How to Publish Yourself in the UK
So you have a book. It's written, it's designed, it has its own ISBN, it's printed and it's registered. You should see it beginning to appear on the online bookshops. Try Amazon or some of the others. You can search using your new ISBN!
Amazon have several services available to help the publisher. Start with their Publishers Guide, which will explain how to get your book listed on amazon.co.uk, much of which will be useful for the other online bookshops.
Their Advantage Programme seems to be listed but ‘closed to new registrants’ at the moment. This allows publishers to send books direct to Amazon.co.uk at a massive discount - currently 60% off the cover price but it does have advantages. The main one is that your book will show as 'In Stock' and will ship within 24 hours. I can't find any serious other advantages and the main disadvantage is the amount of discount they insist on. However, it provides a lot of useful information for the self-publisher and will stand you in good stead when it comes to getting information about getting your book onto other websites.
You now need to visit all the other web based bookshops and add 'Author Comments' and update the data they have with your own, as required. You may also want to add photos. Each has its own way of doing this - you just need to click on the various help buttons on the pages that contain your book info.
This is important for self-publishers – the old (Whitaker) tele-ordering system is still running after 30 years or so. Following the demise of Whitaker, it is now run by Nielsen’s SupplyData team and provides a way for bookshops and wholesalers to buy direct from you as the publisher.
Order alerts are sent to publishers in an email containing a link to the system, valid for 7 days. You’ll need to promptly acknowledge the order and say if you will or won’t be fulfilling it.
You can sign up for BookNet and amend any details using the details below. To sign up you will need a Distributor number. If you register your book through Nielsen you will get this as a part of the process.
And now for the hard bit. Getting your book into the shops! Most large bookshops now insist that you go through their head offices to get an account with them. You generally need an account in order to supply them. This sets up your account details - your publishing name, contact details, terms and conditions of sale and so on. Without an account it's pretty hard to supply them at all.
Waterstones used to allow you to sign up with a local shop but that practice seems to have stopped now with them wanting to reduce the number of suppliers they deal with.
WH Smiths insist you go through their head office and so do Books etc. All contact details are below.
Before you get on the phone, you need to prepare some "Advance Information". This is simply a single A4 page describing your book, just like you did earlier with the Bibliographic data for the online stores. This time though, you need to make it look good, include a picture of the cover, add the groovy words from the back cover and provide the relevant ordering info. You can do all this on your general household PC.
The order of events is as follows:
You may well be palmed off with some reason why they don't have time to talk to you - don't be put off
This can be disheartening work but it has to be done. Use all the tactics you can think of to get the buyer to either look at your book or suggest other routes to supply.
If the large chains are hard work then you can start at the other end of the scale - the local bookshops. In fact you might want to start with your local bookshop. Ask for the manager, explain you are a local publisher then go through the same conversation that is laid out above. It’s easier and good practice for when you call the big boys!
Remember to be professional - have a copy of the book to leave, some advance information, your contact details - a business card made on your PC will do. Avoid looking scruffy, taking your stuff in a carrier bag or worse still, not being prepared at all. Don't forget a paper and pen as you may need to write stuff down.
On the assumption you manage to get someone to take some books you'll need to be able to come up with the terms and conditions. The first few times you'll get ripped off as the manager takes advantage of your obvious newness to the trade, discomfort and lack of experience. Though, these days they’ll probably only order if they can from a distributor, as we discussed above.
However, be ready with the discount - most shops will settle for 30% off but they'll start at more like 50% off. You need to negotiate and you'll end up somewhere between 33-40%. This would be OK. They will also expect “Sale or Return”. This is a misused and abused term which these days seems to mean that if at any point before they die, they decide to return the books, they can! You'll probably have to agree to “sale or return” but you may be able to convince them to go FIRM SALE - i.e. no returns, in return for a slightly larger discount. Or at least put a limit on the time that returns will be accepted – like maybe 3 or 6 months.
The other bargaining tool is the credit terms. Most bookshops will go with 30 days. This usually means they will pay you at the end of the month following the one you sold them the books in.
Basically you are aiming for:
The bookshop will be looking for:
Most often you should be able to settle on 30-40%, SOR and 30 days. More than this and you have been fleeced! And I'd recommend a 'negotiation skills' class!
So you settle on a deal - now you need to provide the books and an invoice.
Parcelforce provide a useful service for delivery of books. It is pricey but available through your local Post Office. This is who I used. Once your volumes are starting to pick up - call them direct and set up an account. You can negotiate prices with them and get them to collect from you. You’ll end up paying less for a 48 hour service than you do at the Post Office for their standard service - which can take up to 4 weeks at Christmas time.
However, the world has moved on and there are new options. I doubt I’d be using Parcelforce in 2019 since so many alternatives have appeared. Basically I’d pop to a service like Parcel2Go.com and drop packages of at my local Petrol station. Easy! Of course, there are other sites like this and you can have packages collected too but the ability to drop off at your local petrol station or some other location at a time convenient to you is pretty handy!
International shipping is a whole other subject and expense which we cover in the next section.
Some larger book shops will provide you with a template for their invoices. I used one from Waterstones and it has stood me in good stead for all chains so far. Here is an example.
It was possible to act as your own distributor/wholesaler when I did my books and then you can just supply the bookshops directly yourself. But in 2019 I notice that even Waterstones have moved to a central buying team and a wholesaler model. Mind you, they should have done that, years ago. It makes life simple for them, but harder (and more expensive) for us!
So, for the main book chains, you need to find a wholesaler. The main book wholesalers in the UK are Bertram Books and Gardners.
You can still market your book direct to the shops but they will buy from the Wholesalers.
The normal wholesaler terms are pretty nasty - 90 days credit and 55% off the list price. These are not very negotiable, particularly for the small publisher. But it may be your only way into the main bookshops. Do try and haggle though!
Things have changed a lot since I published my first books. Whitakers had an ordering service that connected book shops with publishers like me for ordering but that has gone now.
I was lucky with Waterstones as I set up an account before they cracked down on small suppliers. It would be worth asking the larger shops what they recommend for small publishers if they give you a hard time. You do need to be persistent. With Books etc I spoke to the main buyer about three times and in the end pleaded with her to give a small publisher a break in life. That's what did it - I can still remember her (she sounded like Roz from Monsters Inc) saying in that slow, grating voice ... 'OK I'll give your little book a try'. That was years ago and now I have an account I steer well away from head office and just talk to the branches!!
I gave up with WH Smiths in the High Street. I did all the right things, got the right buyer, had a chat, sent him a book and called back. He said he had looked at it carefully and given it full consideration and that he would not take it. After selling 20,000 copies I tried again but he still was not interested.
Interestingly though, his colleague in WH Smith Travel Retail likes the book and sells lots of them at their railway station and airport shops. Just goes to show – don’t give up!
I kept away from wholesale as I thought they were an expensive option. Whilst I had no contract with them the only thing they could do if they got orders from bookshops was use a pro-forma system to order from me. This is great as it means they send me an order, I send them an invoice at much reduced discounts - I gave 25% and charged postage. They pay and THEN you send the books. The disadvantage is that you don't know if you are losing orders because they do not stock your book. These days I doubt they’d get into this though.
So I set up an account with Gardners - I managed to haggle the discount down a little but they would not move on the 90 day terms. The main reason I did this was because Hammicks only seem to order from them, some other bookshops rely on them, and I wanted to see what happened to the pro-forma orders from Bertrams (they stopped).
So far Gardners are selling it quite well and let you see the stock level on their website so you can see how well they are going.
