How our books hit the shelves

Soon it will be almost a year since the launch of our crowdfunding project on Boomstarter, and only now our publications have appeared on the shelves of bookstores. And even now we do not directly supply them to the stores, but use the services of distributors.

Distributors

I'll tell you a little more. Shops refuse to work with authors directly due to the fact that the author has one, or a maximum of 3 books, and thousands of books are sold in stores. And if they work with thousands of authors or small suppliers, they will go crazy (this is their point of view, I personally disagree with it). Therefore, there are some kind of aggregators on the market or, in other words, distributors who accumulate books by many authors or publishers, do logistics in stores, keep records and carry out financial calculations.
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How are profits distributed

Distributors voice their commissions as 30-50%, bookstores add 100% more, depending on their scope. The picture with our book looks like this:

• we give the book to the distributor for 220r;
• distributor transfers it to the store at 300-330r;
• on the shelf of the bookstore it costs 580-660r.

At the same time, neither the distributor nor the store invest their money in the product, they take it exclusively for sale.

About estimated sales

Not a single distributor gave me any orientation on the intended sales, citing the fact that all the books are different. It’s pointless to argue with the fact that the books are different and the buyer decides what to buy and what not.

But out of the corner of my eye I was able to see the sales statistics of one of the largest bookstores in Moscow. And this statistics, frankly, depressing. The maximum sales of one of the bestsellers were only 50 copies per month. And the average figures - 2-4 copies per month. I am speaking, of course, about the off-line store, and not about the Internet.

I will add to this that even at the stage of studying the market for books, I turned to publishing houses with a proposal to publish our books and to the question of what circulation they would be able to sell in a year, all as one responded - 5,000 copies. Little or a lot is difficult to judge. Need to compare. But then I had nothing to compare with, and I took this data as a guide. But time passed and I got some kind of own statistics, focused on sales at the expense of their own forces. The first edition, 5000 copies, we sold the first book in 2 months. We reprinted the book and sold another 3,000 copies in 4 months. But there is still the sweetest period for sales - autumn and the pre-New Year rush.

So where is the mistake? Is our book so good or bookstores can't sell a product? So far I have no answer to this question, but with the appearance of our publications on the shelves of bookstores and as statistics accumulate, I expect to receive an answer to it. And get it.

First echelon

Now the books have gone to the shops of Moscow , Biblio Globus, the Moscow House of Books, and in 3 weeks they will appear in Ozone.


(photo from the store "Moscow" on Vozdvizhenka)