Ordering

I want to buy copies of my book, how do I order?

• Pre-publication, before your book is in our distributors' warehouses – order direct from us on the Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors forum.
• Pre- and post-publication, after your book is in our distributors' warehouses (you’ll receive a notification when this happens, usually 4 weeks before publication) order directly from the distributor.
• For any large orders (over 20 copies) order direct from us on the Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors forum. This is so we can ensure our distributors have enough copies left over after your order.
• Australia & New Zealand authors – order from us by posting on the Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors forum. We prefer 25+ copies orders, as we have your books printed in Australia. You can order from our Australian distributor if you wish, but they would just order from the UK and have them shipped over, and it would likely take longer.

How to order from us

Post the order on Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors forum and make sure you mention:

1. Quantity of books you would like.
2. Where you would like them sent.
3. When you need them by (note: we need at least three weeks’ notice from the time payment is received for US, UK and Europe; more for other countries).
4. Payment needs to be by cheque/check or wire transfer. We will assume that the address to be billed is your author address in your Profile.
5. Delivery is charged for all orders placed through the office.
6. Our standard author discount is 50%. For one-off orders of 500 copies or more, we offer the following discounts: 55% on 500–999 copies; 60% on 1000–2499 copies; 65% on over 2500 copies. The 55%+ discounts do not apply to later smaller orders.
7. Please note that orders going from the UK to Europe will now incur customs charges.

How to order direct from the distributor

We use three main distributors.

• Europe & the Middle East – John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• USA – National Book Network.
• Australia & New Zealand – Brumby Sunstate.
• Elsewhere – post on the Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors forum.

Remember – when you order, say you’re an author or contributor, and they will apply the standard author terms of discount – 50% firm-sale non-returnable on any book in any imprint (the exception is Australia, where it’s 40% when authors order from Brumby, our local distributor).

The books you buy with the author discount are non-returnable, so it is important that you estimate the quantity you require for events. You can sell the books at whatever price you choose.

Distributor information for ordering

John Wiley & Sons Ltd

John Wiley & Sons Ltd distributes our books to individuals and trade customers throughout Europe and the Middle East.

Call – + 44 (0)1243 843291 or email customer@wiley.com with your order and pay by credit card, or ask for a proforma invoice (which can be paid either by phoning with a credit card number or by sending a bank transfer). Payments by cheque or postal order are no longer accepted. Delivery charges will be quoted on ordering.

National Book Network

National Book Network distributes our books throughout North, Central and South America. Tel: +1 8004626420. Email: customercare@nbnbooks.com. More info http://www.nbnbooks.com/contact

• Delivery charges will be quoted on ordering.
• Please be aware that if you request advance copies in the US, we will delay stocking our warehouse at NBN, as copies might arrive more than two months before the planned publication date. This is because NBN will advance publication date and distribute it to all databases, including amazon.com, which causes confusion.

Brumby Sunstate

Brumby Sunstate. Tel: +61 232555552. Email: orders@brumbysunstate.com.au. More info at http://www.brumbysunstate.com.au/.

Bookreps Ltd. Tel: +64 94192635. Email: sales@bookreps.co.nz. More info at http://www.bookreps.co.nz/contact-bookreps-nz-ltd .

• In general, Brumby Sunstate need three months' notice to have sufficient stock available. Discount is 40% through Brumby, firm-sale no returns. Delivery to Australian addresses is free for orders up to AUD $165 (wholesale, inc. GST). On orders under AUD $165 the delivery charge is AUD $13.50. Please ask on the author forum for latest NZ terms.
• Alternatively, for Australia and New Zealand, authors can order online from Booktopia, Book Depository or Amazon.com. Amazon.com.au no longer sells print copies, only ebooks. Or if you are ordering 100 copies or more, put a note up on the Help forum, under Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors. We will then arrange a separate printing in Australia, which bypasses Brumby & Bookreps, so you will get the standard author terms of discount 50% firm-sale no returns plus shipping and taxes and be invoiced from the office.

How far in advance do I need to order?

It takes time to ship the books to you, and even more time if they have to be printed first.

As a blanket rule, we recommend ordering your books 2 months in advance of when you need them. And to be absolutely safe, 3 months if you are in Australia/NZ.

UK

Wiley generally needs 5 working days to process an order, pick & pack, and deliver books to a customer on UK mainland but if a customer doesn’t order frequently, it tends to add 4 working days – so you can assume 9 working days.

• If you order after 4pm, add an additional 1 working day.
• If a customer is in the Highlands and Islands, add an additional 2 working days.
• If the books need to be restocked from the printer, add an additional 14 working days.

Our distributor in the UK, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, supplies large wholesalers like Gardners daily, but for efficiency, they only supply small independent shops once a week. Small shops allow for this by timing their order carefully, placing larger orders, or using a wholesaler.

