Show Your ISBN At The Door Forum Getting on Shelves

Anyone who has ever marketed books will tell you that it isn't easy to get your book onto bookstore shelves. The reason for this is not that book store owners and buyers are evil ogres who are trying to keep us poor. They want the same thing that we want; to make money.

One of the most imortant commodities in any battle is knowledge and getting onto bookstore shelves is indeed, a battle. It's not enough to know that it's hard to get onto shelves, you have to know why it's hard. This is the information that I am here to provide for you. The biggest reasons that it's hard to get into book stores are outlined quite nicely in an article by Dee Power on the website AbsoluteWrite.com ( I have quoted the portion of that article that is relevant to us below:

Booksellers have to make money; if they don't the store will close. Books that are not offered with industry standard terms often won't be stocked, because the opportunity to make money decreases.

What are those terms?

Discount: The discount off the retail price has to be close to 40%. For example: If a book has a retail price of $20.00, the bookstore has to be able to buy it from the publisher, or the wholesaler, for no more than $12.00. That allows the store to make an $8.00 gross profit.

Payment terms: The bookstore has at least 90 days to pay for the books after they're shipped.

Returnability: The bookstore can return unsold books to the publisher or the wholesaler if they don't sell. These books aren't necessarily wasted or destroyed but can be sold to a different store.

Competitive pricing: Bookstore customers are reluctant to pay more than a certain price for paperback and hardcover books. Those that have a price above that resistant level-- $7 to $8 for mass market paperback, $15 to $20 for trade paperback, and no more than $28 for hardcover-- are more difficult for bookstores to sell.


Are you prepared to match those terms? If the answer is no, you will probably have trouble. If you can arrange to at least come close to those terms you might begin to hear some yes's.