BookFunnel Pricing in 2026: $30, $200 or $300 a Year, Not the $20 Still on Google

3 yearly prices make up BookFunnel pricing for authors: $30 for First-Time Author, $200 for Mid-List Author and $300 for Bestseller. Mid-List and Bestseller can also be paid monthly, at $20 and $30. There is no free plan, and a new account can ask for a full refund within 30 days.

Of the 3, only Mid-List and Bestseller can deliver a book sold on your own store, collect reader emails for you or connect a mailing list. Audiobook delivery is an add-on, from $20 a year plus $0.04 per delivered hour. BookFunnel takes no payment and no cut, so a store or payment link such as Shopify or Stripe still sits in front of it.

Search for what BookFunnel costs and page 1 of Google prices the cheapest plan 3 ways: $20 a year, $30 a year and about $15 a month. The middle plan shows up at $100 on some results and $200 on others.

Some of those numbers were right until February 2026, when BookFunnel put its prices up. Some match no author plan on its pricing page, old or new. One of the out-of-date pages belongs to BookFunnel.

Run 600 ebook sales at $4.99 through 5 setups and the yearly fees land anywhere from $277 to $1,066.

The 5 setups are priced from each vendor’s own pricing page, next to the 3 author plans and the prices they replaced.

Key Takeaways

• 3 author plans. First-Time Author is $30 a year, Mid-List Author is $200 and Bestseller is $300. The top 2 also sell monthly.
• Prices rose on February 20, 2026. The old $20, $100 and $250 plans still show on page 1 of Google, including on a page BookFunnel hosts.
• The $30 plan cannot deliver a sale. Direct sales delivery and email collection start at Mid-List, so a direct seller starts at $200 a year.
• Audiobooks cost extra. The add-on starts at $20 a year plus $0.04 per delivered hour.
• BookFunnel takes no payment. A store sits in front of it, and that store’s cut comes on top of the plan fee.
• Existing customers keep their old plan price. It lasts until they change plan. Any upgrade, downgrade or switch moves them to current pricing.

BookFunnel pricing for authors: 3 plans from $30 to $300 a year

BookFunnel sells 3 author plans, priced by the year on its author pricing page, with a monthly option on the top 2.

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First-Time Author costs $30 a year for 1 pen name and 500 downloads a month, Mid-List Author costs $200 for 4 pen names and 5,000 downloads, and Bestseller costs $300 for 6 pen names and unlimited downloads.

Every plan stores unlimited books and comes with landing pages, custom domains, custom themes, group promos, author swaps and delivery through the BookFunnel app.

First-Time Author is sold by the year only. Its card on the monthly view reads “Annual Plan Only”.

First-Time Author also cannot deliver a book someone paid for, so on that plan the checkout has to hand over the file. Payhip, Gumroad and CartMango, the checkout I run, all deliver the file themselves after payment.

What paying monthly costs

Mid-List Author costs $40 more a year on monthly billing, and Bestseller costs $60 more.

12 months at $20 is $240 against a $200 annual plan. 12 months at $30 is $360 against $300.

BookFunnel’s own Mid-List card gets this wrong. On the monthly view it says “Save $30/year with annual billing”. The Bestseller card next to it says $60, which matches the math.

So the card understates the saving by $10. Monthly billing costs $240 a year, whatever the label says.

Why Google still shows $20 and $100 for BookFunnel

BookFunnel raised its author prices on February 20, 2026, and several results on Google’s first page still show the prices from before that date.

First-Time Author went from $20 to $30 a year, Mid-List Author from $100 to $200, and Bestseller from $250 to $300.

The old Mid-List plan sold mailing list connections as a $50 add-on, and the new plan includes them. So a new sign-up pays 33% more than the old plan plus the add-on ($150), and double the old plan on its own ($100).

BookFunnel announced the change in a January 2026 blog post. The post says “In nearly 10 years, BookFunnel has never raised prices” and ties the increase to paying for human support and long-term delivery.

3 pages carry numbers a new customer cannot buy at:

• Reedsy’s BookFunnel review. It shows an August 2026 update date and still lists the old $20, $100 and $250 plans, plus $150 for Mid-List with the add-on. It also lists direct sales delivery under First-Time Author, a feature BookFunnel’s direct sales help page says is “no longer available on the First Time Author plan”.
• BookFunnel’s old pricing page. A copy at bookfunnel.com/pricing-old is still online with the earlier prices, sign-up buttons and no note that anything changed. Google ranks it on page 1.
• Book Promotion.com’s explainer. It describes a Basic plan at about $15 a month, a Pro plan at about $29 and a Premium plan at about $99. Neither BookFunnel pricing page, current or old, has plans with those names, and neither has an author plan at those prices. The only $15 a month on the old page was an audiobook add-on.

