Distribution for small publishers

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Scott Flora on January 20, 2010 at 4:40pm

Patricia,

Good question! In fact, it is so good and important that we created a Distribution Group that is moderated by experienced distribution company staff member, Gail Kump.

You can join the group and see Gail's post at http://www.spannet.org/group/distribution

Thanks,

Scott

Scott Flora

Permalink Reply by Jeanne Webster on February 2, 2010 at 10:56am

Patricia, I'm a small publisher too and I did 2 different runs, one from a traditional press and then I went thru Lightning Source for my online market. Lightning source will hook you up with Ingram and Baker and Taylor and Amazon and the cost is very reasonable to have your books set up. But another thought on this....I don't sell as many books in a book store as I do in other venues. When your in a book store, your one of many, many books so I look for other outlets and target my books for their market. These stores out sell book stores by a country mile. I use Baker and Taylor and Ingram for validation and because book stores will check to see if your on their lists...

And this puzzles me....I hear indie bookstores calling for customers to support them instead of the big chains and yet when I approach them with my company, they give me the doubt eye because I'm a small publisher, so where is the support for the small publisher through the indies stores?

Your model may be different than mine...I go with regional first way before I tackle the national or international market. To me, for small publishers, word of mouth and ground swell is still the best way to get the book out there.

Permalink Reply by Patricia Sullivan HYPD Publicati on February 9, 2010 at 7:20pm

Great input - I'll check them out. Thanks a lot Jeanne.

Permalink Reply by Angie Epting Morris on April 21, 2010 at 8:31pm

I have recently been told by a reliable source that distributors (such as Ingram) will not even talk to you until you have 'at least' 10 books published. That doesn't mean books you've personally written and published - just titles published through your small press company. (NOTE: My source previously worked in the distribution department of Ingram.)

Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Moore on May 1, 2010 at 2:33pm

Actually I tried both Lightning Source and Ingram and discovered that their financial structure does not support small publishers. You have to have a credit card to deal with them directly, or accept that you will have to pay for everything up front, from setup fees to costs of returns. Yes, they will not talk to you unless you have an ISBN for every product you set up (my particular bugaboo), and that costs money, too. At the moment, the best I can suggest is to set up your books on Createspace and if you feel comfortable with the way they work, you will be on Amazon.com from the moment you upload a book and approve the proof. It costs a little extra to enter their "pro" plan, which costs less per book than with LSI. I would recommend Lulu for direct printing, but only if you are also prepared to market and sell your books online directly, because at the moment the Lulu marketplace is flooded with outside books from the major publishers and its marketplace is notorious for not selling books. If you want wider distribution the best place to go is Createspace. I am in the process of slowly extricating myself from Lulu's distribution channel because it is not profitable in the long run. Lulu failed to do the right things to market our books to the "wider audience", so its sayonara for me and hello direct sales.

Permalink Reply by Jacqui Smith on May 18, 2010 at 4:08am

I am amazed and grateful to hear that you only need ten books published to be listed with a distributor, I have had nothing but rejection from big distributors, can anyone tell me, I have heard that you can club up together if you are a lot of small publishers, and present as one entity to a distributor to get distributed. Does anyone know of people I can club up with? If not, do you other small publishers want to club up with me?

I did find one group LSN Libary distributors and although they will put you in shops, they charge for it. I got a package that will display your books in shops in London and New York. The London option cost £3 so it sounded good at first. I live in London and so I camped out at one of these shops to see what happened. The book wasn't featured, it was just on display among other books on the shelf. So far what has happened when people have picked up the book is, they have said 'I dont know this book' and put it down again. I pay £3 a week and although I get Londoners and international tourists looking at the book, I have been on sale there for 3 weeks and no-one has bought my book! It is frustrating! I worked so hard to get the book out there, and for what? To be rejected on account of, I'm not famous! Meanwhile the book cost me £5.50 to print because I didn't shop around when I got it printed - I have since found deals at half that price - and I am asking £6 a copy. Has anyone found a better way?

Permalink Reply by Jacqui Smith on May 18, 2010 at 4:18am

I just wanted to add to Jeane, that I understand what you've been through, my hubby and I tried going around to independent bookshops and half the time, they let us leave a copy for the 'manager' (who never got back to us) and the other half would hold up a hand as soon as they saw us approaching with a book and say 'no no! We get people in here every day trying to put their books with us, there are too many' (and they won't even look at our books). I would love to know what your other strategies are - it sounds like you have some!

Jacqui

Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Moore on May 25, 2010 at 4:07pm

Yes, this is one of the reasons I decided to go direct sales, and forget about consignment with independent booksellers and brick and mortar stores. Thus far my biggest seller has been A BOOK OF FIVE RINGS: A Practical Guide to Strategy by Miyamoto Musashi, which is amazing when I thought originally that it would sell the least. I typically sell between 5 and 10 copies on Amazon Kindle, and that after I learned how to format the books to include illustrations. I put my ebooks up on Scribd and two of them have earned 5 stars each from readers. That is loads better than going from door to door and getting them slammed in your face. The most important thing is to remain proud of what you have accomplished and move on.