Ep. 27: How to Get Your Book in Bookstores

Welcome to the Pub Date Podcast, the show where two book broads discuss what should happen before, during, and after your book publication date. Brought to you by Broad Book Group with your host Vanessa Campos and Jen Dorsey. Hey everybody, welcome to the Pub Date podcast. Hey Vanessa, happy Friday. How you doing?

Happy Friday. I'm doing great. There's not a cloud in the sky and I'm going to enjoy a cocktail later today. How are you?

Same, same. I am so bummed that we didn't get to talk last week because last weekend, last Saturday was National Independent Bookstore Day, which is huge. Did you, did you do any shopping online or in person?

I did my bookshop.org shopping, and I am waiting very ever so patiently to get my books. I decided I'm going to start reading in Spanish so that I can sharpen that first language a bit. But I'm going to start— that's what I did. I bought some books in Spanish and I bought some books in English, so I'm happy.

Nice. I did the same. I had a crazy busy day last Saturday. I had my first communion, I had a kid going to prom, I had all the things, and so I did not get to go shopping. So I also did the Bookshop thing and they were running 20% off, which was great. They hardly ever run a sale, ever. So yeah, I also stocked up. So yeah, I think it was— it was from what I could tell on social, it was a really good day for most independent bookstores, which is great. One place I didn't shop was Amazon physical stores. Because they're closing all of them.

Yes.

And that's not independent, for one thing.

And it's really hard to get into. And they're— the way of getting your book into that is, is an algorithm that I don't think anyone can crack.

So, correct. Yeah, I— if anyone missed it, Amazon's closing their physical bookstores. They did a little experiment a few years ago. They tried to do some physical locations, um, we went to a couple of them in our travels and adventures together, and they were cool. I mean, you know, they kind of felt like your local independent bookstore, but yet you knew it wasn't. So it just wasn't the same. I didn't think they didn't hit the same.

No, it was a— it was a, uh, I mean, you could run in and get like a charger and a book, um, but it just felt— it wasn't warm. It felt like the Amazon website, like, here's some random things that you could possibly be interested, right?

Like, I walked into a website is what it felt like. Yes. For sure. I think they finally realized that's not their jam, so they're pulling those stores as well as the Four Star stores, which I did kind of like because it was kind of like going into TJ Maxx or Marshalls. Yes, on steroids. So those were kind of cool, but I think there were around 67 locations. They're closing those. Their physical stuff only accounts for about 3% of their total rev, um, so they're kind of throwing all their, their physical store money into Whole Foods, I think.

Yes, in fact, actually, I think they're starting to— they figured out that food is the better bet for them physically. There's an Amazon Fresh store opening up near me, right across the street from my Sprouts.

So look out, Sprouts!

Look out, Sprouts! Yeah, exactly.

Coming for you. Well, the word on the street is B&N is actually looking to pick up some of those physical locations because B&N is changing. And sorry, B&N, Barnes Noble, um, they're kind of changing the way they do book selling too. They have in the last year, they've kind of reduced their footprint a little bit. When you go into a Barnes Noble store, it's a little more homey than it used to be. It doesn't feel like you're walking into a warehouse store anymore. So I think some of these smaller Amazon locations might be a really great fit for them to try, like an even smaller footprint style of store, to see if it works for them.

Yes. So that's actually— this is something that's been coming, you know, down the line for years now, right? Where it used to be like a big box store And now it's just like they're giving the power. I feel like the powers that be at Barnes Noble are giving the power back to the book buyers at that location. It's like, hey, you guys know what it is that is selling in your market, so why don't you acquire, not acquire, but buy books and get them on the shelves that make sense for your audience? So that opens up something very interesting for indie authors and hybrid, publishers to do.

Yes, ma'am.

So let's talk a little bit about that. So let's say that you are a business owner, a CEO, entrepreneur who just did their book, and you followed all the rules, all the, uh, you have your check mark list, you did everything to make your book look and feel like a Big Five book, and you have digital distribution through maybe like an IngramSpark, but you really wanna get into your local bookstore. I think that's the big question.

That's the burning question and one that we get all the time. Well, how do I just get my book in the bookstore? I wanna see it on the shelf. I want that, mm-hmm, that feeling of accomplishment that comes with being a published author. And the way I'm gonna get that feeling is I'm gonna walk into Barnes Noble or my local indie and there's my book and I'm gonna see it. I think that's a good question to ask and I think we should try to answer it today.