The Reddit thread on page 1, titled “BookFunnel Price Doubling??”, was posted in May 2025, more than 9 months before the real increase. Its author came back a day later to say BookFunnel had replied: the audiobook option was switched on “for another $100/year, so that’s why it came to $200”. It is all in the r/selfpublish thread.

Do existing customers pay the new prices?

Existing customers keep their old author plan and its price until they change plan.

BookFunnel’s announcement says they “can keep their current plan indefinitely”. It also says that if you “upgrade, downgrade, or switch plans in the future, you’ll move to the pricing and plan options available at that time”.

So an old price is lost the first time you touch the plan. An automatic change went the other way: the 5,000-hour audiobook add-on got cheaper, and BookFunnel said it would move existing customers to the lower price.

There is a catch for authors on the old $100 Mid-List plan. BookFunnel’s mailing list help page says that legacy plan does not include a direct mailing list connection, and it points those authors to the new Mid-List plan at $200, double what they pay today.

Which BookFunnel plan do you need?

First-Time Author fits giving away a reader magnet, Mid-List Author fits selling direct or collecting emails, and Bestseller fits more than 4 pen names or very high download counts.

First-Time Author has none of the 7 features below, Mid-List Author has 6, and Bestseller adds priority support and 2 more mailing list connections.

First-Time Author, $30 a year

First-Time Author delivers free books and nothing that touches a sale or a subscriber list.

You get download pages, landing pages, group promos and author swaps for 1 pen name. A group promo puts your book on a shared page with other authors in your genre. An author swap is a trade: you send their book to your readers and they send yours.

BookFunnel’s First-Time plan guide says that on this plan you “collect reader email addresses on your own website” before sending people to the download.

Mid-List Author, $200 a year

Mid-List Author is the cheapest BookFunnel plan that can deliver a sale, collect an email address or connect to a mailing list.

It also adds Certified Mail, BookFunnel’s secure way to send advance review copies. Each reviewer gets a private link, BookFunnel tracks who downloaded, and it sends the reminders for you. Any plan can email reviewers a plain download link.

EPUB files sent to buyers and reviewers are watermarked with the reader’s details. That is the same idea as the social DRM covered in our guide to stopping ebook sharing.

The mailing list services it connects to include Kit, MailerLite, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, Klaviyo and Flodesk, with Zapier as the catch-all for anything else.

Bestseller, $300 a year

Bestseller raises the limits to unlimited downloads, 6 pen names and 6 mailing list connections, and adds priority support.

API access sits here too. BookFunnel’s API help page says the API “is only available on our Bestseller and Publisher Plans”, and you have to ask support to switch it on.

Downloads and the $5 overage fee

Going over your monthly download limit costs $5 for every 1,000 extra downloads, and BookFunnel keeps delivering your book while it happens.

Its overage help page puts it this way: “Overages are billed at $5 for every 1,000 downloads that exceed your limit.” BookFunnel notifies you at 90% of your limit. You can cap a single link, and there is no account-wide cap.

A download is counted once per IP address in a rolling 24 hours, and the counter resets on the 1st of each month. The same reader downloading at work and again at home counts twice. A private link from Certified Mail, a gifted book or a signup page counts once, according to BookFunnel’s download counting page.

The $5 rate tells you when an upgrade pays for itself on volume alone:

• Mid-List to Bestseller. The $100 gap buys 20,000 overage downloads a year. Bestseller only wins once you run about 6,700 downloads a month, every month.
• First-Time to Mid-List. The $170 gap buys 34,000 overage downloads a year. First-Time plus overage stays cheaper until about 3,300 downloads a month, every month.

So upgrade for a feature you need. Download volume alone takes thousands of downloads a month to justify it.

The overage page was last edited in 2020, well before the 2026 prices, so confirm the rate with support before budgeting around it.

BookFunnel takes no payment, so a store comes first

A store takes the money, tells BookFunnel a sale happened, and BookFunnel emails the buyer a private download link. BookFunnel never touches the payment.

Its direct sales help page says: “BookFunnel does not handle the sale or take a cut of your profit. We just handle the delivery of the files.”

BookFunnel lists 11 sales platforms it connects to: Gumroad, Payhip, Fourthwall, Lemon Squeezy, SamCart, Shopify, Square, Stripe, ThriveCart, Wix and WooCommerce.

