Lessons from Selling Filipino Books at Hot Tropiks (So Far)

This is just a snapshot of how we have been selling books at Hot Tropiks based on our own trial and error. Some of this works for us. Some of it might not work for you. We are still figuring things out as we go.

Hot Tropiks imports, publishes, and distributes books from the Philippines, with a focus on comics, graphic novels, and children’s literature. We started by importing books and selling them directly, mostly online. Over time, we added live events, institutional sales, and publishing our own titles.

Here is what our sales mix looks like right now and what we have personally learned from it.

Our website does most of the work

About 60% to 70% of our sales come from our Shopify site, depending on the month (events can play a big role).

What we like about this is simple. When people buy from us directly, we can talk to them. If something goes wrong, we can fix it quickly. There is no platform in the middle deciding how things should work.

We use Shopify with Klaviyo, organic social, and paid Meta ads. That combination has been the most consistent for us so far. It is not perfect, but it feels manageable and human.

Amazon exists, but it is not our focus

We do sell on Amazon, but it is not a major driver of revenue for us.

From our experience, Amazon is good for visibility but frustrating for operations. Customer support is slow, returns are hard to manage, and the customer relationship does not really belong to you.

We price our books higher on Amazon than on our website, and mostly treat it as a discovery channel. We only do FBM and do not send inventory to Amazon warehouses. That decision might change in the future, but for now, this is what we are comfortable with.

Social platforms work better as traffic, not checkout

We sell through Instagram and Facebook, but we usually try to push people back to our website to check out.

Some people do buy directly inside the apps, and that is fine. We just prefer having customers go through our site where email capture, support, and follow-up are easier.

This is less about optimization and more about keeping things simple for us.

TikTok Shop has been difficult for us

We have sold a few items on TikTok Shop, but honestly, it has been one of the more frustrating channels to deal with.

The seller experience has not been great for us, especially around returns and payments. We know others are doing well there, but at the moment it has not been a priority.

We are considering limiting TikTok Shop to books we publish or products we manufacture ourselves, just to reduce complications.

Live events matter more than we expected

Live events have been very important for us, especially comic conventions and book fairs.

Some are huge wins. San Diego Comic-Con and book fairs have been especially strong. Cultural festivals like Filipino events can be hit or miss, depending on the crowd and how much attention books are competing for (hard to compete with food).

One thing we consistently notice is that our online sales usually increase after events. Even when an event itself is not amazing, the visibility carries over.

Because of that, we try to think of events as both sales and marketing.

Looking beyond book-only audiences

One lesson that really stuck with us is the idea of adjacent audiences.

If your book is about something specific, there might be a community that already cares about that topic outside of traditional book spaces. Comics about sewers selling at plumbing conventions is a real example we have seen. The same goes for science, music, or niche hobby events.

We are still learning how to apply this, but it has changed how we think about events.

Institutional sales came from relationships

We started selling to schools, universities, and libraries this year, mostly through people we met at live events.

This channel moves slower and requires follow-up, but it feels more stable. It is not something we have fully figured out yet, but it is something we are continuing to explore.

Events are powerful but exhausting

Live events take a lot of time and energy, and they are not easy to scale.

Because of that, we are trying to limit ourselves to one or two events a month and focus more on making our online store stronger. Learning how to create bundles on our website made a big difference for us and helped increase revenue without doing more events.

What we are trying next

Looking ahead, we are experimenting with two things.

The first is a small physical presence at Kubo in Long Beach, which gives us consistent foot traffic without needing to travel constantly.

The second is exploring wider distribution options like KDP or Ingram. We are cautious about this and still learning, especially after seeing how risky large distributors can be when things go wrong.

Closing thoughts

We are still early in this. Nothing here is a proven system or a guaranteed path.

For us, the goal is to stay as independent as possible, sell directly to readers and stores, and build something sustainable without relying too heavily on third-party platforms.

This is just our experience so far. If it helps someone else who is trying to figure out book sales in the US, then it was worth writing.