Yes. So let's say you're that author. You have that finished book. It meets all the criteria. So there, there is some criteria that booksellers across the board, whether or not they're a national chain like a Barnes Noble or like if you're in Canada, you're in an Indigo, and even an independent bookseller is looking to have. So is your metadata there? Is your BISAC category selected? Does it make sense? Do you have a barcode? Barcodes are important. Does it look and feel like a book? Is your final quality good? All of this could be done with a really good community of book professionals like us that, you know, we've been working in this industry for long enough and we know what that checkmark looks like. But so say you have this and say you're excited and you're walking into a bookstore. Jen, should I just walk in with my book, my physical book, or do I need anything else?

Oh, let's talk about that, because I think the answer is different depending on what kind of bookstore it is that you're going into. Um, well, no, the answer isn't different, it's just nuanced. I'll put it that way. You should definitely have more than just your book in your hand, but there are a couple of different things to, to think about. First of all, to your point that you need all of this industry speak stuff that we just mentioned— metadata, BISAC codes, ISBN barcode— if that, if those words mean nothing to you and you're listening to our conversation right now, then you need some help. You need someone to help you figure that out, because no bookstore is going to take the thing that you took to Kinko's to make and, and sell it on their bookshelves. Keep in mind that even though books give us this wonderful feeling inside, and it's— there are a lot of passion project people in books, and we all love books, at the end of the day, books is a business. And so if you cannot go into the physical marketplace with all of the things that are required to sell a book, then you don't have a book that you can— that anyone can sell. So at the end of the day, people still have to make money, people still have to earn a living. And so doing all those things like getting metadata, BISAC, ISBN code is the basic model of what you have to do to let your book be a player. So a couple things, um, I think first, if you really want to get your book into a chain bookstore, that's where you need a bigger community, you need a bigger village to help you do that. And the The reason is that most buyers for national chains like Barnes Noble, like Books-A-Million, like Indigo, work at the national or regional level with distributors like Ingram, like IPG, or the Publishers Group. They are buying things from salespeople who know how to sell books. And so your best bet for wide coverage there is to work with a distributor, is to work with someone like Ingram, or if you're very small, like National Book Network. They take on very small publishers there. If you're an if you have your own little metal on the spine of the book and it says, you know, Joe's Publishing House, and you're gonna have more than one title, then those are good options for you. You know, Ingram has different verticals for different kinds of publishers. So like Consortium's for very small, Two Rivers is for very small publishers, and BN is for small publishers. They're not Ingram, but at any rate, you should look into working with a distributor like that. Because, you know, you really need to be able to have someone going in there making a case for your book who knows how to do that, who does that for a living. And to me, that's valuable. It's almost like the question of, should I work with an agent? Well, you don't have to. But if you work with an agent, you're probably going to get put in front of bigger publishers, right? You're probably going to have opportunities for more money. It's the same concept here. If you've got someone out there representing you, you're probably going to get into more stores than you would if you were just trying to cold call people yourself. That's my advice for the chain bookstores. Now that said, you can also go grassroots. You can give it a shot. And a couple ways you can do that for the chains, you can have friends and family go into your local chain store and request your book. Bookstores all have access to the same metadata style catalogs. So like they look at Edelweiss, they look at, you know, their distribution systems. All of them can pull a specific ISBN number. Have folks go in, frequently and request the book. The more people who request your book, the more it's going to be on the store manager's radar. And then speaking of the store manager, make a connection with them. Go into your local Barnes Noble or BAM and talk to the booksellers and get to know them a little bit and make that connection with the manager, because at least on a regional level, that manager can request your book to be in their store, right?

And I think a really good point to that is understand And I think we mentioned this a little bit earlier where they're giving the power back to the book buyers at the individual bookstore level and regional levels. So understand what is selling in your market.

Yeah.

You know, you may be a children's book author illustrator and you have something coming out, but you're, you know, you're in a university town and they're not selling university books. It's okay to reach out to somebody, you know, digitally, virtually and say, hey, I have this really good book. So, you know, make that a criteria. Like, are they selling the type of books that, that I am producing, right?