• Direct sales delivery needs Mid-List or higher. BookFunnel calls the feature Delivery Actions.
• PayPal is closed to new setups. BookFunnel’s PayPal setup page says it removed PayPal as an option for newer connections in early 2025. Accounts that already had it keep it.
• Unlisted stores need Zapier. Asked about Podia, Sellfy and E-junkie, BookFunnel’s answer is “Not at this time”. A store off the list has no direct connection, so it goes through Zapier if Zapier supports that store. That route needs Mid-List or higher and uses 1 of your mailing list slots.
• Buyers get 14 days. Each buyer gets a unique link and 14 days to download, and can ask BookFunnel for more time. Every delivery counts against your monthly download limit.

CartMango is not on BookFunnel’s list either. CartMango runs the checkout through your own Stripe or PayPal account and delivers the file itself through a protected link, so for an author it stands in for the store and the file handover. A reading app and promos between authors are not on CartMango’s feature list.

What a year of selling ebooks direct costs, with and without BookFunnel

Selling 600 ebooks a year at $4.99 costs between about $277 and $1,066 in fees, depending on which store takes the payment and whether BookFunnel handles delivery.

That is 50 sales a month and $2,994 a year in revenue. Card fees use Stripe’s standard US card rate of 2.9% plus $0.30 on every row. Each plan is priced on yearly billing.

Payhip alone and CartMango alone are the 2 cheapest setups at $416.53 and $276.83, and BookFunnel with Gumroad costs the most at $1,066.23.

CartMango is my product, so check its numbers: CartMango is free right now, and paid plans start in November, from $10 a year on the entry plan. It takes no cut of a sale. That $10 plan covers 10 products and 2 GB of files, and CartMango’s $20 and $30 plans raise both.

The store fees come from each vendor’s pricing page. Payhip’s free plan takes 5% of each sale, which our Payhip pricing guide breaks down by volume. Gumroad takes 10% plus $0.50, and card fees stack on top of that, as the Gumroad pricing breakdown shows.

BookFunnel’s help page works a similar example at 50 books a month for $1.99: you keep $81.61 through Stripe, $76.64 through Payhip and $46.66 through Gumroad.

The last 2 rows of my table are cheaper because they drop something. Without BookFunnel you lose its reader support, its app, its watermarking and its promos.

In the Reddit thread above, a commenter who says they work at Payhip told the author that both the EPUB and the audiobook files could be uploaded to a Payhip listing and delivered from there. That setup has no BookFunnel support behind it.

Per book, the $200 fee shrinks as sales grow:

• 120 sales a year: BookFunnel costs $1.67 a book, a third of a $4.99 price.
• 600 sales a year: $0.33 a book.
• 2,400 sales a year: $0.08 a book.

For comparison, what Amazon pays per book is 70% or 35% of a Kindle ebook’s list price. 4 of the 5 setups above leave you with more than 70% at 600 sales, from 79% to 91%. BookFunnel with Gumroad leaves 64%.

Amazon also brings its own buyers. Selling direct, finding readers is your job.

BookFunnel audiobook pricing: a separate add-on

Audiobook delivery is a separate add-on for Mid-List and Bestseller accounts, priced from $20 a year plus $0.04 for every hour of audio delivered. BookFunnel calls those hours DHA, for Delivered Hours of Audio.

By Usage costs $20 a year plus $0.04 an hour, the 5,000 DHA plan costs $100 a year, the 10,000 DHA plan costs $200 and Unlimited costs $300.

BookFunnel’s own example: a 7-hour audiobook claimed by 10 readers is 70 DHA. On the usage option those 70 hours cost $2.80.

You are charged once per delivery, no matter how many times that reader listens. Audio is metered by the minute, and prepaid hours reset on the 1st of each month.

Usage beats the 5,000 DHA plan until you deliver 2,000 hours in a year.

The gap between the 2 yearly fees is $80, which buys 2,000 hours at $0.04. For a 7-hour audiobook that is about 286 copies.

So the cheapest BookFunnel account that can deliver an audiobook is Mid-List plus By Usage: $220 a year before a single hour is delivered.

Part of this got cheaper in February 2026. The 5,000 DHA plan used to be $150 a year.

BookFunnel publisher pricing

Publisher plans, for anyone distributing books by other authors, cost $400, $1,000 or $3,000 a year on BookFunnel’s publisher page.

Micro-Publisher is $400 a year for 10 author names, Low-Volume Publisher is $1,000 for 20, and High-Volume Publisher is $3,000 for unlimited names.

