SALES
How can I order, where do you get the sales, and how can I see them?
HOW DO I ORDER MY BOOK?
WHEN CAN I ORDER MY BOOK?
WHERE ARE BOOKS SOLD?
DEFINITIONS
WHERE DO YOU GET THE SALES FROM?
WHAT DISCOUNT WILL MY BOOK SELL AT?
WHO ARE YOUR DISTRIBUTORS?
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISTRIBUTORS AND WHOLESALERS?
WHAT ARE YOUR GENERAL SALES RESPONSIBIILITIES?
WHAT CAN I DO TO SELL MY BOOK?
HOW CAN I SEE THE SALES?
ARE THE FIGURES ACCURATE?
WHEN CAN PEOPLE PRE-ORDER MY BOOK?
WHEN WILL MY BOOK BE AVAILABLE IN THE SHOPS?
HOW LONG WILL A BOOKSHOP TAKE TO GET MY BOOK?
HOW CAN A NON-BOOKSHOP ORDER MY BOOK?
WHY IS THIS BOOKSHOP SAYING MY BOOK IS NOT AVAILABLE?
I NEED BOOKS FOR OVERSEAS, HOW DO I GET THEM?
WHY CAN I NOT SEE MY BOOK ON THE SHELVES WHEN I'VE BEEN TO SEVERAL SHOPS?
CAN YOU TELL ME WHICH BOOKSHOPS ARE GOING TO STOCK MY BOOK?
WILL YOU DO A FRONT OF STORE PROMOTION?
DO YOU SELL TO LIBRARIES?
WHAT IS THE PLR (PUBLIC LENDING RIGHT)?
WHAT ABOUT PIRACY?
HOW DO I ORDER MY BOOK?
Please note that discounted author totals do not count towards your overall sales figures for royalties and progress towards publicity/marketing mielstones, which are automatically triggered every 500 total copies (print and ebook) sold to customers.
Also, author copies are non-refundable so please do not overestimate how many you feel you can sell.
This is a facility that is only available to authors; you are registered on the distributors' systems as an author, with your address, it is not transferable to family, friends, PR people etc.
Europe
Individuals (not trade); order with a credit card by emailing Orca Marston at direct.orders@marston.co.uk or phoning +44 (0)1235 465577,
In the UK there is free delivery on orders over £150 (except for overseas orders, including mainland Europe). Individuals can not open an account, that is for trade only, but once you have placed one order as an author your address remains on the system so that you can easily reorder. At under £150, the UK postage is calculated on the value of the order and the charges are as follows:
£0-£19.99 = £3.95; £20-£49.99 = £7.50
£50-£149.99 = £9.50
Overseas prices are usually 20% of value of invoice for surface mail with a minimum charge of £7.00. Air mail would be upon application.
North America
Email customercare@nbnbooks.com or phone +1 800 462 6420. More info at http://www.nbnbooks.com/publishers/SixSteps.pdf
You will be billed for delivery. The cost depends on distance and delivery method. It is a lot for "overnight", very little for "cheapest". These are the actual freight (aka carriage, shipping, delivery) costs incurred by NBN.
Please be aware that if you request advance copies in the US and they reach our warehouse at NBN more than two months before the planned publication date, this new date will be bought forward and distributed to all databases including amazon.com. We have no control over this.
Australia
Brumby Sunstate; tel: +61 2 3255 5552 Fax: +61 2 3255 5553
Email: sales@brumbybooks.com.au
Authors need to fill out the application and have account set up before any orders can be taken. Discount is 40%, firm sale. If you wish to be on monthly terms complete section C, alternatively you will be on proforma terms.
You must reach the minimum $165 (wholesale, inc GST) before the order will be despatched or elect to pay the $13.50 small order delivery surcharge. Brumby will only deliver to address provided on the account application and it must be within Australia.
They are unlikely to have enough stock, so prior warning is needed - 3 months ahead.
Alternatively; order online from The Book Depository, or if it is for 100 copies or more email mary@jhpbooks.net. She will then arrange a separate printing in Australia, which bypasses Brumby, so you will get the usual author 50% discount and be invoiced from the office.
Elsewhere
See Distributor details below.
