros | The bookshop | €7.70 to €8.65 | None | The bookshop |
| Amazon as a seller | You, in their storefront | About €16.20 | €39/month or €0.99 per sale | Amazon |
| Publica.la, no-fee plan | You, on their platform | About €12.25 | None | You |
| Store from book-trade software (Weblib, Webedi) | You | Same as your own store | Subscription, amount not published | You |
| Your own store (Shopify) | You | About €18.50 | €24/month, plus setting it up | You |
How much do you keep selling through bookshops and a distributor?
Through the usual channel, the publisher receives between 40% and 45% of the price before VAT. According to Mariana Eguaras, distributor and bookshop share between 55% and 60%, and the bookshop keeps between 25% and 40%. On a €20 book, that’s between €7.70 and €8.65 for you, out of which the author and the printer still have to be paid.
In return you get something no online store gives you: the book on a new-releases table, a bookseller who recommends it and a reader who didn’t know you. It’s not an expensive channel. It’s a channel that charges for work you can’t do yourself.
It fits if: you want to reach readers who don’t yet know you exist. In other words, always.
And Todostuslibros? Isn’t that direct sales?
No. Todostuslibros is the online storefront of Spain’s bookshops, not of its publishers. It belongs to CEGAL, the booksellers’ confederation, and its terms and conditions say it plainly: the platform is a mere service provider, and the contract with the reader is made by each bookshop. When it became a sales platform in 2020, the model was zero commission for the bookseller, as Xataka and the Asociación de Editores de Madrid reported at the time.
For your publishing house that means a book sold there is a book sold by a bookshop. It leaves you the same as the traditional channel, because it is the traditional channel with a search box. What it does do is show the reader which bookshop has your title, and that is worth a lot.
It fits if: you’re already in distribution. You don’t have to do anything, except keep your title records properly loaded so the book shows up as it should.
What do you keep selling on Amazon?
It depends on how you’re on Amazon, and there are two ways. If Amazon buys your books from the distributor, it’s one more bookshop and you keep what the traditional channel leaves. If you sell as a seller yourself, Amazon charges a 15% referral fee on books, plus €39 a month on the Professional plan or €0.99 per unit on the Individual plan, according to its pricing page for Spain.
On the €20 book, 15% is €3. You keep about €16.20 before VAT, and shipping is on you. On paper it’s a good margin. What the math doesn’t show is the rest: you don’t know who bought from you, you can’t write to them when the next title comes out, and you compete on the same page with second-hand copies of your own book.
It fits if: you want to be where people already search and you accept that this reader won’t be yours.
What do you keep with a platform like Publica.la?
With a commission-based platform you don’t pay to set it up, but you pay on every sale. Publica.la publishes three plans: one with no fee, with a 35% commission per sale plus USD 0.25 per transaction; another at USD 249 a month with 25%; and another from USD 492 a month with 15%. They include a store, a web and mobile reader, and file protection.
On the €20 book, the no-fee plan leaves you about €12.25. The USD 249-a-month plan leaves you a little over €14, but you need to sell quite a lot for the fee to pay off. Its strong point is digital books: if your catalog is ebooks and audiobooks and you want them read inside your own app, that’s what it’s built for.
It fits if: you sell mostly digital and would rather pay nothing until the first sale comes in.
And the stores that come with management software, like Weblib or Webedi?
They’re your own stores, but hanging from a management program. Trevenque, which has been making software for the Spanish book trade for more than thirty years, offers Weblib for bookshops, connected to its Geslib program, and Webedi for publishers, which syncs with Gesedi and has ecommerce and ebooks as add-on modules. The advantage is real: the catalog comes out of the same place where you already run the business.
In margin terms they behave like your own store, because the sale is yours and there’s no intermediary. What changes is the cost: Webedi works on a subscription, with support included, but Trevenque doesn’t publish the amount on its site. There’s no figure to put in the table; you have to ask for it.
It fits if: you already work with that management program, or you have thousands of titles and stock that changes daily. For a general bookshop it’s almost always the answer.
What do you keep with your own store?
