Book Store SECRETS! How Publishers Distribute Books

hello everyone Alexa done here and today we're going to be talking about the big topic of book distribution how book distribution works in traditional publishing specifically because it is such a broad and big topic I'm splitting it into two separate videos this one is all about bookstores and I'll do a separate talk on libraries first up a disclaimer I'm sharing as much as I know as much as I've learned about traditional publishing and book distribution and bookstores but there are inevitably going to be gaps in my own knowledge I've learned this through my experience as being traditionally published as well as talking to bookstores people who work at bookstores both Barnes & Noble and Indy and just picking their brains and asking questions not everything I'm going to go over is common knowledge but this is definitely an area that has fascinated me so I've tried to find out as much as I can but inevitably there are going to be things that I don't know about yet or that I leave out but this is your basic inevitably long-winded primer on how book distribution works in traditional publishing when it comes to bookstores so first off this may be stating the incredibly obvious but overwhelmingly bookstores primarily carry titles from so-called traditional publishers traditional publishers our publishing houses typically that offer advance not always but that have distribution chain with bookstores libraries etc it is a publisher who pays you for the rights to publish your work and they're going to physically print your book most of the time and get it out into the world some things are changing in terms of indie titles having carriage in bookstores but my experiences are of course in traditional publishing and that's what I'm going to be focusing on one of the reasons traditional publishers have such a strong foothold in book distribution and bookstores is they've been doing it for decades and decades and decades and they have strong relationships with the big book distributors and that's the thing publishers themselves do not directly provide books to book stores places where you can buy books they use distributors middlemen warehouses and they basically have the inventory and they then provide that stop to the places where books are sold there are a lot of smaller distributors but the major players in the distributor game well there used to be two for bookstores Ingram and Baker and Taylor but Baker and Taylor recently announced that they are no longer going to be in the distribution business with bookstores that they are solely going to focus on libraries so Baker and Taylor will come up a lot in the library video but really all that's left the big player is Ingram so Ingram has warehouses across the United States that they can cover regions and ship books to bookstores and get them there quickly so their giant warehouse spaces where they carry all of these books from all of these different publishers and then the bookstores and libraries have ordering systems where they can place orders for books from Ingram or what have you because there are some smaller distributors who also stock books and bookstores can order from them but all of the major publishers overwhelmingly are going to be using Ingram now so briefly how do traditional publishers reach booksellers because a whole part of things is convincing bookstores to order copies of your books that they are carried in the store and traditional publishing is very well ingrained kind of in this business with bookstores and relationship with bookstores so one way that they are each book sellers is publishers attend trade shows there are trade shows for booksellers the big one is the American Booksellers Association so you may have heard of them ABA you'll hear of OAB a midwinter ABA annual conference so that is the bookseller Association the major ones and they do have regional conferences as well as semiannual conferences and publishers attend these they have booths where they're promoting their current and upcoming titles the people who work for the publisher have relationships with people at the bookstores the buyers at the bookstores and this gets into sales teams and that's the thing there are entire departments at traditional publishers whose sole job is sales convincing people to sell your book there are people who work specifically with libraries and teachers school and library markets and then there are specific people specific teams whose sole job is to convince bookstores to carry their titles typically they're going to have the Salesforce across the country with regionally-based reps who have relationships with all of the bookstores in a given region usually in these stores because Barnes & Noble is managed corporately which put a pin in that we're going to talk about Barnes & Noble and they basically have meetings with the bookstores they bring arcs to them they give them e arcs from sites like a to Y is a net galley but ADA lies specifically is heavily used by booksellers and librarians to evaluate copies of books so that they can place their orders of what they're going to carry in the store tell what this publishers put together seasonal catalogues which show hey these are all of our titles across all of our different categories coming out during this season and why you should buy them they'll have pitches they'll have comp titles so that booksellers have an idea of what they're similar to and how they might sell they'll have key selling points if you get an eighth always account you can actually see all of this pitch language that is used and you can look at the catalogs that publishers send out to bookstores and libraries and I have done that I've set up the needle wise account so that I can look it's it's kind of weird to see how they pitch your book and they also include in these catalogs by the way they let the bookstores know how much marketing they are going to do for a title so that the bookstore has a good idea ah the publisher is going to be pushing this