Delivery
For small orders, the distributor will deliver them to your door (check that your address details in your Profile are up to date). They deliver without calling, and usually leave them on the porch and a note to where they left them in case you are not home.
500 copies and more
From The contract;
"Most publishers sell books to authors at around 30% off the retail price. We sell at 50% discount (and this applies to any book you might want to order from the list, as well as your own); 55% if it’s 500 copies; 60% if it’s 1000 copies; 65% on 2500 and upwards."
These discounts are only applied to orders of those quantities, they do not apply to later, smaller orders.
For orders of 500 copies or more, please send an email to office1@jhpbooks.net giving:
WHEN CAN I ORDER MY BOOK?
When the stock is in the warehouse/s; you can see the planned arrival dates in "Print orders" at the bottom of the Production page.
Within a few days/weeks of your text and cover files being finished, a publication date will be allocated, and the following month the information will go out to distributors, wholesalers and shops. More in Marketing introduction.
It can take a couple of months for the information to circulate around the world and the book to be available to order from different accounts. Which is why we do not print as soon as files are finished. But for your own needs, if you want copies for events before the month of publication, email Mary@jhpbooks.net, with an idea of the quantity you need (not less than 100 copies) and in which country, and she will get stock in earlier. Allow a couple of months for this, at least - it takes time to organize the first printing, and delivery can take days or weeks or months, depending on where in the world you live, more below.
WHERE ARE BOOKS SOLD?
We publish in the English language around the world, making every new title available for promotion and purchase through all bricks-and-mortar stores, and all online stores, in all major territories worldwide.
Which is not to say that all these outlets will have a copy to hand or on the shelf, but more on this below.
"Major" territories, because some are too difficult to get to. For example we do not sell books to India - the retail prices are too low (lower than our cost price+freight). But we do sell many rights to India, for Indian publishers to bring the book out locally in English. Simiilarly, though we do distribute to Australia, South Africa and similar markets, the increasing tendency is for readers to buy online, given the distribution and related cost/price problems.
DEFINITIONS
Bookshops / bookstores
A bookshop is a retailer who mostly sells books. We differentiate that from a card or gift shop that sells a few titles.The bookshop, or bookstore as they are called in the US, continues to evolve with the addition of other products, coffee and food, but still remain our best location for sales. Small local shops and the national chains are both in this category.
Barnes & Noble stands alone at the top among the US book chains, after the collapse of Borders (though they have recently redefined themselves as a digital business which happens to have some bricks-and-mortar stores added). Their 700+ stores dominate the market. Waterstones is the equivalent in the UK, with 300+. Both are likely to cut the number over the coming years, by up to half. We present all of the titles to them but the reality is that they take few. The major reason is that the "sell-thru" (the books that are actually bought by consumers) isn’t strong enough. Outside of the major best sellers and category stalwarts few books are bought on impulse. Customers need to be motivated to buy based on some type of prior introduction to a book. If the sell-thru isn’t there the books get returned in a few weeks, and pulped.
We also present the books to the smaller chains like Books-A-Million in the southern part of the US, and Indigo/Chapters in Canada, who are mainly focused on bestsellers and sidelines such as toy, cards, games, and stationery.
The ranks of independent bookshops/bookstores have been seriously thinned over the last two decades. First it was the growth of the superstores and then the transition to digital. There are still many great ones and those that have survived represent wonderful opportunities for author signings and speaking engagements.
Online
The game changer for bookshops has been the growth of online sales. Every bookshop and bookstore has had to change their strategy to accommodate the activities of the online sellers.
There are many things authors can do to help themselves and each other, through co-operation, as in reviews, more in Amazon/online retail.
Online sellers, even more than physical, rely on the information about a book, or its "metadata". That is one reason why we have so much emphasis in the Proposal and later stages on getting the information right.
Wholesalers
Between our major international distributors and the retailers, the wholesalers occupy a crucial spot. Most retailers and libraries buy directly from them rather than the distributor or the publisher. Mostly for convenience. They can place orders through one company for titles from many publishers. The same goes for their inventory. They can have everything come to their stores in one box and everything shows up on one bill.
