Tips for getting your book into the bookstores: Tip 4
Have a distributor
An equally important part of marketing is distribution. You must be able to get books to the bookstore, and the bookstore, unfortunately, must be able to get books back to you. Distributors make those transactions easier in both directions.
Bookstores will seldom deal directly with you. The sheer number of publishers makes it impractical. Costs, time, and logistics would overwhelm any bookseller who tried to maintain accounts with all of them. Bookstores prefer to obtain all but special orders from a handful of suppliers. The chains and even the larger wholesalers, in fact, maintain lists of preferred vendors to which they will refer you when you seek to do business with them. There are exceptions, but if you are reading this blog to find out how to get into bookstores, you will not be one of them.
For your book to receive serious bookstore consideration, it must be available through one of the middlemen that stores prefer to work with. This assures bookstores that transactions for your book will occur with minimal hassle. If you don’t have a distributor, get one before you approach the bookstore. In the United States, there are 5 or 6 "master distributors" and a couple dozen wholesalers that will make your books available to stores and chains.
Getting a distributor to carry your book is a challenge in its own right. I’ll discuss that in a later blog entry or two.
An equally important part of marketing is distribution. You must be able to get books to the bookstore, and the bookstore, unfortunately, must be able to get books back to you. Distributors make those transactions easier in both directions.
Bookstores will seldom deal directly with you. The sheer number of publishers makes it impractical. Costs, time, and logistics would overwhelm any bookseller who tried to maintain accounts with all of them. Bookstores prefer to obtain all but special orders from a handful of suppliers. The chains and even the larger wholesalers, in fact, maintain lists of preferred vendors to which they will refer you when you seek to do business with them. There are exceptions, but if you are reading this blog to find out how to get into bookstores, you will not be one of them.
For your book to receive serious bookstore consideration, it must be available through one of the middlemen that stores prefer to work with. This assures bookstores that transactions for your book will occur with minimal hassle. If you don’t have a distributor, get one before you approach the bookstore. In the United States, there are 5 or 6 "master distributors" and a couple dozen wholesalers that will make your books available to stores and chains.
Getting a distributor to carry your book is a challenge in its own right. I’ll discuss that in a later blog entry or two.
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