How to get a book published is just one of the tasks authors face. How do books get in the bookstores?
After the literary agents, book editors, and the marketing departments at book publishing houses have all made their decisions about what will be published, in what quantities, and how the finished product will look, there is one final decision maker who ultimately decides what books will be presented for sale to consumers: The buyer for the bookstores.
The decision maker for the independent bookstores is often the owner, or the owner and several employees. The chains have corporate buyers who specialize in different areas. The buyer looks at the prior sales history of the author, or if it is the author’s first book, the buyer will look at similar titles or topics. Of course the books publisher's sales rep lets the buyer know of the marketing push the title will receive from the book publisher.
If advanced reading copies are available or galleys – the uncorrected page proofs of a book, these are sent by the book publisher to the chains and major independents three to four months prior to the title’s publication date.
Booksellers usually buy their first order of a new title from the book publisher through their sales reps. Subsequent orders can be placed directly with the book publisher or through a wholesale distributor, which allows the bookstore to batch their orders to several different book publishers and receive one invoice and make only one payment. It also allows the bookstore to return books from different book publishers to one place –the wholesaler.
The decisions book buyers make about what titles to stock are a blend of taking into account the sales pitches from book publishers’ reps, historical sales data they have collected about an author or a topic, knowledge of their customer base—and to a large extent simply what their gut instinct tells them will be popular.
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