How Book Distributors Drive Sales In The Industry
Book Distributors
Book distributors have a vitally important part to play in the way printed material finds its way to the people who want to read it. This is just as true for the books which are created online and self published, as it is for the books published by the large traditional publishing houses, although the system operates in a completely different way. If you are looking to use self publishing as a platform from which to launch a productive career as an author, it will be a good idea to learn how the distributorship program works.
Book distribution is designed to allow retailers stocks of the books which will sell to their target customers. A lot of effort will have gone into carrying out the market research and data analysis needed to know which books are likely to sell in which shops, in which areas. This research can also be used to make sure that any special events created to sell the books have the best possible chance of success. If an author is going to making a special appearance and signing copies of their book, they can make sure the signing is in the right place.
Traditional book publishers only take on books which they expect to sell in large quantities, which is why new authors have such a difficult time breaking in to the market. When a big name author writes a book, they will usually have been paid an advance fee by the publisher, so the publisher has every incentive to try to recover this as quickly as possible. The stores where the book is expected to sell well will already be expecting it, and they will have engaged in promotion before the book was even published.
Self published books are distributed in a different way, because the online retailers which sell them are effectively the distributors. They take on the job of listing the title in the marketplace, and satisfying any orders which come in. Even though this system makes it easy to publish a book and get it onto the Internet ready to be sold, sales are unlikely unless you can drive buying traffic to the web page where the book is being sold. This is something the online distributor cannot help with.
The most effective book distributors are the ones which combine good marketing with effective distribution. The machine which creates press releases and media attention can help to spark a great deal of interest in a book which is about to be published. Even if you are not a big name author, you can still sometimes benefit if you have written a book which is part of a series. Even though your name may not be known, the name of the series will be. See if you can benefit from the marketing of the book distributors.