What You Need To Look For In A Distributor
·
Are they reputable and well-established?
·
Offers
fair terms for sales, warehousing, and shipping costs.
·
Has
a decent track record for selling similar books in your genre.
·
Will
represent one-book authors and not just small publishers of several titles.
When you work with a distributor, follow their timeline of
when they plan to launch the sale of your book. They may need several months to
get your book in their system and to
allow time for their sales reps to pre-sell it. Many distributors have various
fee-based marketing programs, where they will charge you for any number of
services, including telemarketing stores, mailing galleys to stores,
advertising, or scheduling book signings. They will do other things for free,
such as include you in their catalog, create a sales sheet for their sales
reps, or list you in various databases and online commerce sites, such as www.amazon.com
If you are published by a traditional publisher, your
success will depend, in part, on how big the publisher is and how active they
will be in marketing your book. University presses and small publishers have
very limited budgets to promote, so don’t assume they will do much for you.
Mid-size and larger publishers may do some basic things for you, such as
sending out a few dozen advance copies to select reviewers. If you are lucky
and your title is seen as one the publisher wants to support they may assign an
in-house publicist to work on your book for six to eight weeks -- along with a
zillion other titles.
The bigger publishers simply have too many books and too
little staff to promote every title. Even when they do get involved, time and
budget are key factors. The truth is, most publishers rely on authors to
promote and market their books. A publisher provides many advantages –
prestige, editing, cover-design, book layout, a sales force, foreign rights
sales, etc. – but publicity and marketing is not always part of the deal. You
may wonder why they’d publish something that they don’t fully support in their
marketing efforts and the answer is: You.
They only agreed to publish you because they thought the book was good and on a topic that sells.
They know that with decent distribution, the book will sell at least a few
thousand copies. Depending on their costs, their break-even point may only be
that they have to sell a few thousand copies. Second, they know you will
promote and market it, that you won’t let your baby die on the shelf. Third,
you may have committed to buy a certain number of copies to give out to family,
friends, clients, or to resell at seminars and through your site, or because
you had a connection to an organization that agreed to buy a bunch of copies.
Further, the publisher can earn extra income by selling
various rights to the book – foreign, audio, paperback (if it was published as
a hardcover), digital, etc. So if publishers do no worse than break even on a
few titles but make at least a few thousand dollars on hundreds of titles
published each season, and then have a few mega-selling, breakthrough best-sellers,
they will be in the black without doing much by way of marketing and promoting
the vast majority of their titles.
Still, traditional publishers can be helpful in giving you
ideas or resources for selling your book. They want you to succeed. You can
help them by informing them of upcoming events, publicity efforts, and public
appearances so they can then inform their sales force and key book buyers.
Some popular book distributors include:
·
Baker
& Taylor
·
BCH
Fulfillment and Distribution
·
Book
Baby
·
Book
Masters
·
Cardinal
Publishers Group
·
Consortium
Books Sales & Distribution
·
Greenleaf
Book Group
·
Independent
Publishers Group
·
Ingram
Content Group
·
Ingram
Spark
·
Midpoint
Trade Books
·
National
Book Network
·
New
Leaf Distributing
·
Publishers
Group West
·
Readerlink
Distribution Services
·
SCB
Distributors
·
Simon
& Schuster
·
Small
Press Distribution
There are also specialty distributors
including:
·
AK
Press
·
Anchor
Distributors
·
American
West Books
·
Bella
Distribution
·
Casemate
·
DeVorss
& Company
·
New
Shelves Books
·
Sunbelt
Publications
·
Tan
Books
“Nobody ever died of
laughter.”
--Max
Berbohm
“We must all hang
together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
--Benjamin
Franklin
“People who read only
the classics are sure to remain up-to-date.”
--Gilbert
J. Presterson
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
--Honore
de Balzac
“Few maxims are true
in every respect.”
--
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues
DON”T
MISS THESE!!!
How authors get
their book marketing mojo – and avoid failure
Authors cannot succeed
without the right attitude
So what is needed to be a champion book marketer?
Should You Promote Your
Book By Yourself?
The Book Marketing Strategies Of Best-Sellers
How authors can sell more books
No. 1 Book Publicity Resource: 2019 Toolkit For Authors
-- FREE
Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and
interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of
his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more
important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in
Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and
IBPA’s Independent. This was named one of the best book marketing
blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the
top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best
resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.
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