Besides direct shipments to the smaller shops, the wholesalers serve a valuable role with the online sellers and chains. If Amazon doesn’t have a book in stock they can send the order to Ingram who, if they have it in stock, will send it out direct to a consumer in an Amazon carton.
Specialty Sales
Specialty Retailers
Any store that sells books as a secondary item can be considered a ‘Specialty Retailer”. Whether it’s a coffee shop, hardware store, or New Age retailer any store can also sell books. Specialty Retailers can acquire their inventory from the distributors or the wholesalers.
Non-retail Special Sales
There are avenues beyond traditional book retailing and special sales to sell books.You can sell books to direct sales companies (email, direct mail, door-to-door), book clubs, corporations, seminars, non-profit organizations, schools, yoga mat manufacturers, and on, and on. Books can be used as a premium with purchase, a seminar guide, and as an educational tool.
WHERE DO YOU GET THE SALES FROM?
Around 90% of our sales are through bookshops/stores, of which 60% are bricks and mortar, 40% online. Another 10% comes from book clubs, non-bookstore outlets and authors. This is likely to change substantially over the next few years. See for instance:
http://www.idealog.com/blog/where-will-bookstores-be-five-years-from-now.
WHAT DISCOUNT WILL MY BOOK SELL AT?
Our distributors have a "matrix" of 70 or so different discount points depending on whether it’s a "trade" title, "professional;", "Reference", returnable, non-returnable, etc. NBN for instance usually sells at 47% discount to bookstores sale or return, but there is a matrix of several dozen different levels which you can see on their website, at:
http://www.nbnbooks.com/Booksellers/retail_discount_schedule.shtml
Virtually all our titles are sold as "Trade", and "Returnable", as that discount represents the best way of getting the books into the shops.
The average discount in this category is 50%. But it can easily vary by a 10-20% average either way for a particular title. We deal with dozens of different wholesalers and distributors in different countries, and basically you’re talking about a spread from 0% on direct sales, through 35% to independent bookshops, 50% to most wholesalers, 60-70% for some major chains, Amazon, distributors in parts of the world, 70-85% for some clubs, supermarkets, all influenced by different countries, freight complications, exchange rates, all depending on what proportion of sales go where.
We have these set discounts for retailers, but we do not have any control over the prices charged for our titles, nor does any other publisher. It is up to them what price they sell them at. If the retailer run promotions and discount to reduce the price further, later, its up to them, it does not mean that we are selling them the books more cheaply. So it is quite possible that if they are clearing stock (which could be for all kinds of reasons, not necessarily anything to do with the sales of your title), they will be selling books at a lower price than you can buy them from us.
WHO ARE YOUR DISTRIBUTORS?
The names and contact details of our distributors are on the website, on the copyright page of each book, and given below.
US/Canada
In North America we both distribute through National Book Network (www.nbnbooks.com), who are the largest independent distributor (approx $150 million in sales) and in the top 20 suppliers to the US general trade (they also have an office in Canada). They have approx. 50 reps and publicity/sales executives, many dedicated to specific accounts like Barnes and Noble, Borders, Ingrams, Baker & Taylor etc., and are one of the ten distributors recommended by Barnes & Noble as "preferred". They get the books on Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, books-a-million.com, and powels.com. NBN also sell to the major non-traditional outlets like warehouse clubs, Target and Costco stores, museums, as well as to specialty distributors like New Leaf.
NBN (National Book Network)
Tel: 1 800 462 6420 1 800 462 6420 Fax: 1 800 338 4550
15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214 USA
UK & Europe
In the UK and Europe the books are warehoused and invoiced in the UK through Orca Book Services (www.orcabookservices.co.uk), now part of Marston Book Services, the largest independent distributor. We visit main accounts from the office, like Bertrams and Gardners, Waterstones, the more specialist ones like Bookspeed, head offices of chains like Waterstones, book clubs like Cygnus.
Orca Book Services
Author orders: direct.orders@marston.co.uk;Tel; 01235 465521 Fax; 01235 465555
Retail orders: tradeorders@orcabookservices.co.uk
Export orders: exportorders@orcabookservices.co.uk Te; 01235 465516 Fax; 01235 465555
160 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4SD
Elsewhere
We work through distributors in Australia and New Zealand (Brumby Sunstate Books, who have their own sales team); the Far East (STP) and all major territories. For reasons of logistics and credit it’s difficult to get books into Africa, and scattered English language shops in South America etc. apart from individual orders with pre-payment. We do not distribute to what might seem major English markets like India (or, coming along, China) because Western prices are too high (their retail prices are equivalent to our print costs).