USA (Central and South America)

NBN need up to 10 working days to process, pick, pack, and ship books to a US customer by Standard Ground UPS.

• If it’s the end of the month, when the warehouse is busiest, add an additional 2 working days.
• If the customer is offshore or hard to reach, add an additional 5 working days .
• If the books need to be restocked from the printer, add an additional 14 working days.
• If you’re planning an event, allow two months, and give as much notice as you can.

Large retailers, such as Barnes & Noble, buy centrally; the books go to their central warehouse, then out again, adding a week or so.

Canada

Allow 30 working days, for delivery because of border customs. It can take longer to get books a few hundred miles from Pennsylvania to Ontario than a few thousand miles from England to Singapore. British Columbia is worse still.

Other regions

• South Africa – 5-6 weeks to deliver books which are in stock (please be aware that there may be a Customs charge when books enter South Africa).
• China and Singapore – 6-8 weeks,
• Australia & New Zealand – 10-12 weeks.

When will you do the first print run of my book?

We aim to have printed stock in the warehouses by the first day of the month in which your book is published, so we place a print order the month before publication. It takes varying lengths of time to get into the shops:

When will bookshops and trade buyers order my book?

We submit new books for advertisement in the NBN Sales catalogue around 10 months before publication, as well as compiling our own biannual catalogues.

Before we order the first printing, we check in with the trade buyers to see how many they have ordered – we want to have as many orders as possible before we print.

Many trade buyers do not make their initial orders of stock until around 4-6 weeks prior to publication so we try and leave our first print order as late as we can, so we can get a sense of what the trade are ordering.

Can I order multiple ebooks?

Yes you can, but not through us. We recommend the bulk buying of e-books through ebooks.com. They can be used as part of a special offer, or prize giveaway, for example.

For smaller orders, you can purchase on your site, but for bigger orders it's worth contacting them directly.

You can distribute your ebooks in 3 ways:

1. You can receive a spreadsheet of voucher codes/links you can distribute. The user then clicks the link and signs in to their eBooks.com account (or creates one) to redeem the voucher and add the e-book to their account.
2. Through a service called Campaigns, ebooks.com creates a landing page for you. You can then supply a list of authorized users (either by email address or by email domain), who can navigate to the landing page and enter their email address – they are then emailed a voucher code to redeem on eBooks.com.
3. ebooks.com can create a series of accounts for their website, consisting of usernames and passwords, you can and redeem a voucher against each name and password. This way you distribute the usernames and passwords to the people you want to have the ebooks, and whoever receives the ebook does not have to create an account on the site.

Ebooks will be in EPUB format and ebooks.com recommend ebooks be read in Adobe Digital Editions Mac and PC and the ebooks.com Ebook Reader app for mobile devices. All software is free.

To order, please contact Alex Turvey alex.turvey@ebooks.com and copy in gia.young@ebooks.com

Can I find out about pre-orders for my book?

We receive notice of Amazon.com pre-orders via our NBN Amazon sales rep, and we are able to monitor early orders, with the aim of predicting and maintaining the necessary stock levels. The distributors then dispatch these orders to the trade accounts in the weeks leading up to publication.

However, we can't track individual pre-orders as and when they come in. We only get an idea of the figure when Amazon etc. place their initial orders a month or two prior to publication. An author can only really gauge pre-orders by checking the sales rank.

Discounted author orders do not count towards your overall sales figures for royalties.

But they do count towards the sales figures that automatically trigger extra publicity at every 500 total copies (print and e-book) sold to customers.

Distributors ask for payment from individuals and authors on ordering, and generally accept all credit cards if they have the book in stock. We cannot offset payments against royalties, because the accounts the distributor holds with you are separate from the ones we hold.

A local bookstore want to buy some copies of my book, what should I tell them?

If the bookseller plans to order in quantity for an event or other special promotion, they may need extra discount, delivery by particular day, or have other requirements. If so, direct them to How to Order on our website, where they will find contact details for the distributor in their region and can contact CI to negotiate terms. They can order on account or not, but non-account holders will be asked to pay in advance by credit card.

The discount and whether returnable or non-returnable terms depends on the type of retailer, credit risk, order history and size of order. In US and Australia this is determined by the respective distributors NBN and Brumby, elsewhere by negotiation with us, CI.

If the bookstore wants to order a few copies for their shelves, they can also order direct from our distributors, via the How to Order, page, or they may prefer prefer to order through a wholesaler. The main book wholesalers in the US are and Baker & Taylor (and New Leaf for Mind, Body, Spirit), and in the UK Gardners.

Let us know if you are involved in any orders from distributors, wholesalers and bookshops!

Please let us know of any trade orders that you are involved in through the Help forum, under Sales & Distribution: Sales to authors. It helps us plan our printing.

