What Do Bookstore Buyers Look For?

A bookstore buyer is ultimately deciding whether a title deserves scarce physical shelf space. That decision can involve several factors:

• Demand: Is there an established audience for the book? Does the author have a platform, publicity, events, or other marketing activity that can drive readers into stores?

• Category and positioning: Can the buyer immediately understand where the book belongs and who will buy it?

• Price and wholesale terms: Is the retail price competitive for the category, and do the wholesale terms allow the store to make an appropriate margin?

• Returnability: Returnable books generally present less financial risk to bookstores. IngramSpark notes that some booksellers will only purchase titles on a returnable basis.

• Metadata: Accurate title, subtitle, author, category, description, price, publication date, and other metadata help buyers and booksellers discover and order the book.

• Professional presentation: Cover design, trim size, binding, and overall production quality need to meet readers’ and retailers’ expectations.

• Reviews and publicity: Reviews, media attention, awards, endorsements, and other third-party validation can help demonstrate potential demand.

If you spend enough time talking to publishers, you will hear the same phrase repeated again and again: “We have distribution.” Sometimes that statement is accurate. More often, it is used loosely enough that it becomes difficult for authors to evaluate what it really means.

The challenge is that distribution has become one of the least clearly defined terms in publishing. When authors rely on the term alone, rather than understanding the underlying systems, they often make decisions based on potentially misleading language instead of reality. In practice, distribution requires infrastructure.

A more useful approach, then, is to ask a different question: What systems are actually supporting my book once it is in the market, and will I have visibility into them?

Why “Being in Ingram” Is Not a Strategy

One of the most common phrases we hear from authors is, “My book is distributed through Ingram.” It’s usually said with relief, sometimes with pride, and often with the assumption that a major hurdle has been cleared. However, that’s often not the case.

A book does not move from author to bookstore shelf in a straight line. It moves through a layered system: publisher to distributor to wholesaler to retailer to reader. Each layer serves a specific function. When those functions get conflated, authors mistake access for traction.

When it comes to whether or not to use your author photo for the front cover design, the answer is – it depends, but probably not. Here are some essentialthings to consider when making this choice for your book.

When books are published, they need to be classified into specific genres and subcategories so that bookstores and consumers can best find them. Two of the primary means of classification are BISAC codes and Amazon categories. A great deal of confusion surrounds these two systems and the differences between them, but they each serve a specific purpose for different groups of people.

What is the best way to properly price a book?

Bookstore events are an exciting part of the book launch. Many authors look forward to readings, signings, and bookstore-hosted workshops and have visions of hundreds of people waiting in line to buy their book. Here’s how to approach to planning a bookstore event and some of the related pros and cons.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple are the big dogs on the ebook scene, but they aren’t the sole providers of electronic books—not everyone who reads ebooks has a Kindle, Nook, or iPad. Let’s look at a few of the other players who still get quite a bit of traffic.