Australia & New Zealand
In 2012 our Australian distributor Brumby was bought by Sunstate Books to become Australasia’s largest book wholesaler distributor, Brumby Sunstate Books
Brumby Sunstate; tel: +61 2 3255 5552 Fax: +61 2 3255 5553
Email: sales@brumbybooks.com.au
32/37 Mortimer Rd, Acacia Ridge, QLD 4110 Australia
www.brumbybooks.com.au
Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei
Pansing Distribution Pte Ltd; tel: (65) 6319 9939 Fax: (65) 6462 5761
Email: kemal@pansing.com
438 Ang Mo Kio Ave 10; Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park 1
Singapore 569619
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISTRIBUTORS AND WHOLESALERS?
"Distributors" generally refers to companies who warehouse and invoice books on behalf of publishers, and sometimes also have sales teams to represent the publishers. The large corporate publishers have their own distribution/warehouse complexes, the vast majority of small/medium sized publishers do not. In each market there are also "wholesalers", like Ingram in the US or Gardners in the UK, who act as middlemen between the publisher/distributor and the shops.
Most shops buy their books (whether from large or small publishers) from wholesalers rather than direct. It means they can bulk up their orders through one account rather than deal with thousands of different publishers.
So your book goes from printer, to distributor, is sold to a wholesaler at a discount, sold to a shop at a further discount, where hopefully it is sold to a customer (sometimes at a further discount), and the money travels back through the chain. Half the time though the book itself comes all the way back because it wasn’t picked off the shelf quickly enough (increasingly down to a few weeks) - publishing is virtually unique in the retail business in that all books are "sold" on sale or return. That process accounts for about 80% of the margin between production cost and retail.
That’s the simple version. There are many variations, including specialist wholesalers in particular subject categories like New Leaf in the US or Bookspeed in the UK. They have their advantages in that they are closer to particular specialist shops and there are disadvantages in that they are another link in the chain, and often restrict their own buying to the minimum according to their financial circumstances.
Our distributors do not buy books from us, they warehouse them on our behalf, charge for us doing so, which covers sending them out to shops, wholesalers and authors, and the invoicing and collection of funds. We do not collect the 90% of the wholesale price of the book (with 10% going to you in the form of royalty). We get what is left after distributors and wholesalers have taken their cut. After the cost of returns are deducted, this is usually nearer 50%. Out of this we pay for the print, marketing, overheads and royalty.
The distributors do what we ask them to do. They can not change prices or discounts without asking us first. But we need to work through their systems. So, for instance, they will sell books from all the publishers they represent to a particular account at the same discount. We can not say "change the price for three months" or "for this particular sale to this shop give an extra 10% discount" because it is too difficult logistically. The distributor does not send one invoice for our books to one shop, but for all the books sold across the publishers they represent. Some of the books will come back as returns, distinguishing between those at a particular discount and price and orders that happened prior to that or later is not possible, either on the shops systems or those of the distributor.
So neither you nor we can negotiate discounts with particular shops if they already have an account with the national distributor. If they do not have an account with the distributor, they will have an account with a wholesaler. If they do not have an account with a book wholesaler, they are not serious book buyers, but the distributor will be happy to sell them books.
WHAT ARE YOUR GENERAL SALES RESPONSIBILITIES?
Metadata
The information about your book – metadata – is vital. We makes sure that the information about your book is distributed around the world to key players like Amazon, Bowker, Waterstones, etc. If the key to selling books is discoverability then metadata is the most significant underlying foundation to successful discovery. Today’s metadata goes well beyond title, ISBN, author, and price. The initial transmission of a book’s metadata is when we send it to the international distributors. From there the distributors send out the metadata (technically called the ‘ONIX feed’) to all of the major databases, wholesalers and retailers in the world. Once the data gets out in the world it’s very difficult to edit so precision is critical.
More about metadata from Publishers Weekly: Accurate metadata sells books.
