Publishing Hub: How does the Trade distribution work

Oliver - Lord of the reads: +3087

Hi Alan,

If I may I’ll broaden the question scope to describing the different forms of distribution. Books can be distributed in three ways.

Direct from CompletelyNovel.
CompletelyNovel distribution is available to everyone and is when your readers buy directly from you through CompletelyNovel.com. When books are bought this way the order is sent to a printer who prints the book and sends it to your customer. Because there are no other retailers or distributors in this supply chain this provides the best deal for you and the customer.

CompletelyNovel merchant accounts.
CompletelyNovel merchant account distribution is available to plus and pro accounts. This is for orders placed on other websites such as Amazon which have support for independent sellers. This means an Amazon customer can purchase a book from CompletelyNovel through Amazon and we will send out a book. When Amazon credit our account we will credit your account will all the proceeds of the sale after amazon and logistics fees.

The last is the trade distribution.
This is only available to pro account authors due to the complexity of this option.
CompletelyNovel lists your book in a distribution catalogue so any shop or distributor can sell your book. This provides the widest coverage as any trade book seller can sell your book (this is how most mainstream publishers distribute their books). Retailers and distributors take fees along the way which is around 40% of the cover price. As your book is printed using print-on-demand this can make the cover price quite high. When the distributor pays us (usually 30 days credit after end of month) we will credit your account with the remaining income after printing and distribution/retail fees are paid. The printing fee is the printing price for your book and the distribution/retail fees are up to 40%. Here are a couple of examples of trade distribution:
- A high street book shop requests your book to stock, they place an order through the ISBN agency and a distributor such as Gardners will pick up that request and place the order with CompletelyNovel. We will get the book printed and sent to Gardners to send to the retailer.
- An Amazon customer purchases your book from amazon.com (not a merchant account), Amazon will request the book to be sent directly to the customer from one of their preferred distributors. If your printer is Lightning Source they will fulfill directly to the customer as they are one of the preferred distributors (this is faster and cheaper). At the time of writing (11/02/2011), if your printer is CPI Antony Rowe the order will be sent to Gardners (a distributor) who will request the book from CompletelyNovel who will fulfill the order.