Absolutely. And I think really just be— if you really want to be serious about it and it's about more than your ego, if it's really about selling books because you want to go out there and, you know, be a smaller publisher or be an independent author with a really good footprint and you want to get that kind of traction, then I think you have to become a student of bookstores. Um, it's really important, like you said, to not only to get to know the people, but pay attention. Pay attention to the way things are marketed within the bookstore. What's getting end caps? What's getting table space? And a lot of it is pay-to-play, but not as much anymore. Barnes Noble more and more is not doing as much co-op as they used to do. It's a little bit more organically grown, which is nice because you might have a shot at getting on one of those tables even if you don't have $5,000 a month to put toward it. So yeah, pay attention to that.

See what is trending.

BookTok is huge. I walked into Barnes Noble a couple weeks ago, not in my town. I was up in Connecticut on a business trip. Totally different feel to that Barnes Noble than mine locally. But they had a massive BookTok display. So people are paying attention to things on social media. They're paying attention to what's in the news. So just kind of learn the lay of the land when you go into your local bookstore and start charting trends and see where your book can fit. Because even if it's not a big splashy BookTok-style book, you can probably make some notes as to where it does fit. So, you know, going back to your children's book idea, children's book market is huge, right? It's, it's practically flooded. But Barnes Noble does a great job of displaying those books and of doing events for them. So see how you can kind of wedge in there. Maybe it's with the homeschool market, you know, maybe it's with the STEM market. Um, you know, think of all the different ways that your book can appeal to people.

Yes, and the STEM market and the homeschool market, we call those special sales markets. So let's say, okay, I'm gonna go at it, I, I'm grassroots, I, I not going through a distributor. The only thing that I have as an author is like IngramSpark or KDP, but I did follow the IBPA, which is the Independent Book Publishers Association, um, checklist of making sure my book fits the criteria for booksellers. I have that checklist, I have a good book, it's been edited, it's been designed, and it has an ISBN barcode and everything, and I'm good to go. Let's talk a little bit about what, you know, what I can do as an independent author to make myself a little bit more competitive on the marketing scale. So you had mentioned earlier, you know, the national booksellers, they go out and they are basically approached by booksellers that are marketing the book. They talk the book business. So what are some of the things, some of the tools, some of the, the sell sheets that independent authors can create? Sell sheets are really important.

They are. And, and you can probably speak to this better than I can because you're the marketing brain here, but in the industry we use something called a tip sheet, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's sort of like the one sheet that that buyers need to look at to make a decision on your book. So it's like the executive summary if we want to go like business school about it. Yes, it says all the basic stuff. It's got those BISAC codes, the ISBN, the price, the trim size, the format. Is it paperback? Is it trade paperback? Is it a board book? It has all that product information. So for example, when you go on the Amazon book page and you see all of that stuff, all the product information, All that stuff is what should be on a tip sheet. But then we have to put the marketing stuff on there. As an independent author, how do you market your book? Well, there are lots of ways. You know, basically use the platform that you have to market that book. So for example, if let's say I'm, I'm big on Facebook, Vanessa, what could I put on my tip sheet as an author to speak to my Facebook presence? Yes.

So for your Facebook presence, it would be really good to include that link. A lot of the times you're going to be reaching out to, to bookstores and they're going to want that PDF sent. Make sure that that link is on there and it's hyperlinked. You let them know at a glance how many people are following you, how many people are liking you. If you're a business, include that as well. So it's not just your, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have this, you have your business page and then you have your personal page. A lot of the times when we're going to tell you this, if you work with us, You're the individual selling the book. Everything that you're doing on your business side could be duplicated, but nobody could duplicate you. So we want to know a little bit more about you. What are you doing to get more viewers and more butts in those virtual seats? So I want to see that. Let's make sure if you are doing Facebook one-on-one or Facebook Lives, how often are you doing? How many people are watching them? What's the comment section like? Are you engaged? If you are putting on a, uh, newsletter or something like that on your— because I know Facebook is really good at, you know, making sure that it's multimedia content. Do you have a post on there that just was about the book and it took off like wildfire? Like wildfire. What are the stats around that? I love seeing stats and I feel like a lot of authors, especially the indie authors, don't think of those things as important. But I think in a digital market, those are really important because that's going to tell to the bookseller, I can get attention for your bookstore if you carry my book to these people, right?

