You’ve written a book - Congratulations! We applaud you! We know what an enormous amount of dedication writing a book can take. Whether your book winds up on our shelves or not, please know that we appreciate the effort, care and creativity that has brought you this far.
The Little Book Shop is proud to support and promote local authors by providing a bricks and mortar retail outlet for books published through non-traditional publishing sources.
When your book is self-published, published by a company that we do not already do business with, or is available only on a non-returnable basis, we will work directly with you to sell your book on consignment.
Our consignment program is an agreement between you, the author, and The Little Book Shop to offer your book for sale in our store and online. By leaving your books with us on consignment, you can expect that we will:
- Place your book for sale in our book shop in the appropriate genre.
- Place your book for sale in our online bookshop (images and description must be supplied by you through Neilsen or email).
- Track sales of your book using our computerised inventory system.
- Contact you if we need more copies.
- Issue a payment and remittance advice for each book within 48 hours of its sale.
- Remove your books from sale after 6 months unless it is continuing to sell well and both you and we agree to extend the consignment.
- Contact you at the end of your 6 month consignment period and it is your responsibility to pick up any unsold books at that time.
- Any books left beyond the consignment period will be disposed of by The Little Book Shop.
- We will only pay you for books that are sold. Damaged or stolen items are your sole financial responsibility.
In return, we expect you to:
- Leave copies for sale at our store (quantity specified by The Little Book Shop staff).
- Accept standard 60/40 publishing industry terms
- Include the fact that your book is available at The Little Book Shop in any and all of your marketing and advertising and add a link on your website/social media. It is important for you, as the publisher, to remember that marketing and promotion is up to you.
- Pick up any unsold copies of your book at the end of the 6 month consignment, understanding that any books left past that time will be disposed of by the bookshop.
The Little Book Shop reserves the right to refuse any book proffered for consignment deemed unsuitable for sale in the store.
We receive a high number of unsolicited self published books in the post and in our book shop. We’ve compiled some handy tips to help you stand out, increase your chance of having your book on our shelves, and in general make our lives easier.
Before you come to the book shop or send us an email requesting that we stock your book, please make sure you have the following basic information to hand:
- ISBN:
- Retail Price
- Wholesale Price
- Distribution method including any shipping fees
While many self published authors choose to publish through Amazon, it is only fair to let you know we will never directly do business with Amazon so for us to stock a book published through an Amazon platform, you must supply the books to us yourself. For more information why, we recommend you read How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine, owner of the Raven Bookstore.
Here are just a few things to consider when thinking about marketing your book in our bookshops - remember, we want all of your hard work to be rewarding, both for us and for you.
Quality (and we don’t mean the fluency of your prose and the intelligence of your thinking).
Is your book as perfect as possible? Spelling, grammar and typesetting count. If you are self-published, the company that prints your book may offer proofreading, or even a fair amount of editing, for a fee. Professional authors with the resources of an entire publishing house behind them have whole teams of people who do this for them. And readers are picky. If you are expecting your readers to pay as much for your book as they would pay for a book from a major publishing house, they are expecting a work of equal quality. Assemble your own team to make your book the best it can be.
Pricing
In order to sell, your book should be priced at or below the cost of other books of its size and sort. It’s easy to see how your book compares by browsing your local bookshop. When you negotiate for the production of your book, be sure to take that into account, as well as the fact that you will have to pay at least the industry standard discount to shops who stock your book, and reasonable sums for marketing so that readers can know your book is available. Do your math ahead of time so that you aren’t disappointed later.
Cover Art
Like it or not, books are judged by their covers.
Promotion
Create as professional an author bio and press release as you can to tell your story.
Contact local and regional media and use mailing lists, social media and print media to let people know you’ve published a book and which bookstores it’s available at.
Send out press releases, review copies and other promotional materials to local media and any other organisations with which you are affiliated.
Tell friends and family and send them to the store for copies - this generates the all-important buzz that generates more sales.
Branch out. How about high school and college alumni associations? Your writers’ group? Lions or Rotary? Your church or other places of gathering? Everyone you can send to the store for copies generates traffic and word-of-mouth for your book.
Consider a signing. Book signings are a great way to gather all of the folks you’ve been marketing to at one time - and crowds attract crowds. Bookshops are well connected to the readers in their communities and we can arrange book signings and author events for self-published authors whose books are selling well in our store.
Buy and read some of the following resource books:
Self-Publishing in New Zealand by H.L. Kennedy
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King
A Novel in a Year: From First Page to Last in 52 Weeks, by Louise Doughty
