D is for Distribution

When I first started Plain White Press, every busi­ness adviser I met asked “how are you going to get dis­tri­b­u­tion?” Honestly, it is a ques­tion I wish I would have just ignored.

My first prod­uct as a boxed set of fit­ness cards, adorably pack­aged for the busy mom with water­proof cards, a pop-​top lid, and even a robe lan­yard to hold the right cards together for your work­out. The author man­aged to secure an arti­cle rec­om­mend­ing the boxed kit in a national Magazine. I had a ware­house han­dle stor­ing and ship­ping the boxes, but I didn’t have any retail dis­tri­b­u­tion — not even on Amazon. So, amaz­ingly all of the sales came directly through my own lit­tle web­site that I’d put up myself using Squarespace and a sim­ple cart by Mal’s E-​commerce. The future looked bright.

Within a year, I’d signed a con­tract for a national dis­tri­b­u­tion deal for the card box and three more prod­ucts. In order to keep up the dis­tri­b­u­tion, I needed to be able to cre­ate new books for each sea­son, and I spent most of my time just man­ag­ing that and not nearly as much on pur­su­ing direct mar­ket­ing. As soon as my books and set became avail­able on Amazon​.com, they were also avail­able for at rock-​bottom prices. The press was still not prof­itable, so I kept dig­ging into my own resources. I wish I would have just said “enough,” but I’m too stub­born for that.

There are so many costs asso­ci­ated with dis­tri­b­u­tion: print­ing the inven­tory, man­ag­ing the mar­ket­ing, keep­ing the PR machine run­ning, and the dis­tri­b­u­tion fees that included pay­ing for cat­a­log print­ing, freight, mis­cel­la­neous ware­house charges, and the very worst of all — returns.

Looking to find sales every­where led me to find very few sales any­where. Nothing reached its poten­tial, and I burned out.

If I were to do it dif­fer­ently, I would look to cre­ate prod­ucts that could find lim­ited dis­tri­b­u­tion in a sin­gle chan­nel, or bet­ter yet, direct-​to-​customer. With the grow­ing ebook mar­ket, almost all fees and costs are gone, and print-​on-​demand is a mir­a­cle that allows a small pub­lisher to make a book with­out mak­ing a ware­house full of books. Several print-​on-​demand ser­vices offer low-​risk dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices through the major whole­salers, but keep in mind that although your books are avail­able to any book­store or library, there is no one out there actively sell­ing your book. The suc­cess of mar­ket­ing is still up to the per­son who holds the great­est stake in the prop­erty, typ­i­cally the author.

The best advice that I didn’t take was from a wise edi­tor at a well-​known pub­lish­ing house. She sug­gested that I should cre­ate mock-​ups for bril­liant prod­ucts and sell them exclu­sively to a major retailer for the hol­i­day sea­son. It’s both the guar­an­tee of one big buy and the con­cen­tra­tion of your effort. The same tac­tic would work for any kind of spe­cial sales: a cor­po­ra­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion or exclu­sively online. I’d start again here and then build block-​by-​block, market-​by-​market, expand­ing my list and prod­uct line as I secured the mar­kets. Not the other way around.