With your own store you keep a little over 95% of the price before VAT, and the reader is yours. On Shopify’s pricing page for Spain, the Basic plan costs €24 a month and charges from 2.1% plus €0.30 for each card payment. On the €20 book that’s €0.72: you keep about €18.50.
The difference from the traditional channel is about €10 per book. If setting up the store costs €2,970, it pays for itself with about 300 books sold directly. It’s not a little and it’s not a lot: it’s a figure you can compare with your mailing list and your preorders.
Two things the math doesn’t say. Shipping and packing are on you, or the reader pays for them. And a store doesn’t bring readers: it sells to the ones who already follow you. If today you have nobody to tell, the 95% margin applies to very few books.
It fits if: you have your own catalog and a community, however small, that already buys from you.
So do you have to pick one?
No. Almost no publisher should pick a single channel. Bookshops bring new readers. Your own store earns more from the ones you already have. The useful question isn’t where do I sell, but which sale do I want to go through each place.
What tends to work: new releases and backlist in bookshops, as always, and in your store what only you can sell. Preorders, signed editions, bundles, the ebook, the merchandise. Spain’s book law (Ley 10/2007) requires respecting the fixed price, with a maximum discount of 5%, so you won’t be competing on price with your booksellers, nor should you want to.
It fits if: you’d rather bookshops remain your shop window and your store be your till.
How we do it at Mister Mikel
Mister Mikel is a web design and online store studio based in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, specializing in publishers, bookshops and cultural centers. We build your own store on Shopify, with the catalog loaded and designed for your team to run. If what you have is thousands of other publishers’ titles with a management program behind them, we’ll tell you: that’s a different project. Plans and prices are at online stores for publishers and cultural centers.
Frequently asked questions
When Amazon buys from the distributor it acts as a bookshop: the margin you receive is that of the traditional channel, between 40% and 45% of the price before VAT. When you sell as a seller yourself, you pay a 15% fee per book plus a subscription, and you handle shipping. In both cases the customer belongs to Amazon, not to you.
Because the one selling there is the bookshop. Todostuslibros shows which bookshops have your book and lets people buy it, but the sale, the payment and the customer belong to the bookseller. For the publisher it’s visibility within the traditional channel, with the traditional channel’s margin.
Yes, if it respects the fixed price. In Spain, Ley 10/2007 limits the discount to 5%, so the book costs the same in your store as in the bookshop. The usual approach is to keep for the store what the bookshop can’t offer: preorders, signed editions, bundles and your own products.
It depends on how many books you sell a month. With a €20 book, a 35% commission costs you about €6 more per sale than your own store with a monthly fee. From about four sales a month, the €24 fixed fee already works out cheaper, not counting what it costs to set up the store. If you sell less than that, the commission is the prudent option.
Four things: how much you keep per book today in the traditional channel, how many readers you can reach directly, what share of the catalog is digital and whether you work with preorders. With those four figures the table above becomes a decision. If any term sounds like gibberish, they’re explained in the publishing ecommerce glossary.
Keep reading
- How to sell books online without depending on Amazon
- How much does an online store for a publisher cost?
- Book preorders: how to fund a print run before printing
- How to sell ebooks from your own website
- How to create an online store for a publisher, step by step
Sources
- Mariana Eguaras, “Porcentajes de un libro impreso: cómo se reparten los ingresos en la edición tradicional” (2024, in Spanish).
- Amazon, pricing page for sellers in Spain (accessed September 2026).
- Publica.la, pricing page (accessed September 2026).
- Shopify, pricing page (accessed September 2026).
- Xataka, “800 librerías de barrio unidas para competir contra Amazon: así funciona Todostuslibros.com” (2020, in Spanish).
- Asociación de Editores de Madrid, “Todostuslibros.com se transforma en plataforma de comercio online” (2020, in Spanish).
- Trevenque, product pages for Weblib, Geslib and Webedi (accessed September 2026).
- Todostuslibros.com, general terms and conditions (accessed September 2026).
- Ley 10/2007, de la lectura, del libro y de las bibliotecas (Spain’s law on reading, books and libraries).