Budget from the yearly totals. The annual cards on that page show “$40/month” for Micro-Publisher and “$88.33/month” for Low-Volume Publisher, and $400 and $1,000 divided by 12 are $33.33 and $83.33.

Publisher audiobook pricing is stated 2 ways. The publisher page says $50 a month per 20,000 delivered hours. The January announcement says prepaid publisher audio was cut to $40 a month or $400 a year, with a usage option at $10 a month or $100 a year plus hours.

Ask support which one applies to you before you sign up.

Is BookFunnel worth $200 a year?

BookFunnel’s $200 plan is worth it when you want its delivery and reader support on books people pay for, or you want BookFunnel to collect the emails from your free books and pass them to your mailing list.

Every plan, the $30 one included, comes with BookFunnel’s reader support and its app. The $200 extends that support to books you sell, and it adds email collection, mailing list connections, secure review copies through Certified Mail and the audiobook option.

When a reader cannot open the file, BookFunnel’s support team answers the email. Its FAQ tells authors to copy the support team on the reply and let them handle it. With a checkout alone, that email comes to you.

I have paid to save time before. In 2022 I moved my Google Workspace account to a new one and spent half a day just moving files. I ended up paying for a tool to do the copying.

I wrote to my email list afterwards: “I’d rather pay money because money can be gotten back. But not time.”

My read, for a direct seller of $4.99 ebooks: at 200 sales a year the $200 is 20% of your revenue, and at 600 sales it is about 7%. If your readers can open a file without help, a checkout that delivers it is enough at either number.

Pay the $200 when readers need that help, or when you want BookFunnel collecting emails for your list. For a reader magnet alone, the $30 plan delivers the giveaway if you collect the emails on your own site.

BookFunnel refunds, downgrades and cancelling

A new BookFunnel account can be refunded in full if you ask in writing within 30 days of creating it, and there are no refunds after that. That makes the first month a low-risk way to test a plan.

The rest of the rules come from BookFunnel’s terms of service and its plan change guide:

• Upgrades are prorated. You are credited for the unused part of your old plan.
• Yearly downgrades wait. A downgrade on an annual plan takes effect on your renewal date. On a monthly plan it is instant.
• Downgrades delete things. The help center lists pen names, signup pages and Certified Mail campaigns your new plan does not cover. The terms add books and reader links. Dropping to First-Time Author also removes your mailing list connections.
• Downgrading mid-month can cost you. Downloads are counted on the last day of the month against the plan you hold that day, so a smaller plan can trigger overage.
• Cancelling keeps you live until the term ends. The account closes on the last day of the period you paid for, and BookFunnel keeps your data for at least 1 year.

FAQ

Is there a free version of BookFunnel?

No. BookFunnel’s pricing page has no free plan and no free trial, and the cheapest plan is First-Time Author at $30 a year. The nearest thing to a trial is the refund: a new account can get its payment back in full by asking in writing within 30 days.

Is BookFunnel free for readers?

BookFunnel’s pricing pages show no reader plan and no reader fee. A reader pays whatever the author charges for the book, or nothing if the author is giving it away as a reader magnet or a review copy.

Does BookFunnel take a percentage of my sales?

No. BookFunnel charges a plan fee, plus overage or audiobook usage if you go over, and its help center says it “does not handle the sale or take a cut of your profit”. The store you sell through may take a cut, and card fees apply to every sale.

Can I pay for BookFunnel monthly?

Mid-List Author and Bestseller can be paid monthly, at $20 and $30. That works out to $240 and $360 a year, against $200 and $300 on annual billing. First-Time Author is sold by the year only, at $30.

Can BookFunnel deliver a PDF?

Yes. BookFunnel’s FAQ says a book that is a PDF can be uploaded as your ebook, just like an EPUB, and bonus material such as a worksheet goes in as a media file. Our guide to selling PDFs covers pricing and delivery in more depth.

When a download link is all your readers need

A download link is all your readers need when you sell a PDF, a workbook or an EPUB to people who know how to open one. BookFunnel pricing is built for the other case, where readers need help with their devices and you want list-building tools on top.

For the simple case, the payment and the file handover can sit in 1 tool. CartMango runs the checkout and delivers the file. It is free right now, paid plans start in November from $10 a year, and CartMango takes 0% of each sale.

About the Author

👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.

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• Gumroad Pricing: why the 10% fee is really 12.9% plus $0.80
• How to Make and Sell an Ebook: from a finished draft to your first direct sale