And that's really— that's, I think, the conduit, especially for independent bookstore owners. It's kind of got to be a two-way street. Not only are you saying, hey, I can sell some books, but I can also give your business a halo effect by talking about how my book is at your store to my people. So it's really— it's a relationship that you have to build. And I think you know, whether you're talking about a big bookstore or you're talking about an indie, it's all about that relationship building. And even more so with the indies, because, you know, they're— they are fighting an uphill battle too. Uh, everybody's fighting online sales, everyone's trying to get more people back in the stores, especially post-pandemic. Uh, so, you know, there's a lot of good that can come from, from really building those relationships with indie bookstores. And you, you should build those relationships before you have the book. Yes, well before. You should be a customer that they know, that when you walk in the door, they know who you are. So if you know, hey, next year I'm going to have a book, I'm working on it now, but it's going to come out, go ahead and start building those relationships. Not in a transactional way, but in a very communicative and collaborative way, because you and the bookstore can help each other. And plus Bookstore people are just awesome. Why would you not want to get to know them?

Right?

A little bit better. You know, work with them to build some events. Talk about things that you can do together. It doesn't have to be a traditional bookstore signing. Quite frankly, not a lot of people go to those anyway unless it's like a very big name author. Think about how you can weave your book into cool events together that they're already doing. You know, going back to the idea of maybe a children's STEM book as an example. Maybe you work with a local library to do a hands-on STEM event with kids, do a science experiment thing with kids. The local bookstore can provide the books. Everybody gets a book as the price of admission. So, you know, there are lots of things like that that you can do on a really grassroots level to benefit both you and the bookstore.

Yes. And for all the entrepreneurs and business owners out there that are thinking about doing that book, Next year or in the fall, and you haven't told anybody about it. You're, you're out there right now. You're doing events, you're doing, you're talking to people about a webinar and you've not mentioned that. Stop doing that. Please mention your book. These people are basically now working with you. They've already bought into who you are. The event coordinator knows you. The event coordinator believes in you. They, they have an audience that fits you. You don't have to sell them full copies of the book now.

Just mention it.

That's all you have to do is mention it. Hey, I would love to present you with sample chapters once I have them available. As early as that, people are interested. They want to know that. So going back to that tip sheet, that tip sheet is such gold because if you don't have a finished manuscript, you have sample chapters, you have a table of contents, you have an idea of what that could be. And our big thing here is that your book can work for you and should work for you. You should be able to go out and say like, I have a title, I have this, I have a cover. All of these things are social media marketing points that can start getting attraction. And, you know, in marketing, the more often you, you remember or remind somebody about something, it's like, oh yeah, I think I heard about that.

Oh yeah, I think I heard about that.

And then they'll see little bits and pieces and they'll put the connection, they'll connect the dots, and then they'll say like, oh yeah, 'Oh, Jen's writing a book about that. I can't wait to get that.' Exactly.

And I think you can work it in very organically into your social interactions so that it doesn't feel salesy and it doesn't feel transactional. You know, the more you can interact with your local bookstores, with, with other authors who are kind of in your space but not necessarily a direct competitor to your title, the more you can lay that groundwork now to, you know, chime in and, you know, pop into their TikTok and drop a comment or, or retweet somebody or whatever you can do, I think is just— it just greases the wheels.

Yes. Competitors. That's actually a really key and vital thing is if you have a book that is a competitive book to yours or that you don't even know, like, is this book already out there? I think booksellers are going to be that well of information for you. So you can walk in and be like, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. About this? What books are currently, you know, selling at your bookstore that are similar like mine? Or maybe have an author that's like me who is in this specific genre, you know, work with them and then have them be involved in this process. Because I think that that makes them— I mean, booksellers are just like the librarians of the consumer world, and they have so much knowledge. So you just have to ask. You do.

And I think to your point, that can also connect you with people who maybe can support you. I mean, there's enough to go around for everybody. So, you know, If you know a couple of really great authors and you mention it to a bookseller, you might be able to be connected to that author so that you can get a testimonial from them. You can get a back of the book blurb from them. Um, you know, independent bookstore people especially, they know a lot of authors personally. Because for the, for the more well-known indies, like, um, what am I thinking of, like Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans, which is one of my favorite bookshops, Left Bank Books here in St. Louis, Book Soup in LA, you they have so many people who come in for signings who are big names. So, you know, it's— the world is smaller than you think, and all roads meet at the indie bookstore.

Yes, yes. And if, and if you're like me and, and Paul here, who's our producer here in Orange County, there's not a lot of indie bookstores there. They, they are, uh, specialty. So like we have romance bookstores, we have mystery bookstores. But if you're in need of finding a bookstore near you What resources can we give our audience for that?