title so if I stock it in my store higher chance that copies are gonna move from the shelf and so bookstores then decide they tell the sales force usually approximately six months before a book comes out how many copies they are going to place an order for and have in their store and this is how the publishers determine demand for a title real demand for a title and determine their print run so I do want to talk a little bit about print runs just like a fun little fYI thing that I've learned so publishers will state a print run usually a year out from the time that the titles coming out because that's when the sales force starts doing their job and by the way this is my lead times are so and publishing because they need usually a full year for the sales for switching their job to get bookstores to agree to take on a certain number of copies to do all of the marketing etc so at that point nine months to a year out they're gonna say the print one for this is seventy-five thousand copies and I'm here to tell you that's always a lie possibly with the exception of like the biggest sellers in the industry it's a lie typically your actual print rent is going to be sixty to seventy percent lower or more then these stated print run but these print ones that they announced give the sales force a tool and booksellers and so on an idea of how big the title is to the publisher how much push they're putting behind it how much money and it's all kind of PR tool for the sales team to get bookstores to place more orders so then you won't actually know your print run until much closer to publication three or four months out and that real print run is typically reflective of how many bookstores and libraries and book boxes and all of that have actually agreed to take copies of your book and that becomes your print run number and the number against which you have to kind of evaluate sales and success and that's that's the whole thing okay so let's talk about sales incentives so how publishers get bookstores to take more copies of your book so this is it's like a dirty little secret but is it really a secret it is definitely something I learned about once I was kind of already in the mode of traditional publishing and it was definitely a lightbulb moment for me I was like this makes so much sense but also makes me hate everything so certain publishers usually the biggest publishers have sales incentives for book stores where they basically say hey hey hey hey you love us right um if you take five of our titles agree to stock three copies of these five titles we're gonna throw in a sixth title for free now when bookstores order titles they're getting a wholesaler discount they don't pay list price for the book they get wholesaler discounts and then you know sell it on to you the consumer so that there's a profit margin there and these sales incentives basically get them extra stock at a cost savings this is better for the bookstore because it can increase their profit margin so it's very attractive to them but it can mean oh the bookstores will then favor carrying more titles from certain publishers because it's more cost-effective for them and it is definitely the bigger publishers that can offer these sorts of incentives the smaller publishers are even the smaller major publishers can't necessarily offer these sales incentives it's all really interesting and then this brings me to returns free returns this is another really essential aspect of distribution and bookstores that is definitely worth knowing including if you're indie because this is going to potentially cannot come up if you're an indie author I'm told if you go through Ingram spark you can select free Returns which makes it more likely that bookstores can stock you because it's all about reducing risk for the bookstore bookstores like free returns which essentially means they get a refund for unsold copies of books so let's say Barnes & Noble takes five copies of your book for every burn to Nobel in the country or let's say local Indy Joe takes three copies of your book and in six months the Barnes & Noble have only sold at any given store three of those copies which leaves two left over for every store and the indie could only sell two of the three well that those extra books they get to return them to the publisher and the publisher but we fund them the cost of those books so essentially bookstores don't have to eat the cost of books they can't sell the publishers take on that burden and by the way this trickles down to you is the author there's something called a reserve against returns so when you're looking at your royalty statements often firms the first couple of years of publication refer a certain number of royalty statements your publisher holds a reserve of profit against returns so that amount of money that is theoretically been made off your book because they've sold them the wholesaler to book stores doesn't count toward you earning out because they anticipate X percentage of your books are going to be returned to them and they're gonna have to refund the booksellers so that's the whole thing it goes high the reason this is very important to know about is this can be kind of the sticking point between being traditionally published with a large more established publisher and a smaller publisher that maybe is newer or just doesn't have the cash flow to support free returns and thus what can often happen with these is they'll say to the bookstore any copies you buy are non-returnable and so that means at the bookstore either sometimes we'll opt not to carry any titles from a publisher because it's just too high of a risk if they can't move the copies or they're going to take far less if they do take them at all and where I've seen this come up with friends of mine is to me I'm published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt which is a it's one of the majors but it's not big five but they're long established and if they do free returns with bookstores so never any problem for me to do an event with a bookstore