Key National Accounts
We ensure that all of the major accounts know about your book, and when appropriate based on factors such as marketing, PR, sales potential, etc, will contact the accounts for larger starting orders. We place the correct amount of stock with each account based on the demand for a book. Overstocking our wholesalers and retailers is an expensive game where no one wins.
UK
Catherine Harris manages the relationship with Orca Marston, our European distributor, and the major UK wholesalers (Gardners, Bertrams, Veritas, Bookspeed, Westnedge), the major bookshop chains (Foyles, Waterstones, Blackwells, WHSmiths), online retailers (Amazon, The Book Depository, Aphrohead), library suppliers (Rondo, Coutts, Bertrams), bookclubs (Cygnus, A Great Read) and a very few specialist independent bookshops (Watkins, Atlantis, Mysteries, Church House, Housmans).
US
Catherine also manages the relationship with National Book Network (NBN), the major US wholesalers (Ingram and Baker & Taylor), and the major book chains (Barnes & Noble, Indigo/Chapters, and Books-A-Million) and a very few specialist distributors or bookstores (New Leaf, Banyen...) and the online retailer Amazon.
We do not call on the independent bookstores in the US. No one does any more, for most of them. We do not have a "field" sales force, going to individual shops. We used to, in both the US and UK, up till 2009. It is no longer cost effective. Chain store buying is centrally controlled. In the big publishing companies now, the field sales force (increasingly getting smaller), accounts for 5-15% of sales. The bulk of sales go through the "national" accounts, like Amazon, Baker & Taylor, B&N, and Ingram (and Costco, Target and Wal-mart for the biggest players). We cover those. Virtually nobody outside the "Bix Six" still has a field sales force. More in Marketing introduction
WHAT CAN I DO TO SELL MY BOOK?
Often, the author is the best possible sales person for a book. Put up some thoughts onthe Marketing Plan page. The publicist will work around them.
The bookstores that are surviving, particularly the independents, do so through encouraging links with their local communities, part of which is backing local authors, getting them to speak and do signing sessions. It's worth contacting every bookstore within a 25 – 50 mile radius of where you live. Most of them should be on the contacts database. Send a letter or email about the book to each store. Better yet is to call each store and arrange a reading or lecture. Bookshops/stores are always looking for evening events and one with a local author is usually successful for all parties. If they are not on the contacts database, please add them, ask if they would like to be subscribed to receiving information on new titles. If all authors do that, everyone benefits.
Here’s a starting list of things to do, in conjunction with the publicist:
· More in Marketing introduction
HOW CAN I SEE THE SALES?
We began providing monthly sales for all authors in late 2009. It's not usual, some big publishers started the same in 2011 - New York Times.
The monthly sales are given by units and value, for each of our territories where we have a distributor, with the value denominated in £ sterling. The exchange rate used changes monthly. The figures include sales to authors. We generally add them at the end of the following month, depending on workloads/holidays etc.
Ebooks are released in the month of publication, so the sales figures will not appear till the end of the following month, whereas print book sales may appear earlier. Sales of ebooks prior to November 2011 are not given on the website, but will have appeared on your six-monthly royalty statement. All ebook sales go through our N American distributor and are then fed out to other databases from there, so total sales appear in the N America column.
The bought forward figure for sales prior to Nov 2008 are showing in the sales table as Dec 2007. This is a temporary fix.
ARE THE FIGURES ACCURATE?
The current monthly sales figures, going back to November 2008, are accurate, though there may be slippage from one month to the next. Prior to that, they are not.
WHEN CAN PEOPLE PRE-ORDER MY BOOK?
We can not give a firm date when it’s possible to pre-order. Some shops will take pre-orders, some will not.
The surest way for friends to preorder your book is through Amazon.
WHEN WILL MY BOOK BE AVAILABLE IN THE SHOPS?
Usually in the month of publication. But times are variable. It takes around five weeks from leaving the warehouse for books to get to all shops even within the USA. This is something we have no control over.
HOW LONG WILL A BOOKSHOP TAKE TO GET MY BOOK?
It depends where the bookshop is, and what type of shop it is.
