Difficulty: Moderate
With BookFunnel Delivery Actions, you can sell your book through Shopify and BookFunnel will send a unique, private download link to your buyer automatically! We’ll also handle any tech support if the reader has trouble transferring the book to their reading device. Learn more about delivery actions and how they work.
Ready to get started? First we will save the delivery settings for Shopify, and then we will create a delivery action for your book.
Shopify Delivery Setting
This video will be updated soon to include instructions for creating and using a checkout delivery page.
It takes about five minutes to save the delivery settings for Shopify, but you only have to do this one time.
This delivery setting tells Shopify to notify BookFunnel when you sell a book (using a webhook). It also allows us to verify that a transaction is legitimate before we send a delivery email.
To set the delivery settings for Shopify:
- Open your BookFunnel Sales dashboard
- Click Action and select Delivery Settings
- Enable Shopify
- Click COPY next to your Shopify webhook to copy the link to your clipboard
- Log into Shopify in a separate browser window. Click Settings in the bottom-left corner of your Shopify dashboard and then click Notifications.
- Scroll all the way down to Webhooks and click Create Webhook
- Under Event, select Order Payment and leave the format as JSON
- Paste the Shopify webhook into the URL field
- Click Save to create the webhook. Below your new webhook, you’ll see a message saying All your webhooks will be signed with… Highlight and copy that unique verification key.
- Return to BookFunnel and paste the verification key into the Shopify Verification Key field
- Customize your checkout delivery link using your author name or online store name, your choice
- Click Save Settings
Now Shopify will send BookFunnel a webhook when you sell an item, and we can verify that it is valid. You will not need to edit these settings again unless you create a new Shopify account.
Shopify Delivery Actions
This video will be updated soon to include instructions for creating and using a checkout delivery page.
A delivery action tells BookFunnel exactly which book (or books) to deliver when we receive a webhook from Shopify.
If we receive a Shopify transaction for an item that does not have a BookFunnel delivery action, we will simply ignore it.
- Create the book as a new product on Shopify.
- On your BookFunnel Sales dashboard, click Action and select +New Delivery Action
- Name your delivery action Example: Book One with Extended Epilogue
- Select the book to deliver from the drop-down menu (select additional books if you are selling a boxset or book bundle)
- Select Immediately for most delivery actions, or select At a later date to create a preorder
- If you have enabled more than one sales platform, select Shopify
- Assign a product SKU and then highlight and copy it (the SKU must be unique and can be descriptive)
- Open your Shopify dashboard in a separate browser window and click Products in the side navigation menu. Click the name of the product that BookFunnel will deliver and scroll down to Inventory and paste the SKU. Click Save.
- Return to BookFunnel
- If you have a sales link for your item, you can paste it into the Product Store Link field (otherwise, leave Product Store Link blank)
- You can optionally customize the delivery email and delivery page settings
- Save And Close your new delivery action
- Purchase the book from your Shopify store by setting its price to $0 or using a 100% off coupon to verify the delivery action is correct
- After completing the purchase, open your BookFunnel Sales dashboard and check the Recent Transaction Log see if BookFunnel received the transaction and if we were able to match it to the correct delivery action.
Test Your New Delivery Action
Once your Shopify product is live and your delivery action is all set, you will need to test the connection. To do this, you will purchase the book in your Shopify store, just as if you are a reader. You can temporarily set the product to free or at a discount to perform the test purchase.
If you do not receive a delivery email after testing your new delivery action, check our Shopify troubleshooting guide.
Testing Free Books on First-Time Author Plan
BookFunnel will not send a delivery email on the First-Time Author plan on a free book.
You can still test with free books and check your dashboard to make sure Shopify and BookFunnel can communicate. The BookFunnel Sales dashboard will indicate why a book wasn’t delivered. If the only reason it was not sent was the price, you know that everything is connected correctly! Once the book is not free, BookFunnel will send a delivery email on future purchases.
Activate a Paused Delivery Action
- Click Sales on your BookFunnel dashboard
- Click the name of the delivery action
- Click Action and select Edit Action Details
- Uncheck “Pause this Delivery Action”
- Save and close your delivery action
PayPal Error When Testing
PayPal will not allow you to buy an item with the same PayPal account as the PayPal account of the seller. To get around this problem and test your book delivery, you can either:
- Use a second PayPal account, or
- Click Pay with Debit or Credit Card and purchase without logging into your PayPal account.
Do you want to handle tech support?
NOPE! Of course not. Add this to your receipt email and thank you page so buyers don’t ask you for help:
You will be receiving an email from help@bookfunnel.com with the link to download the book. If you have any trouble, click the help link at the top of the BookFunnel page and they’ll be happy to help.
If you did not receive your download email, click here: https://bookfunnel.com/help
Additional Notes
- Delivery Actions are available on all BookFunnel plans
- Each buyer receives a unique download link
- Buyers have 14 days to download the book files, but are given a message letting them know they can send themselves a new link. This action is only available on direct sales and gifted books
- EPUB files are watermarked with the buyer’s identifying information
- Delivery Action downloads are counted against your monthly download quota (just like a regular download)
FAQ
You will create a Shopify delivery action. A PayPal delivery action will only work when you are using PayPal buy buttons on your own website.
There shouldn’t be a delay, but there can be internet hiccups that slow down the transaction notification. In our testing, it never took longer than 20 seconds to receive a completed transaction notification, but individual results may occasionally vary.
Yes! You will need to create a delivery action for your item. Then you can customize the email your readers receive from BookFunnel. Since they may have already downloaded the files, you can include text like this in your delivery email:
“You’ve already received the book files, but sometimes they can be tricky to transfer to your reading device. If you have any trouble, you can download your copy of {{title}} from BookFunnel using this link. They have step-by-step instructions and are happy to help if you need additional assistance.”
If you are on a Mid-List plan or higher, BookFunnel will send a delivery email when you “sell” a free book in your Shopify store.