they have plenty of copies of my book they're able to order let's say I'm doing an event they'll order 20 copies to have in store and it represents no risk for them because if they don't sell they can return them to my publisher but I know people who have been published with smaller publishers still traditionally published where that isn't the case they try to set up a bookstore event and they're told by the bookstore they have to pay for their own stock supply their own stock because the bookstore will not order 20 copies of their book because if they only sell five of them they're stuck with 15 copies and that's a waste of money to them so it's it can be good to kind of ask upfront before you're getting a publishing deal talk to your agent talked to the publisher and you might not want to sell to publishers that don't kind of have those terms because it can definitely impact your experience as an author you're likely to be carried in fewer bookstores if at all and you can encounter problems where you do have to pay it for your own stock just to do a signing event so there there's definitely a variance of experiences across traditional publishing so next I want to talk about the power of bar Noble or the juggernaut of Barnes and Noble and of course everything I'm talking about is really the us-based industry and I can't really speak to foreign markets it's easy it's just a folk on the focus on the traditional published us book market and here all we have left in terms of major bookstore chains is Barnes and Noble they're the last one standing though a couple of markets do have books a million and me your elder I just remember when there were so many bookstore chains there there was B Dalton books and borders of course Barnes and Noble you just had more choices there's more than I can't even think of but my region B Dalton was like the major in competition with borders and Barnes and Noble and then they all went away except for Barnes and Noble and we've had a situation for a while where Barnes and Noble has an inordinate amount of power I mean between Barnes & Noble and Amazon there are a lot of concerning things facing the book industry though happily in the last couple of years we've seen a real resurgence of India bookstores which is a good thing but burnsy Noble has a lot of power because they are the major national chain book store so this brings me into like the next section of things to know about bookstores fascinating things to know about bookstores when it comes to Barnes & Noble and how it really an impact the bookstore market so Byrnes ennoble has a ton of power because if a book isn't stocked in Barnes & Noble if Barnes & Noble declines to carry a title I can seriously impact the life of that book the sales that can get etc and so publishers strive to do whatever they can do to get books picked up by Barnes & Noble because it does happen sometimes that Barnes & Noble declines to carry a title book store carriage is not guaranteed when you were traditionally published it is statistically way way way way way way more likely than if you're doing Indy or even if you're with a legitimate small publisher but it's not guaranteed you can be with a big v publisher and Barnes Noble can decline to stock your title but publishers do everything in their power to avoid this and some things that Barnes Noble therefore has some sway over real power over is your title and your cover Barnes ennoble can say we don't like that title or we don't like that cover and in order to get at Stockton Barnes ennoble your publisher has to change it if they want to be in Barnes & Nobles so those things can definitely happen and then the size of your Barnes & Noble order can make a huge difference with like your print run and like the health of your book and kind of people being able to go into any store around the country and buy your book it really varies widely you probably might want to hear some averages though since you're here to learn everything about books or distribution so generally if you get one to two copies of your book stocked in a bookstore at any given time upon release up into a certain point which we're gonna talk about weeding that's another thing that not everyone knows about bookstores and traditional publishing publishing in general but if you get one to two copies on shelves at most bookstores you're doing very very well you're gonna have the healthy print run good chance at selling especially if the booksellers are hand selling your book you have more than that it's pretty big deal but just to warn you that many traditionally published books only get one copy stocked at any given time in bookstores a lot of authors I think end up being disappointed because of course we we see the dream we hope for the dream where you going to a bookstore and oh my gosh they have ten copies of your book and they sell them and that's just not the norm a lot of titles just get one book stocked in any given bookstore and that can still be a very healthy print run and of course if they sell that copy they order another to replace it on the shelves but it's more rare to have three four five copies that at any given time on the shelves they do those for the books that are really going to be moving because generally because of the warehouse system with the distributors they have a lot of them around the country they're strategically placed and I an indie book seller friend of mine told me they can get a title 24 hours max 48 in a lot of cases so if you're looking to order a title you don't always have to go with Amazon for their prime shipping your local indie can get that book just as fast if not faster which brings me to things publishers pay Barnes & Noble for so this might blow some minds this was definitely a learning moment for me I was like wow cool also I hate everything so publishers pay Barnes and Noble to put books on display any time you see a book on a display table like summer favorites new releases why a series to read whatever or endcaps so those are the caps at the end of the