US/Canada
Standard Ground UPS shipping generally takes five days. But shops will only pay (as is standard practice) for freight by the cheapest and slowest method, and it can sometimes take six weeks for books to get from the East coast to the West coast of the USA. It also varies according to the type of store. Barnes & Noble, for instance buy centrally, the books go to their central warehouse, then out again, adding a week or two to the trip. For anything like a signing session, allow for two months to be on the safe side.
It usually takes longer to Canada; the distributors have no control over timing once they get to customs. It can take longer to get books a few hundred miles from Pennsylvania to Ontario than a few thousand miles from England to Singapore. British Columbia is worse still.
UK
Our distributor in the UK, Orca Marston Book Services, supplies wholesalers like Gardners and Bertrams daily. But it runs out orders for small shops (independents and specialists rather than chain stores) once a week. If the order has been sent electronically they won’t know they have it till they run the invoices once a week. They do this to bulk up orders. Some shops complain that this means they don’t get the books fast enough, in comparison to distribution outfits run as part of larger corporations, particularly if they happen to send the order in a day after an order run has been done. So if they’re buying direct from our distributor rather than through a wholesaler they won’t get a replacement book in a couple of days. It’s just tough, it’s a conscious decision rather than inefficiency. Orca (owned by Marston) is a £10m business rather than £100m. The simple answer is for the shop concerned to buy two copies rather than one, or to use a wholesaler (most do, anyway).
HOW CAN A NON-BOOKSHOP ORDER MY BOOK?
All book wholesalers have accounts with NBN in North America, Orca Marston in the UK, etc. If it’s a non-trade account, like a conference center, or online site, or retreat house, or whatever, that don’t have an account with a distributor or wholesaler, they need to contact the distributor direct to set up an account, and they’ll usually get 35% discount.
If there’s a shop which doesn’t have an account with NBN, details are at;
http://www.nbnbooks.com/Booksellers/credit_application.shtml.
If they’re only likely to buy a few books once or twice it’s not worth setting up an account (which can take a couple of weeks, it means checking bank references etc.) so they will be asked to pay in advance. Usually this will mean paying by credit card or paying a proforma invoice before the books are sent. Details of opening an account, standard terms, returns policy etc. are on the distributor’s websites (www.nbnbooks.com, www.orcabokservices.co.uk, www.brumbybooks.com etc.) or can be obtained by email.
WHY IS THIS BOOKSHOP SAYING MY BOOK IS NOT AVAILABLE?
We spend a lot of time dealing with these problems, where the query seems genuine. Very occasionally, it’s because sales are going faster than we expected, and we’re temporarily out of stock (usually two weeks max.). Far more often, the answers fall into the following kinds of categories;
Inaccurate information
Non-availability
There’s a raft of similar reasons. Do let us know if you come across any problems. But be precise. A general email along the lines of "I went to my local bookstore last month and they said they had ordered it but it hasn’t arrived" does not get us far. If you are concerned, press the shop for details -"When was the invoice sent? For how many copies? What was the invoice number?" And send those to us, with the ISBN of the book. Even “B&N in Pittsburgh ordered this last month and it hasn’t arrived yet” isn’t enough. NBN get thousands of orders from B&N a day. It may have come from the shop, it may have come via a wholesaler, it may have come through central office. NBN need the order reference to check. Its time consuming, but virtually every time we look into this, the distributor is not at fault. Distribution of books is a nightmare kind of business, it’s a lot of hard work for low margin, they frequently go bust, and we work with the ones that provide a good a service as it’s possible to do.
WHY CAN I NOT SEE MY BOOK ON THE SHELVES WHEN I HAVE BEEN TO SEVERAL SHOPS?
The total number of books available in English is somewhere north of 30 million. The number available to buy online is over 10 million. The average number stocked in a bookshop is around 10,000. Most of these are backlist sellers relevant to the shops marketplace, which they know are going to sell. Some are new books, most of those are by well known names. We can only get directly to very few of the 20,000 shops in North America/UK, they mostly buy centrally, or through wholesalers. So if it is not there, the most likely reason is that the information we sent out to the main buyer and wholesaler was not persuasive enough. Or, if it's a chain, they have allocated it to a few shps but not all of them. Or if they did buy it, and it is in the month of publication, it may because the book has not got to that shop yet. If it is later than the month after publication, it may be that the shop has had the book but sold it, and not reordered yet, or did not sell and has been returned. Most new books are only stocked for a few weeks and then returned if they are not selling fast enough.
