The self-funding test
Start with the books you already sell.
Model how sales you already make can contribute to a publisher-owned reader platform: purchases moving direct, physical readers joining your app, and an owned audience that compounds over time.
Run the model01 / The model
Put your own starting assumptions on the table.
The useful question is not whether every reader changes their buying behaviour overnight. It is whether a realistic part of your existing audience, catalogue and margin can create a durable contribution to the direct channel.
Start with the books you already sell
Model a direct route using your present catalogue, rather than assuming a new publishing programme or a complete change in reader behaviour.
Include the relationship, not only the sale
Consider readers joining a branded library, returning to it and becoming easier to reach over time alongside their purchase value.
Make the assumptions visible
Adjust the sales mix, conversion, subscription, royalty and processing assumptions so the model becomes a useful internal brief rather than a generic promise.
02 Your self-funding test
Explore the levers behind the direct route.
Use the calculator to make the starting model specific to your own sales, reader audience and commercial assumptions.
Print, ebook and audio together — the whole list, every channel.
How much of that is digital (ebook or audio)?
1,500 digital and 3,500 physical units a month at this split.
Physical buyers scanning the QR code into your app
A QR code in every print run turns bookshop sales into 175 named, reachable app users a month — each one eligible for an ebook or audiobook offer.
Scanned readers buying an ebook or audiobook that year
These are digital sales you don't make today — print buyers who become ebook or audiobook customers because the app is already on their phone.
Digital sales shifted to your app in year one
Year-one rate. As the app becomes your default channel this share grows ~25% a year in the model.
Your funnel, each month
105
digital sales in your app
175
print buyers scanning in
280
new in-app users, ready to buy digital
Entry begins at £249/month; Growth and Custom plans are shaped around formats, audience and integrations.
Average digital price
Five years, side by side
Y1
Y2
Y3
Y4
Y5
- New in-app users / month
- 280
- In-app users by year 5
- 15,199
- Subscribers by year 5
- 608
- Year 1 net
- +£17,978
- Year 5 net
- +£106,228
Cumulative five-year position
— — —
Set your monthly volume above and the model fills in — these are your figures, not ours.
Selling under 1,000 books a month?
The calculator understates your case. Smaller lists compound faster in percentage terms, and print is the flywheel's fuel — every QR code in a physical book turns an anonymous bookshop sale into an owned reader relationship.
Illustrative model only. Every commercial assumption is adjustable, including platform fee, sales mix, conversion, subscriptions, royalties and payment processing. In a demo, we can run the model against your own figures.