aisles of bookstores usually themed like recommended blah blah blah 90% of the time publishers have paid for that positioning they're paying I I don't know if it's by week or by month but they pay to have your book featured on the table they'll pay for the 20% off promo and getting it on the table of course there are cases where employees do their own recommended things usually on an end cap and as far as I know publishers aren't paying for that so that would represent the exception but by and large if you're getting that focused out of Barnes & Noble store it's because your publisher paid for it similarly if you see a special display like they'll do these really fancy like custom cardboard displays for new releases 100% those are being paid for and kind of in the tier of paid marketing from your publisher that's like at the top if you get a special display at Barnes & Noble you're probably a league title and your publisher is shelling out a lot of money it's more like mid-level to get paid display on tables or on end caps and then if you're not in the top of the pile marketing-wise they're not gonna do any extra payment and you're just gonna be on the shelf like normal now there are things they're newer like the Barnes & Noble book club that I've noticed and I want to say they're doing a book box I know indigo does in Canada I don't know if those are paid but I highly suspect those are paid for by the publisher don't quote me on that I haven't had the guts to ask and I certainly haven't had that myself but just part a lot of this I've learned through my own experiences so I found out that they paid for the display tables because my publisher paid for me to be on a display table and I was like also Thank You publisher you're great but this should both I mean slightly horrify you but it should be elucidating but also maybe really so if you're an author and you are traditionally published and you're just really disappointed that you're not on display tables are endcaps it's not your fault it's not because you aren't good enough and the bookstore doesn't love you often it's pay-to-play it's that your publisher hasn't paid for that privilege so I also strongly suspect this is the case with target as well I suspect some of the highlighted titles at Target might be paid for as well but I know way less about target cuz here girl let's definitely not in target need to learn more about that hopefully by getting into target someday now I can say as far as I know and could confirm with my friends who work in indie booksellers indie stores are not paid the the bookstores don't essentially give them context for this preferred placement so anytime you're seeing a curated display or table in an indie that is genuine 100% the indie bookstore deciding to support that book and that author and putting it out there the one exception to that in indie stores will be ending next picks but that's not paid either indie next is a program put together by indie booksellers where they're sent advanced copies of books and then every season they pick a certain number of books that are like ones to watch so they're any next picks and those are highlighted in the store that's not paid for though that's just kind of a extra thing that can happen with bookstores which I guess again is another thing to know about traditional publishing this is a possibility where you can be in the knee next pick which can really help your visibility and your sales across the country attending bookstores okay so lastly with bookstores I want to talk about shelf life and weeding kind of going into this as paperbacks this is one that a lot of people don't know about or don't kind of consciously realize or recognize once you're in there and you really think about it both as a consumer and as an author it totally makes sense but the sad reality is most books simply don't remain on the shelves that that's because there are constantly new books coming out and bookstores need to stock the shelves with titles that are going to move things that they can sell its business the huge hit books will always have shelf space at the bookstore and that's why I think a lot of us don't realize or take for granted that your book will always be physically on the shelves at a bookstore because we as consumers go to stores years over years and we always see The Hunger Games or Harry Potter or Red Queen or John Green because of course we do these are perennial sellers a bookstore can always move a copy of these books and so they always keep them in stock but the vast majority of titles that's simply not the case I recently posted a video about midlist which you can watch if you want to hear more about this the mid list falls in the middle it's steady books that sell well enough but they're not evergreen best-selling titles and so these are exactly the kind of books that you're gonna see churn on the shelves though some Midwest favorites will have a longer shelf life because they are mythos favorites but all that stuff below the mid list when a book comes out and it just doesn't perform it's going to be weeded from the shelves this is a practice that happens both at bookstores and libraries but focusing specifically on bookstores it's literally just about can the book store move the stock there can be cases where a book store stocks even just one copy of a book and it doesn't sell in eight months and so they just can't keep it on the shelves anymore the book just didn't sell to their local book buying population and so they returned it to the publisher some bookstores are going to start the weeding process earlier than others it depends on the size of the store the appeal of the title whether they want to give it more time and the volume of more titles coming out it can also be genre and publisher specific certain genres have much higher turnover than others meaning lots of titles continually coming out like why a fantasy would definitely be one of those but you know outside away like historical novels there just aren't as many as of them so there might be a