Publisher Services - Distribution Explanation

Distribution & Identification in the Book Industry Supply Chain

With the advances in technology, the traditional processes for book production and marketing have been forever altered, so anyone can effortlessly print and make their work available to the public. Twenty-first century publishers now get to capitalize on the advances in digital printing and global internet sales. Our Independent Publisher Program is geared to provide assistance to these new types of publishers who intend on distributing their publications themselves. Since an ISBN is simply an identifying string of numbers (like the license on a car), Publisher Services customers convey ISBN and corresponding book information directly with their trading partners. Booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble have specific guidelines for publishers to upload their ISBN and book information to their proprietary systems. As illustrated in the diagram below, today's independent self publishers have a multitude of potential avenues to distribute their work.

In the example above, the author/publisher is handling the relationships and communication with the various types of trading partners. The alternative used by many mid to large publishers is to utilize book distributors who typically handle order fulfillment and marketing services. Many smaller companies do not opt for this route because distributors usually charges 45-55% of sales for their services. Since distributors work with thousands of companies, they are reliant on bibliographic information available from third party databases and a few require their publishers to have an ISBN prefix in their name due to their system's configuration. Companies who intend to market multiple publications and utilize book distributors are encouraged utilize our Personalized Publisher Program. The illustration below depicts how medium and large publishers distribute their publications.