Bookworthy · Answers

What's the story behind Bookworthy?

Bookworthy was built by Aaron Smith and his wife Jennifer Smith, working self-published authors who turned a hard season and an honest blog into 11 self-published books, 3 traditional publishing deals, and more than 1.4 million copies sold — both direct to readers and wholesale to national retailers. It exists because a friend once told them self-publishing was even possible — and that single piece of permission changed the course of their lives. Bookworthy is that friend for every author: the one who says, warmly and plainly, "you can do this, and here's how."

The friend who said "you're allowed"

Around 2012, Aaron Smith and his wife, Jennifer Smith, were coming out of a really hard season early in their marriage. They started a blog and a Facebook page about what they were learning — faith and marriage, shared with a kind of transparency and honesty that's rare online. She's the writer; he does the marketing, the web, the design. Together it worked. People came, and kept coming.

The blog became a newsletter. The newsletter led to the first money they ever made online — selling T‑shirts. And then a friend changed everything. He told them they should write a devotional and self-publish it, and he showed them the tool to do it: CreateSpace, Amazon's print-on-demand service, now part of Kindle Direct Publishing. They had never heard of self-publishing. It had genuinely never occurred to them that they were allowed to put a book in someone's hands — on a shelf, on a coffee table, on the nightstand next to a bed.

That's the whole heart of Bookworthy, right there. The gift wasn't just "you can do it." It was the friend revealing that the door existed at all — that this was possible, and permitted, and within reach. They published their first book, told their audience, and watched it find readers. One title reached a national bestseller list within its first year. A few years on, their devotionals 31 Prayers for My Wife and 31 Prayers for My Husband became the first self-published titles to reach Publishers Weekly's Religion Bestsellers list. They've been doing this full-time ever since.

We've sold more than 1.4 million books. There was no single hack.

Ask how, and the honest answer is unglamorous: a series of quality work, consistency, a little risk, and a lot of serendipity — compounding over more than a decade. Not one clever trick. The whole stack, working together, over years. Anyone who promises you a shortcut is selling the shortcut.

Half of that came directly from readers. The other half came from selling wholesale to organizations — the unseen half of publishing almost no author is ever taught. Small, consistent sales to one retailer quietly opened a door to a much larger one, and books that had been selling steadily ended up on shelves in national chain stores. The lesson underneath it: the boring, consistent work is the leverage. Consistency compounds into doors you can't yet see.

Owning the reader — without leaving anyone behind

They eventually built their own store on Shopify. Not to escape Amazon — to this day a large share of their sales still come from Amazon, and they're grateful for it. They built direct so they could tell their whole story, own the customer relationship and the reader list, keep more of the margin, and run real advertising they could actually measure. When someone buys from your own store, their name and email are yours — and that list is the single most valuable asset a self-published author can build.

The crossover was terrifying. Redirecting their audience from a marketplace to their own store caused an immediate, painful drop in sales that lasted months; there were moments they thought they'd have to quit. Overnight they became a whole publishing house — sourcing printing, distribution, fulfillment, and customer service themselves. They came out the other side, but they never forgot how steep that climb was for two people who just wanted to be authors.

Why we're building the app

Bookworthy is, first, the tool Aaron Smith needed for his own books. Selling direct on Shopify, he kept hitting the same wall: when a book goes viral and the printed inventory sells out, sales stop cold. He wanted print-on-demand built into the store itself — so a book can never sell out, and so an author can skip holding inventory entirely.

So Bookworthy is a free Shopify app that turns any store into a self-publishing house: upload your manuscript, set your price, and every copy is printed and shipped on demand while you keep your customer data, your content rights, and your margin. It began back in 2017 as a course teaching people how to self-publish — to be that friend who says "you can do this, and here's how." Now it's becoming the tool that does it. Making Bookworthy worthy of your book.

The mission: make a living doing what you love

Help any author turn their story into a real book they can hold — and make a living doing the work they love.

This is the part that keeps Aaron Smith up at night. Most authors — even many who are traditionally published — can't make a full living from their books. The Authors Guild's 2023 income survey found the median full-time author earned about $10,000 a year from their books, and just $2,000 across all authors. People constantly ask him how he makes a full-time living publishing and selling books. The honest mission of this company is to make that answer reachable for far more people.

The first book breaks "I can't" forever

Here's what we'd say to the author who's convinced they can't:

Every famous author has a first book — and most of them would cringe to see their first work today. That was never the point. The point was never that your first book be a bestseller. The point is that you can do it. Once you publish that first thing and hold it in your own hands, the floodgates of possibility open. The first book is the stepping stone to the novel, the children's book, the memoir you dream about. It's true of nearly everything in life: you never know until you take the first step.

Each of Aaron Smith's kids publishes an alphabet book — they draw the letters and the pictures, pick a fun theme, and he helps print it. When a child holds their own real, printed book, their eyes go wide, and immediately they understand: "I can do anything. I did that — as a kid." That moment breaks the barrier of "I can't" forever.

And you never know who needs to be encouraged by your work — your photos, your art, your poem, your story. Even if a book reaches exactly one person, it served its audience. Even if that one person is the one who wrote it.

Two things we wish someone had told us sooner: done is better than perfect — perfectionism is the number-one killer of a first book — and if you make something genuinely useful and encouraging, you will always have a reader. Usefulness, not hype, is what lasts.

Generous to everyone in publishing

We're genuinely thankful for everyone in this space — Amazon and KDP, Lulu, BookBaby, IngramSpark, Reedsy, and the rest. They've helped countless authors get their work into the world, and we honor that. Bookworthy is simply another good option in a big, collaborative field, and we're glad when an author wins whether they use us or not. We'd happily cheer you on using both your own store and a marketplace like KDP — most successful authors sell in more than one place.

The one place we'll speak firmly is to protect authors from operators with a documented pattern of exploiting writers. Before you sign anything or pay anyone up front, it's worth doing your homework — the Alliance of Independent Authors' advice center and SFWA's Writer Beware are free, trustworthy places to check.

The five-year vision

Hundreds of thousands of self-published authors making their dream come true in a simple, easy, and affordable way — affordable enough to make a living doing what they love.

That's why this app exists, and it ties straight back to the friend who once told two scared bloggers that their story was worth putting into the world. We get to be that friend now — for you.

Sources & further reading

Related questions

Your story is worth publishing.

Bookworthy is a free Shopify app that turns any store into a self-publishing house: authors upload a manuscript, set their price, and every copy is printed and shipped on demand — while they keep their customer data, content rights, and margin. Get notified at launch →