I NEED BOOKS FOR OVERSEAS, HOW CAN I GET THEM?
The simplest and most effective way to get hold of books is to contact the distributor direct. Their normal stock levels may not be enough. They will be able to give you more exact information as to when they are expecting stock. They have their own arrangements for consolidating shipments, so we can not say exactly when they will arrive in a particular country.
So if you are doing any promotion in Australia (or other territories outside the USA/UK) email the distributor giving them an idea of how many copies you think will be needed, at least three months before they are needed, so they can take that into account when ordering. Books can take eight to ten weeks to get there. New Zealand takes longer still, as the stock goes through the warehouse in Australia first. Somewhere like Tahiti - don’t even ask. Expect it the following year!
If we do not have a distributor in your country (eg; India, Thailand, Japan) it is because we have not found a reliable one who is interested in distributing our list. In some of these places, like India, we sell a lot of rights - Western prices are just too high to make distribution of books printed outside the local market realistic. In others, like Japan, we do not have much luck either in selling books or selling rights. If you have local distribution contacts, let us know and we will follow them up. We can not send stock by courier to countries outside North America & Dependencies or UK/Europe - it just does not work. More often than not, some of it gets damaged in transit, and trying to get refunds costs as much as the shipment was worth.
CAN YOU TELL ME WHICH BOOKSTORES ARE GOING TO STOCK MY BOOKS?
No. Our distribution and sales chain gets to every shop, in theory at least. And we really do work at it. But that does not mean that your book will necessarily appear in bookshops. Or that, when it does, we know which bookshops it’s in.
Many shops, particularly the chains (increasingly dominant, a quarter of independent bookshops have closed in the last 10 years), will not see reps. Some will only see reps from the top dozen or so publishers. Chain stores usually buy centrally, rather than at individual shop level. All our titles are presented to the central buyer, but we do not know which shops they are then allocated to. Independent shops are seen by the sales reps wherever possible, but they almost invariably place their orders through wholesalers, whether smaller specialty ones like New Leaf or larger ones like Ingrams. There is no straight route from us to the shop, let alone the reader; its more like a complex clockwork mechanism, the cogs of which do not always mesh together well. Or many clocks, because online sales are different again, and the whole thing is replicated differently in different markets, national and international.
Spring 2011; the main chain in New Zealand, Whitcoulls, has gone bankrupt, as has Angus & Robertson in Australia, Borders in the US. In the UK the specialist religious chains like SPCK and Wesley Owen have done the same, the main MBS shop, Watkins, went bankrupt a few months ago, and other key ones like Inner Bookshop are closing. It is similar in the US, and every large chain in the US/UK is essentially up for sale. Everyone is carrying as little stock as they can, including wholesalers. If, at some point in the sales chain, like at Ingrams, or New Leaf, they are only stocking a handful or less of your title, that is not unusual. The point is, the channels are open, it only takes days for them to order more stock. The key is to have people ordering the books from the front, not to try pushing it in from the back.
There is more on average sales in the Authors Guide and Estimate of likely sales. Don’t assume that because you have published a book, whatever marketing we give it, that it will be found in bookshops. The various sales teams present the books, but it is up to the shops to place the orders, and they only stock around 1% of the books available. We also probably won’t be able to get your book into shops in quantity. With electronic point of sale and next-day delivery from wholesalers there is little incentive for a shop to stock more than one copy, apart from proven bestsellers.
We can present your title to supermarkets (Target in the USA, Asda and Tesco in the UK, etc...) if it is selling around one to two thousand copies a week through the main bookshop channels. They will not consider anything less than that.
From an author’s perspective, we do not get books into enough shops. From our perspective, we get too many in. Many months, our returns from shops are more than 60% of the sales, particularly in the US. In January it’s been as high as 80%. The annual average is something like 40%, which is around the mark for all trade publishers. Every one of them costs us money. Most of our strong sellers, year in, year out, are not standard stock items.
