An E-book Store from Scratch: Graphic Design, Discounts, Payments, and Secure File Delivery

Who is the client?

Łukasz Kuciński is an entrepreneur, manager, and business consultant. He is a co-creator of the Corporate Global Thinking concept and the author of the book “The Company as a Whole: Bringing Order to Corporate Chaos,” is the creator and content partner for the Executive MBA program at Collegium Da Vinci, and has served on the jury of the Polish National Sales Awards for many years.

He decided to publish a series of e-books expanding on this same concept: 27 volumes, each devoted to a specific problem within a company, ranging from “Why Things Keep Breaking” to “Scaling That Destroys the Company.”

What problem needed to be solved?

Selling 27 e-books isn’t just about selling 27 files. It’s a catalog where the customer needs to be able to find their specific problem, rather than scrolling through a list of volumes.

On top of that, there are three things that aren’t visible from the outside but determine whether such a store works at all: bundles sold for less than the sum of their parts, payment methods that support the ways Poles actually pay, and file delivery, which immediately ceases to be under the seller’s control after purchase.

This last point is crucial for digital products. An e-book costs 59.90 PLN, and once downloaded, it can be forwarded with a single click.

What did we do?

Graphic design and store development from scratch. The entire store was built from the ground up: visual identity, layout, homepage, product pages, and the author’s page.

The catalog structure is organized by the client’s problem, not by volume number. The 27 volumes are grouped into nine thematic collections: Fundamentals of Systems Thinking, Strategy and Direction, Owner and Management, People and Culture, Processes and Operations, Sales and Marketing, Finance and Control, Risk and Development, Holistic Management. In addition, there are three format categories: e-books, audiobooks, and bundles.

The buyer doesn’t need to know they’re looking for Volume 13. They know their processes are chaotic, so they go to the “Processes and Operations” collection.

Discounts and Bundles. We’ve configured the logic for bundles and discounts so that a customer who buys the entire collection pays less than the sum of the individual volumes. With 27 products at similar prices, this is the main driver of cart value.

Payments. The store supports BLIK, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Klarna, Shop Pay, and Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, American Express, and UnionPay cards. BLIK is the most important payment method here and is often overlooked in stores built by foreign agencies.

Delivery of watermarked files. The customer receives the files immediately after purchase, but these are not the same files stored in the warehouse. Each copy is watermarked, so a file circulating outside the store later can be linked to the order. This won’t stop determined piracy, and no honest person would promise that. However, it does prevent what really happens with e-books: thoughtlessly forwarding a file “because a friend might find it useful.”

Catalog management on the customer’s end. The author adds new volumes, updates descriptions, prices, and availability status themselves. For a series published in installments, this is essential so the store doesn’t need a contractor for every release.

Why Shopify?

Because in e-commerce, Shopify is simply a good tool, and we work with it every day. Payments, taxes, the shopping cart, checkout, and regulatory compliance are areas where maintaining your own system costs more each year than it yields. There’s no reason to build this from scratch just to sell e-books.

The value we bring lies in what Shopify leaves to be done: graphic design, a catalog structure tailored to the buyer’s needs, the logic behind bundles and discounts, selecting payment methods suited to the Polish market, and file delivery—which the platform doesn’t handle on its own.

When the sales process is so unusual that a ready-made platform can’t handle it, we build a custom system and explain why. In this case, there was no such need, so we didn’t force the issue. We match the tool to the problem, not the problem to the tool we happen to want to sell.

Who does this model work for?

For authors, trainers, consultants, and publishers who sell digital products under their own brand and want to maintain control over them instead of giving up 30–50% of their profit margin to an intermediary platform.

There’s just one condition: you need to have a foundation on which to build your brand. Having your own store means you’re solely responsible for driving traffic. If you don’t have an audience, an email list, or brand recognition, an intermediary platform will generate more sales for you than even the best-designed store that nobody visits. That’s honestly the biggest limitation of this model.