We work at contacting all relevant wholesalers and retailers, online and bricks-and-mortar, about your book, worldwide.
(Smaller retailers, Amazon and libraries can get books more quickly and efficiently through wholesalers rather than direct from a publisher or distributor. In North America their wholesaler might be Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bookazine, New Leaf or Quanta, and in Europe Bertrams, Gardners, Westnedge, OLF or Bookspeed. All our titles are available through all of them).
Important note: Please do not contact the sales teams directly. They all represent numerous publishers, and it’s not feasible for them to work with authors on an individual basis.
We will present your title to the sales teams. Our Sales Co-ordinator passes on important marketing information, which the reps then highlight to buyers when pitching your book to bookstores. A bookseller is far more likely to be persuaded to order copies of a new book if they are alerted to significant marketing. This includes details of upcoming events, scheduled interviews, endorsements from high-profile reviewers, and any traction a book may have gained in mainstream press or on social media. If you arrange a book event or any other publicity regarding your book, alert us to it by adding it as ‘Arranged’ in your book’s Marketing Activities to ensure we know about it and can pass on the details.
We’re in constant touch with the our sales teams, sending them AI/tipsheets, catalogues, attending sales meetings. All the main reps get access to an AI sheet on every title, and we provide them with subject catalogues that include strong backlist. We also supply book metadata to international bibliographic distributors such as Nielsen, Bowker and Bibliographic Data Services.
You can be sure that your title will be presented to larger retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Hudson, Hastings, BAM, NACS and Folletts in the USA, Indigo in Canada, and Waterstones, WH Smith, Blackwell, Foyles, and John Smith in the UK. Reps also present to library suppliers such as Brodart in USA, and to Bertram Library Services, Askews and Yankee Book Peddler in Europe.
Over the years we have built good relationships with booksellers in particular subject areas, which you can see in the Contacts Database.
We run adverts for qualifying books in trade catalogues published by wholesalers such as Ingram and submit books to reviewers in the trade press such as Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller. These catalogues and journals are both in print and digital, and offer booksellers details of new books several months in advance of publication. Reviews and adverts are recorded on your Marketing page in Activities.
We offer certain booksellers extra discount or free books in return for higher profile on their website or in their shop window, inclusion in promotional mailings to their customers, running an event and occasionally “publisher shop front” space online.
We don’t run front-of-store table promotions in the big chains. Exposure for books at the front of a bookstore is “bought” by the publisher at the discretion of the bookseller and costs in excess of £10,000.
Please note: Realistically, with us your best chance of getting stocked in physical bookstores is in the UK, North America and Europe (and getting them stocked in these regions is tough). The market in Australia is extremely difficult at present, and it is highly unlikely we will be able to get your books into shops there unless you’re a national name, or there’s specific demand. We no longer have a local distributor for physical bookstores in South Africa. Countries like India are nigh on impossible because of low retail prices. So, outside the UK, North America and Europe your book is most probably going to be available online only, via the regional Amazon or other retailers like The Book Depository (free international shipping).
We’re building up our own contacts with the trade from the office, sending regular newsletters in different subject areas, which they subscribe to. These also go to, journalists, foreign publishers and readers. They highlight author events, articles and interviews, and new and better-selling books.
In 2015, 500,000 new titles were published in US, 300,000 in the UK. Another million or so were self-published. A small proportion (of the former, let alone the latter) get onto bookshop shelves. You can help by contacting local ones yourself, running workshops, giving talks, handing out flyers, being active on social media, and emailing your networks. Make sure readers can buy books easily, add clear buy links and directions in emails, on social media, in articles, in posts, on your website and on any other websites with which you have connections. There is a BUY ONLINE button to key retailers for your book on your page.
Libraries generally do not buy from publishers, but from wholesalers, who we do contact. In the UK these are organizations like Bertrams, Askews, Yankee Book Peddler and Tomlinsons. There’s a similar spread in North America, where Baker & Taylor has about 70% of the library business. These wholesalers pass on information to libraries through online feeds. There are useful articles on libraries at: http://www.strategicbookmarketing.com/services-library.html and http://www.library.pima.gov/contact/authors.php. We do also donate several books to the library network here in the UK.
The degree to which libraries continue to receive taxpayer support varies enormously by region. The one common thread emerging recently is “PDA”—Patron Driven Access, i.e. “Patrons” or “readers” will have a greater role in book acquisition. Libraries need to make themselves more directly relevant to reader wishes. So though the library market is shrinking, the possibilities for direct author intervention are increasing.
- If you are an academic, please encourage your university library to stock your book and others on the list, and subscribe to our newsletter. Do you know of courses where your book could be a course text or on a reading list?
- Add your library to our contacts database.
- Contact your local public library. Tell them briefly what the book is about, of any reviews and how to order. Public libraries now offer ebooks too, so go online and check they list your book and, if not, recommend it and any others in the imprint. Overdrive distributes our ebooks to most public library platforms in UK & US. NB Overdrive will only list your book as available in a particular country if a library has requested it. So ask for it in your local library and get friends in other countries to ask in theirs too. It’s quite simple…in most cases, if a library gets a request for a book from a reader, they will order it. Libraries may also be interested in hosting an event for you.
- Reviews in library review journals, such as Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, can help. We submit a number of books each month to these journals.
In some countries the government pays authors a small amount every time their books are borrowed from a library, the Public Lending Right. 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. It usually only applies to books being used as a classroom text.
Piracy is a negligible issue on printed books. Piracy of ebooks is more common. Along with most publishers, we do not build digital rights management (DRM) into our ebooks because it would restrict their readability and distribution. What instead happens is many of the third-party stores (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble) add a layer of DRM that locks the book to a specific user account and device. That said infringements are much too common these days. Fortunately, there are tools to fight them. The DMCA takedown notice is one of the more powerful ones. If you come across an instance of your manuscript being offered as a free download and you can find a contact email address for the ISP on the offending site, use the template below to issue a takedown notice asking that the offending URL to your titles be removed. They should remove the infringing materials. This might be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/
Template
Re: Copyright Claim
To the ISP Hosting Company:
I am the copyright owner of the eBooks being infringed at:
This letter is official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to effect removal of the above-reported infringements. I request that you immediately issue a cancellation message as specified in RFC 1036 for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing material to your servers in the future. Please be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to “expeditiously remove or disable access to” the infringing material upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of immunity for liability under the DMCA.
The use of the material in the manner complained of here is not authorised by me, the author and copyright holder, or the law. The information provided here is accurate to the best of my knowledge.
Please reply to me promptly indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter.
Yours Faithfully,
Email: hardworkingauthor[at]mybooks.com
If the offender doesn’t comply, raise the problem by posting on the Help forum in Sales & Distribution/ Sales Online with the URL link to your book and the email addresses you have tried. We will follow up. Word Press is on our side and will take down any offending URL if they can.