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Services for Publishers from LSN Library
Small presses:
would you like to put your books in more places where people can see them? Are you sick of online distributors who offer verbiage about sales and marketing...but don't actually put your books into shops? Would you like to display your book in the centre of London to hundreds of shoppers and tourists, from here and abroad? What about bookshops overseas? Can you take payment straight from your web pages for your books? Would you like us to link up your site with our payment service, or even let us host your website? We can help.
Read between the lines and you'll discover that most distributors offer a storage and postal service for hard copy books in essence. If someone
already knows
about your book and wants a copy, the distributor will post one off. We'll do this for you too, and like other distributors, we'll list your hard copy books in our catalogues, and depending on the book's merit, may place it in shops, free (for some special books) or with a smalll fee. You can even
rent a year's space
from us on bookstands in central London, to give hundreds of customers direct access to your books each week. But posting off a book catalogue in the mail occasionally to a few bookshops, or listing your company's name as one of many publishers becomes 'sales and marketing' and 'representation' on the sales pages of many distributors and publishing websites. We must be forgiving - it's nearly impossible to make headway in a close industry - but headway - and exposure - IS possible - it's just a lot of effort. The question is, how many
new
books actually make it into shops each year thanks to most distributors' efforts? How many bookshops order books based on a catalogue listing? How many distributors offer international presence for actual, physical books?
What few distributors will offer, because it is difficult and time consuming, is a ground service and physical book display presence: Our reps go out regularly and meet with shop owners and salespeople. We show new books physically, in person, to individual shop owners, and we discuss where your books might be displayed. We discuss what bonus offers we can give to customers to encourage them to buy books. We always try to offer a pick of books on different subjects, because it helps us keep interest in new books and offerings, and we exhibit at festivals, events and exhibitions around the world. We maintain supplies of books to counter displays in central London, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. And periodically, we go on road trips with our book selections, and meet and distribute among regional retailers.
How to get us to distribute your book
It's a simple matter to get us to distribute your books. To start with, send us a copy of each one, and enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope or carton, or courier account number, if you want the copy returned to you. Our quality control team will assess where your book will fit in with our other selections, and based on that, we'll make you an offer. It might be that we can offer you the usual distribution services of listings, of listing your book with us for selling online, or we may offer promotional feature articles, or storage and postal services. If you have eco-minded, green-theme, children's or fantasy books, organic cookbooks or gardening guides, you might be offered a place on our displays in central London. If you agree to sign up for some of our services, and then decide to cancel, we'll ask you to pay postage or shipping costs to return your books to you.
Remember: one reason for publishing your book is to create sales
- to be one of many listings in a catalogue is certainly better than nothing, but when you are trying to show people why they should buy your book or stock it, there is no substitute for actual contact between the retailer or shopper and the book! We also offer web download pages for individual books that are offered electronically. If you'd like to sell your book or books using these pages, we can refer you to a typesetter in our network who will convert your book for electronic sales if you need one.
Use only Royal Mail to send your book (or equivalent, if overseas)
If you live in Britain, post your book second class by ordinary mail to us - the postage will cost less than £1.50 for most books sent within UK. The workers at the Royal Mail distribution centres have a good accuracy rate and are faster and cheaper than most of the big courier companies. You can include a second envelope in your package, stamped second class prepaid postage, and addressed to yourself if you want us to return your book. Books sent by TNT, DHL or similar will not be accepted, sorry. (We do use courier companies but only if lots of books are being shipped at once
!). If posting from overseas, use the regular postal service in your country, not courier companies. You'll need to ensure the postal service delivers to BOX NUMBERS. The best way is to use your normal postal system run by the government or similar. Include your email address with your book so that we can contact you quickly.
booksellers services