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How to Find Book Distributors and Book Wholesalers

Book Distributors

Book Distributors are an important ally if you want to sell to bookstores. The role of a Distributor is to fulfill orders from booksellers. Most book retailers will not purchase directly from a self publisher or small press. It would be a logistics nightmare for a bookseller to process the thousands of purchase orders from small publishers.

Distributors can perform the following services:

  • provide online and printed catalogs
  • provide a telephone order number
  • store your book
  • ship orders to retailers and booksellers
  • handle returns

Services N-O-T Provided by Book Distributors

Keep in mind the Distributor does not market your book. Their role is to make the book available when orders are placed. Your role as a self publisher is to fuel book demand.

How to Choose a Distributor

You should choose book distributors or book wholesalers with nation wide coverage and distribution to online booksellers like Amazon.com. Be careful with small wholesale book distributors. Some have closed their doors overnight due to financial problems. When this happens any book inventory may be held by creditors for auction -- even if the distributor has your books on consignment!



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Resources

Baker & Taylor
Baker & Taylor is one of the larges library book wholesalers that generally places very small orders.

Biblio Book Distributors
A Division of National Book Network. Biblio was formed in early 2001 to provide a new approach to effectively representing books published by small trade publishers by offering warehousing, distribution, sales and other operation services. They have relationships with Ingram Book Group.

Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Consortium Book Sales & Distribution is the exclusive distributor of books for over 50 publishers, offering sales and marketing expertise, order fulfillment and customer service throughout the United States and Canada.

Gardners Books
The UK's leading book wholesalers, with over 150,000 titles in stock from over 1,650 publishers.

Independent Publishers Group
IPG acts as book distributors for small publishers throughout the U.S. and worldwide.

Ingram Book Distributor
Ingram is one of the largest book wholesalers in the United States, and the best avenue for getting your books into bookstores. I list them here for reference. They are currently not accepting small press publishers directly. Although they have affiliations with other distributors that get you in the Ingram book database (See Biblio Distribution and Lightning Source).

Lightning Source Inc.
Complete Digital Fulfillment. Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries Inc., offers a suite of digital fulfillment services to the book industry. Lightning offers one of the most comprehensive packages of print-on-demand and distribution services on the market today. They cover 90% of all bookstores in the U.S.

Publishers Group West
One of the largest marketing and distribution companies for independent publishers.

Quality Books Inc.
One of the largest book distributors to libraries, they have a reputation of dealing well with small publishers.