First Word

Now in the irritating part of the business world, book distribution is an irritant on par with a sour stomach at bedtime. I've never had a single positive experience with the book distribution aspect of publishing. The antiquated system of returns from all directions going right back to the publisher and taking a bite out of profits has come home to roost - again. Out of the blue I received a bill from our distributor Baker and Taylor for a large sum of money. Since no checks had come in from Baker to justify this sum, I contacted them with one of those questions that starts with "What the heck???" I soon discovered that in their business "RETURNS" mean ALL returns from all sales sources whether they went out through Baker and Taylor or not.   This business model is absolutely insane. In fact, I'm going to stamp it with the word "PURE INSANITY". If my company is forced to pay for books we didn't even sell you can imagine the...

I am constantly having my company 3L Publishing compared to what I call "distribution mechanisms" that are not true publishers. Authors think that many of the new eBook distributors are publishers. I try to dispel this misconception. Some of these "tools" include Create Space and Smashwords. Now some of these services will provide what I call rudimentary services such as editing and graphics, but the prices are so low that you have to understand the difference between the perceived value vs. true value. Create Space is primarily a distribution mechanism for eBooks. You follow their parameters for the eBook formatting and then it's distributed via their systems. Now I am not an expert on Create Space, but also I do caution authors who believe Create Space is their publisher . These groups, and this includes Smashwords, are in the group of self-publishers, but typically don't provide any substantial assistance and real publishing methodologies. For example,...

Big news for 3L Publishing . We worked hard, followed the detailed instructions, wrote the marketing plan, and submitted a package to premiere book distributor Bakers and Taylor earlier this summer. All of the hard work paid off. We received notification that Bakers has agreed to distribute our books! Why is this so important and exciting? I will outline it below: Bakers works like Amazon and only keeps stock on hand that it has orders to fill. This means no storage and insurance fees that we have to pass to our clients. We can do smaller print runs for niche books, as Bakers doesn't have a 500 book minimum they require to fill orders, and thus, no storage and insurance fees. Bakers fills orders to all of the major bookstores and suppliers worldwide. Bakers royalties are real! Not a bunch of nonsense with handling fees and misc. accounting fees that all add up to reduce royalties down to nothing.  Bakers is also a major supplier for Barnes and Noble. Bakers doesn't tak...