There’s a useful listing of good independent shops in the UK at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/bookshop/independent-bookshop-directory
WILL YOU DO A FRONT OF STORE PROMOTION?
When you see piles of books at the front of a bookstore understand that the exposure was “bought” by the publisher. It’s mostly relevant to mass-market fiction and celebrity self-help, not the more specialist kind of books we generally publish. For example, it may cost $5,000 to get a book on the "New Arrivals" table at all Barnes & Noble superstores. Or it may run $15,000 to $25,000 to be the “Book of the Week”. For more serious widespread prime exposure around a single main bookshop chain you’re looking at $50-100,000. But it is not down to us to choose the book, the main bookshop buyer at head office does that.
DO YOU SELL TO LIBRARIES?
We do contact library wholesalers, but do not go to libraries direct ourselves. There’s a useful article on libraries at:
http://www.strategicbookmarketing.com/services-library.html
http://www.library.pima.gov/contact/authors.php
As in many areas, it helps to make direct contact.
www.publiclibraries.com is a good source, as is lists.webjunction.org/libweb/Public_main.html.
Libraries generally do not buy from publishers, but from wholesalers. So we do not sell to them directly. That's pretty much true of all publishers. It's tough enough selling to bookshops, but at least when you get a book in there there's a chance that the shop will reorder it if and when it sells. With libraries, you have the same kind of sales costs, but you only sell one copy, because then it gets reused.
So we sell to the wholesalers from whom the libraries buy. In the UK this is organizations like Bertrams, Rondo, BDS and Lindsay & Croft. There's a similar spread in North America, where B&T has about 70% of the library business. These wholesalers pass on information to libraries through online feeds.
Wholesalers can push books into libraries, and also fulfill a library order. B&T for instance has a collection development team that will make recommendations to libraries and also arbitrarily send books to libraries based on various criteria. Decisions are based on reviews, gaps in subject coverage, demand, and sales rankings. We push books to wholesalers like B&T, but not as aggressively as we used to do - in 2010 our level of returns there was 70%, and returns get pulped.
Libraries also make their own decisions. They can be influenced by reviews in magazines like the Library Journal(the disadvantage there being that they want to review manuscript or proofs at least four months before publication, so it extends the publishing schedule, and they review around one in 100 titles submitted). In addition they can be directly solicited by authors. Authors can write to the collections development staff of a library and suggest the purchase of their book. They can make a good case for their book if they are a local author, or writing about a subject that is of interest to the local library (local history, local landmarks etc.) or if they have identified a gap in a category in the library's holdings.
The bookshop market is going through unprecedented stresses and challenges, with online competition and ebooks. The library market, if anything, even more so. The degree to which they continue to receive taxpayer support varies enormously by region. The one common thread emerging recently is "PDA" - Patron Driven Access; ie "Patrons", or "readers", will have a greater role in title acquisition. Libraries need to make themselves more directly relevant to reader wishes. Demonstrate to the bureaucrats that they are fulfilling a need. So though the library market is shrinking at a rate of knots, as they buy fewer books, the possibilities for direct author intervention are, if anything, looking up.
WHAT IS THE PLR (PUBLIC LENDING RIGHT?
In some countries the government pays authors a small amount every time their books are borrowed from a library. Authors have to register for this directly. It does not happen in the USA. For the UK, check on www.plr.uk.com.
Also, in the UK, you can register at www.alcs.co.uk. It’s a central body for collecting payments from schools etc. for photocopying. Payments will not be sent to you unless you register. Payments can vary from nil, to a few £ a year, or we have one author who earns £ several thousand a year because the book is used as a classroom text.
WHAT ABOUT PIRACY?
Due to the production costs of a paperback, its quite rare to see instances of piracy where it can be reproduced without our collecting royalties. However, ebooks can potentially be pirated. We do not build our own digital rights management (DRM) when producing ebooks because it would be practically impossible to take into account all of the various readers and 3rd party stores. What instead happens is many of the 3rd party stores (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble) add a layer of DRM that attempts to lock the book to a specific user account and device. If you do come across an instance of your manuscript being offered for anyone to download for free, then please email us at office1@jhpbooks.net. We will then send a take down notice to their service provider and they normally respond promptly to such requests.