Oh, that's a great question. Well, there are a couple of places that you can look. IndieBound is a great place to look for independent booksellers and find them online and find out where they are. You can also go to Bookshop, even though you can purchase directly from Bookshop, it's also just a great place to look and see what local indie sellers are in your neighborhood or close by to you.

Yes, that's very, very good. Okay, so we dropped a lot of information. Today we spoke about making sure that you have a checklist ready, that you're like this, you're prepared like a national bookseller, that you have everything spick and span. How do people get these, these documents? And I think we have to drop something on our website or something. Do you think people would want some sample PDFs about this, like how to actually get started?

I think so. I think that's something that we could very easily put together. And put on the site at broadbookgroup.com so that people can learn a little bit more about how to maximize their potential with bookstores as an independent author. So let's do that.

And I put it in your show notes.

Yes, show notes.

Thank you, producer Paul Roberts.

I just had one question I was dying to ask. That's why I popped in. In a world where there are fewer bookstores than when I used to look at this many years ago, With fewer bookstores, is it harder to get on the shelf? Is there less space, or is it maybe even easier because you can approach them and, and work with them and you're going to sign the book and you're going to do things to promote it locally? I don't know. Is it harder or easier to get in a bookstore these days? What do you think?

My take is that it's both. And the reason, the reason I think it's both is because the locations, because of the pandemic and everything that's happened, locations have, have closed down. But because of the internet and the ability to— I mean, it's a small community when you think about it. You can go online, you can find a bookstore that fits exactly what your book is about. If it's a children's book, if it's a fiction book, if it's a mystery book or a business book, you can find those specialty bookstores and reach out to them digitally.

I would agree with that. And, you know, I think 10 to 15 years ago, we were all afraid that Barnes Noble was going to eat everybody.

Yeah.

And there would only be big box stores. And now Barnes Noble is kind of the comeback kid, and they're not really looked at in that way. I think what people were afraid would happen didn't happen. Yes, Amazon is happening, but I think that's kind of a different way of selling books. Independent bookstores are thriving, and as Vanessa said, they are really niching down. So they're not— not every independent bookstore is everything to everybody. They're either regionally focused or they're topic focused. And in a lot of ways, you're right, that makes it easier for people who have a really specific type of book to find the stores that it will be a fit for instead of trying to throw spaghetti on the big box store wall.

And I think the big box stores presented an insurmountable hurdle to the first-time author. They only took big titles. You would think they had bigger space and they would take everything. My perception was it was hard for the independent, uh, the first-time book author to get into Barnes Noble or one of those big giant conglomerates., and then it might be easier to just approach Book Soup up in LA and walk in the door and say, here, I've got this book.

Yeah. And you know what? There, people talk. Uh, as Vanessa Campos said, it's a small community, smaller than you think. And so booksellers talk to each other. And so you get some good traction in a really great indie, like a Book Soup, like a Garden District Bookshop. They are going to meet up at their next conference and say, hey, have you seen this book? "Look, this is a great book." So that word of mouth and that hand selling is just pure solid gold. Good.

I just want to drop in this very last bit. I know we were talking about getting to know your bookseller, but I had worked on a book maybe last year, the year before. It was a book about grief, and the woman who wrote it was very good friends with a few booksellers. And so the booksellers were like, "We need this." they encouraged her, they gave her some feedback, and then they gave a review as the bookseller of this specific book. And what that did is, because this bookseller reviewed the book, her name and the name of the book, uh, store was shared digitally at all the retailers because it became an editorial review. And guess what? That happened, you know, then it got indie love, then it got Goodreads love. So it's just like, you never know who that person is going to be that maybe behind the counter that maybe has a book talk, maybe has a book block, because that's just what we do in, in the book publishing business. We are not just doing that thing that we're doing for your book to help support you. We're also book lovers, and we talk. We talk. So be nice to us too.

We'll come back and talk some more. I'll just wrap it up here for today. All right.

All right. Well, this has been a great conversation. We love talking and bookstores all the time. So thank you so much, Paul, our wonderful producer. Thanks to Emily Carpenter-Pulskamp, our executive producer, and we can't wait to talk to you again. See you soon. We hope that you gained some valuable insights into the world of book publishing. Head over to broadbookgroup.com to learn more about us and all our services, and be sure to check out all our social media @BroadBookGroup. Until then, keep publishing!