longer shelf life of books it's it's physically about shelf space and then with specific publishers as I mentioned you know those incentive programs you know to get XYZ number of Harper penguin Random House titles on the shelves bookstores can't have only HarperCollins books are only penguin Random House books they want to have a variety of titles from a variety of different publishers so very often you'll see I've noticed this specifically with Harper Teen Harper teen publishes a lot of books I'd noticed at best the shelf life but a Harper teen title is going to be six months it's often shorter though they released so many titles that it's almost like the bookstores have a certain quota for her fourteen books and when new ones come out they have to shuffle the old ones off the shelf so you might see her turnover if your publisher publishes way more titles in a specific genre or space the titles will stay for sale on the websites of the bookstores they're still viable through the nd you can or burn to Noble you can always order them and have them shipped to you or pick up in store but when you're weeded you're no longer sitting on the shelves for any random person to come into the bookstore to browse and buy so for example I'm definitely not on bookshelves anymore and most bookstores that's been oh gosh a year and three or four months since my book came out honestly I'd be shocked if it was still in shelves six months after my book came out so I think some bookstores did keep me for like eight months thank you but the shelf life of my debut novel has passed at most bookstores but I have a new book coming out in February of 2020 and a paperback release scheduled for the same day paperback release of that first book the reason publishers do this I also have a video on paperbacks you can watch if you want to learn more from there and whole link to it down below the reason publishers release the paperbacks of previous titles either really really close to the release of a new hardcover or the same day is to get back on the Shelf space if the hardcover has been weeded and no longer has a home on the shelves the paperback is a new release a new opportunity for people to buy it and the bookstore will stock the paper back alongside your new hardcover so that is another chance at shelf-life so my new paperback hopefully will be on the shelves for six to eight months alongside my hardcover it's a cycle it's a life cycle and that's just kind of a reality of books and really I just want to close on kind of the fickleness of bookstores in the industry meaning just as a caution that when you're traditionally published or published at all you're definitely end up having feelings in bookstores if you're lucky you're carried in every bookstore imaginable and you can walk into any bookstore and see your book and it's a great feeling but it also happens often enough especially if you're not a big splashy breakout title that you're gonna go to a bookstore and your book isn't there and it's always kind of a bummer and then once the shelf life of your book passes and you've been weeded you're not gonna see it anymore and it's a bummer again but at least you're in the same boat as a lot of other titles but it's just to let you know that the book selling in bookstores it's a very cyclical business nothing lasts forever unless you're a huge food seller but that's why it's always write more books you want to try to get more deals as you develop a back list especially if you do have a more successful book you increase your chances of being worst some shelf space so that they carry your books longer-term your we need less often or just you know Indies liking you or booksellers a foreign Sanibel liking you hand selling can do a lot for a book and if a book performs very very well in a specific bookstore or location they're more likely to stock your book because they know their local readers might potentially like this so it's always an interesting thing oh and also very very important for you to establish a relationship with your local bookstore don't just think that there are these weird you know faraway corporate or you know indie entities who don't want to talk to you I know it's scary I had been terrified every time I've done it but introducing yourself at your local bookstore your indie or your burns and Noble is always valuable because they're more likely to stock your book including long-term if you're local and they like you plus you can do events there so that is the nutshell of how bookstore distribution works for traditional publishing generally and just some of the cool things to know secrets disappointments but not symbols of how it works for traditional publishing as I said I'm always learning more things so maybe I'll learn even more about bookstores and have more to tell you but this should work as a primer for anyone who's interested in traditional publishing and getting their books in bookstores and kind of how it works let me know it down below in the comments any questions you have about this whole thing it's a big topic if I don't know something I'll try to ask a bookseller girfriend and find out for you I've definitely learned just by asking questions by seeing something and asking either my publisher or friends like what's this about how does it work and I've I've learned a lot about the business give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I will make more in-depth videos about the nitty gritty of traditional publishing if you're not are subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week thank you so much for watching and as always guys happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 13,684

Rating: 4.9739923 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, book store distribution, how books get into book stores, can i get my book into a book store, barnes and noble, book store secrets, are book stores paid, traditional publishing, book distribution

Id: K5BfO9T8qeQ

Length: 29min 28sec (1768 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019