We also gauge how many to print by looking at the Marketing page for any Promotional Plans and Marketing Activities. Above all, please advise any bookstores with which you are in contact to allow us time to replenish stock if necessary. We need at least three weeks’ notice for US, UK and Europe, and more for other countries.

Stores, for whom books are only a small proportion of their stock, may be able to order books through their usual wholesaler.

How to run a promotion

Occasionally, we offer books at discount to readers or booksellers, or invite authors to offer this to their networks. These offers to authors are only effective for books by several authors with wide ranging and deep networks of potential buyers. Promotions are run at our discretion.

We set up a promotion code and an offer discount and special ordering details with each relevant regional distributor.

To run this promotion authors and CI could:

• share with their networks by email or on social media
• add to the end of an article or blog post
• list on a retail order form distributed at conferences, shows and meetings
• include in a newsletter to readers

To claim the discount, readers would need to:

• order within the time limit of the promotion e.g. before 1/1/2017
• contact the distributor by phone e.g. Wiley + 44 (0)1243 843291 NBN +1 800 462 6420 ext 3022
• pay by credit card and be prepared to supply name, address, telephone number, credit card type, number, expiry date and 3 digit security code number only; no other details would be taken
• quote promotion code e.g. 17CIAG or PAGAN101
• give title & ISBN e.g. Paganism 101 ISBN 9781782791706
• be ordering for the first or subsequent times within the terms of the promotion
• expect shipping charges to be added e.g. to mainland UK addresses
• expect any local taxes to be added e.g. US state taxes

Promotions must be set up by CI.

If you would like to run a promotion, please post your request in the the Help forum under Sales & Distribution/Other queries. Make sure to add this promotion to you Marketing Activities and to share with CI on the FB closed author group.

Help! My book is not available, what should I do?

We spend a lot of time dealing with queries from people saying their book is not available. Very occasionally, it’s because sales are going faster than we expected, and we’re temporarily out of stock (usually two weeks max.). More often, the answers fall into the following kinds of categories:

Inaccurate information

• Your friend has gone into a local shop asking for something like “it’s by Herron, with two ‘r’s, and it’s got ‘well-being’ in the title.” And they say they cannot find it, without going into more detail. The problem is, there are several hundred books by the surname "Herron," and there are over 10,000 with “well-being” in the title.
• They miss out a digit on the ISBN or a letter in the title. This happens with the distributors as well. If someone rings up NBN, for instance, quoting the title as Jeremiah rather than Jeremiad, they will search and it will show as unavailable. They cannot spend time searching amongst more than 100,000 titles they have in stock. Nielsen and Amazon track around 12 million. A tiny error in the detail and your book may not be found.

Non-availability

Sometimes, a bookstore in one part of the world or another complains that they can’t get hold of a book from our distributor. This is usually for one of the following reasons:

• The bookstore does not place backorders. So, for example, a bookstore orders a title from a wholesaler before the wholesaler has received their stock, so the order isn’t fulfilled and it isn’t kept as a backorder.
• Their account is on stop, because they’re late payers.
• They only want to order one copy, and the distributor has a minimum order level of 10 units to obtain the best discount (the case with NBN), and the shop is waiting till it gets enough orders to reach 10 copies.
• There’s a freight-free level which the bookshop wants to reach, and the orders are held until they reach that.
• If it’s a chain store, it is usually because they haven’t actually ordered it. Or the store ordered it before publication, but the central office of the stores will not let the distributor hold advance orders, because they do not want those financial commitments to show up in their figures, and they do not want to say that to the person asking.

There’s a raft of similar reasons. Do let us know if you come across any problems. But be precise. Press the shop for details – Which store? Which manager dealt with your book? What date was the invoice sent? For how many copies? What was the invoice or order reference number?" – and send those to us, along with the ISBN and title of the book. Distributors get thousands of orders from stores each day. They need the order reference to check. Virtually every time we look into this, the distributor is not at fault.

Non-visibility

The total number of books available in English is somewhere north of 30 million. The number available to buy online is over 10 million. The average number stocked in a bookshop (if it's a large one) is around 10,000. Most of these are backlist sellers relevant to the shop’s marketplace, which they know are going to sell. Some are new books, but most of those are by well-known names. We can only get directly to very few of the 20,000 shops in North America/UK, as they mostly buy centrally, or through wholesalers. So, if it is not there, the most likely reason is that the information we sent out to the main buyer and wholesaler was not persuasive enough. Or, if it's a chain, they have allocated it to a few shops, but not all of them. Or if they did buy it, and it is in the month of publication, it may because the book has not got to that shop yet. If it is later than the month after publication, it may be that the shop has had the book but sold it, and not reordered yet, or did not sell and has been returned. Most new books are only stocked for a few weeks and then returned if they are not selling fast enough.

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