ORDERING
In this section:
How to run a promotion to your network at extra discount
Other Ordering Issues (Inaccurate information, Non-availability, Non-visibility)
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:
USA: NBN needs up to 10 working days to process, pick, pack and ship books to a US customer by Standard Ground UPS. It will take longer at the end of the month when the warehouse is busiest (add 2 working days) or if the customer is offshore or hard to reach (add 5 working days), and if books need to be restocked from the printer (add 14 days). Large retailers, such as Barnes & Noble, buy centrally; the books go to their central warehouse, then out again, adding a week or so. For an event, allow two months and give as much notice as you can.
Canada: It can take an extra month, 30 working days, 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.
UK: Our distributor in the UK, Orca Marston Book Services, supplies large wholesalers like Gardners and Bertrams 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. Generally Orca needs 5 working days to process an order, pick & pack and deliver books to a customer on UK mainland. It will take longer if Orca receives the order after 4pm (add an extra working day), if customer doesn’t order frequently (add up to 4 working days), if customer is in highlands and islands (add 2 working days), and if books need to be restocked from the printer (add 14 days).
Other regions: For South Africa allow 5-6 weeks to deliver books which are in stock, China and Singapore 6-8 weeks, Australia & New Zealand 10-12 weeks.
- For initial orders, particularly those needed before publication, and for all orders for over 10 copies, authors should order direct from the office by putting a note up on the Help forum, under Sales & Distribution/Sales to Authors (we will then send you an invoice and arrange for copies to come to you directly from the printer), giving:
- Quantity of books.
- Where you would like them sent.
- When you need them by (note; we need at least three weeks’ notice from the time payment is received for USA, UK and Europe; more for other countries).
- Payment needs to be by check or wire transfer. We will assume that the address to be billed is your author address in your Profile.
- Delivery is charged for all orders placed through the office.
- 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.
- For orders 1-10 placed after the initial print run; contact the distributor in your region (listed below), 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 (exception is Australia where it’s 40% when authors order from Brumby our local distributor).
Please note
- Discounted author orders do not count towards your overall sales figures for royalties, but 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.
- 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.
Europe & the Middle East
Orca Marston distributes our books to individuals and trade customers throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Individuals (not trade); order with a credit card by emailing Orca Marston at direct.orders@marston.co.uk or phoning +44 (0)1235 465577.
- Delivery from Orca within UK is free on orders over £150. On orders under £150 delivery charges are: Order value £0–£19.99 = p&p £3.95; £20–£49.99 = £7.50; £50–£149.99 = £9.50 (correct at 30/9/16).
- Individuals cannot usually open an account, that is for trade only, but once you have placed one order as an author your address remains on the system so that you can easily reorder.
- Overseas surface mail is 20% of order value (minimum charge of £7.00). Overseas air-mail charges are quoted on ordering.
America
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 USA, we will delay stocking our warehouse at NBN, if 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.
Australia & New Zealand
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 we 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, The Book Depository or 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 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.
Elsewhere
Post a note in the HELP forum under Sales & Distribution/Sales to Authors. For more details see https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/jhp-how-to-order.html.
Most bookstores prefer to order through a wholesaler. The main book wholesalers in US are Ingram and Baker & Taylor, and in UK Bertrams and Gardners. Otherwise the bookseller can order through the distributor in their region, these are listed on the JHP website in How to Order.
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 our website How to Order where they will find contact details for the distributor in their region and can contact JHP 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 USA, Australia and South Africa this is determined by the respective distributors NBN, Brumby and Hay House, elsewhere by negotiation with us, JHP.
Please let us know of any trade orders that you are involved in through the Help forum, under Sales & Distribution/Sales to Authors. We also gauge how many to print by looking at the Marketing page for any Promotion 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 USA, UK and Europe, 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 to your network at extra discount
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 JHP 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 eg before 1/1/2017
- contact the distributor by phone eg Orca Marston +44 1235 465577 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 eg 17JHPAG or PAGAN101
- give title & ISBN eg Paganism 101 ISBN 978-1-78279-170-6
- be ordering for the first or subsequent times within the terms of the promotion
- expect shipping charges to be added eg to mainland UK addresses £3.95 per book or free for orders over £150
- expect any local taxes to be added eg US state taxes
Promotions must be set up by JHP. If you would like to run a promotion, please post your request in the the Help forum under Sales & Distribution/Other queries. And make sure to add this promotion to your Marketing Activities and to share with JHP on the FB closed author group.
Other Ordering Issues (Inaccurate information, Non-availability, Non-visibility)
We spend a lot of time dealing with queries from people saying the 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," there are over 10,000 with “well-being” in the title.
- Or 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, 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, 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, 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.