Readers' questions: Distribution & publicity

Plus: why publishing is analogous to cooking up a big vat of baked beans

In my second “readers’ questions” post, I’m going to tackle one of the biggest misconceptions about the publishing industry – what a “distributor” is and why it matters – and reveal what I have planned for our 2024 books in terms of promotion. How do beans figure into this? You’ll find out!

I’ll ease into the task with a simple numbers question, though. The reason so many people have been asking about distribution and publicity is, of course, because submissions are open and they’re wondering what the benefits are of handing over their precious book to Valley Press. This first question is about submissions more generally:

If a “small press” operation like Valley receives 300 submissions in a month-long window, what kind of competition will I face when submitting to literary agents, or larger publishers?

I’ve scoured Google, and found that the smallest agents are receiving 300 typescripts a month every month – which is plenty of reading to be getting on with – while the biggest are receiving 1,500 a month. I hope they have assistants, is all I can say.

Gollancz, the sci-fi and fantasy imprint of Orion (a sizable publishing company itself owned by Hachette, one of the “big 5”) run an annual, free-to-enter, one-month submissions window, which offers a useful comparison for what I’m doing. I heard from a reliable source that they receive 2,000 typescripts during their window, and read 50 pages of each entry; which amounts to thirty million words in total. The editorial team is still very small (my source says there are one-and-a-half editors seriously engaging) but they do allow themselves nine months to reply.

From another source: a large independent publisher working in the same genres (Angry Robot, nine staff) usually receives 900 submissions in their windows. I couldn’t find out how many titles they accept, but I think these examples do provide a good sense of scale as you move up the industry ladder – and for VP submitters, perhaps a sense of relief? It could be worse!

Let’s try distribution, next.

As a recently self-published author, I was saddened to hear I have little chance of seeing my book in my regular high-street haunts, since it doesn’t have a “distributor”. My local indie bookseller says they only buy from one in particular, Gardners, and I was told more-or-less the same in Waterstones. Are Valley Press titles distributed to bookshops by a distributor?

Within this question is the big misconception I mentioned above: that a distributor “distributes” books throughout bookshops, and that’s how they end up on shelves. I have seen this thought expressed in an email every other week since I started Valley Press; and in fact each sentence from the question above was from a separate email I’ve received this month. So you’re not alone in your confusion! This part of publishing can be a dense thicket of knowledge, but I’ll try to hack away a small clearing today.

When Valley Press books are printed, some come to me in Scarborough to fulfil web orders and for promotional use, but most are sent to a company called Booksource in Glasgow. They are our distributor, but the term “warehouse” would be just as accurate. Booksource have absolutely no say in which books appear on the shelves of Waterstones; they just house our books, receive orders, process the orders and fulfil them. They don’t pay us for the books, we pay them to do the above, because it would be horribly inconvenient to do it ourselves. As a reader, you can’t order from Booksource; it’s only for booksellers, and even then only a specific range.

Gardners are a wholesaler of books, and are pretty much without competition in the UK since the demise of Bertrams in 2020. They are our biggest customer, and place orders for our books through Booksource; they do pay, and while they prefer 60% discount(!), are only asking for 52.5% from Valley Press at time of writing. Therefore, Gardners’ business model involves buying books from publishers for just under half price, then reselling them to bookshops (including the “local indie” mentioned above) for a pound or two more. Waterstones buy books from Gardners, but confusingly, they also buy from us via Booksource – sometimes. (That’s too far into the thicket for today.) Crucially, Gardners also have no say over which books appear in Waterstones; no one does, except Waterstones themselves, and all we can do is try to persuade them that Valley Press titles should be included. (More on that later.)

What, then, is the point of Gardners? Why don’t all the bookshops go straight to Booksource, and keep the whole 52.5% for themselves? It’s because Booksource is not the only distributor: there are a dozen similar institutions in the UK, and it’s not economical from a time or shipping perspective for most booksellers to trek round six or seven outlets for their weekly orders. They want to get all their books from one place, click click, and right now that place is Gardners. Therefore, having “a distributor” isn’t actually a necessity to appear in bookshops – Bluemoose still claim to do all their distribution, including to Gardners, from their living room – but having some sort of relationship with Gardners is.

“Can self-publishers get their books into Gardners?” I hear you cry, and the answer is: maybe. I am working with a couple of self-publishing clients right now to that end, so if you remind me in December I might have a firm answer.

Next question then… oh hang on, did you have something to say?

I’m still totally lost with regards to distribution. Those last paragraphs made my head spin. Can’t you trot out one of your famous analogies?

Alright then: let’s try Heinz baked beans. The beans and tomatoes are grown by farmers (authors), and purchased by Heinz (Valley Press). In the factory, they bake them (editing), mix up the sauce (er, design?) and put them into cans (printing). Big cases of cans then go to the Heinz warehouse (Booksource), who aren’t buying the beans from Heinz; they’re on the same team, storing and shipping them as a service.

Supermarkets (Waterstones) will occasionally buy directly from Heinz’s warehouse, and they’ll certainly communicate, but your local corner shop (an indie bookseller) hasn’t got time to deal with Heinz, Kelloggs, Nestle and whoever all at once, and the supermarkets might not fancy that either. Plus, the shipping would be horribly inefficient if everyone was ordering from a hundred different places. So instead, the big cases of beans are sold in bulk to a wholesaler (Gardners), who get a huge discount from Heinz (Valley Press) because they buy hundreds of cans (books) every week.

Are you with me? Both supermarkets and corner shops then buy their beans – along with everything else they need – from the wholesaler, and it just about works out for everyone. Heinz certainly don’t want to deal with each shop every week; they just want to get on with baking more beans, though they might occasionally send reps round the country with a free sample to remind shopkeepers that their beans are tasty. (We do this too! See later answer.)

As for self-publishing, while it might theoretically be worth the farmers' time to try and brew up their own baked beans and sell directly to the wholesalers, it’s always going to be a little awkward and inefficient – and of course, it’ll take them years to build up a trusted brand. In a roundabout way, this is why the publishers mentioned above have so many submissions, in an age when self-publishing (particularly for genre fiction) is the easiest it’s ever been.

Here’s a follow-on question that I can almost hear you asking…

If Gardners can buy books for 52.5% discount, why can’t I do the same – either as a VP author, or a customer buying from the VP website?

It’s simply because when Gardners buy one of our books through Booksource, the effort required of me is absolutely zero. I can sell thousands of copies that way without lifting a finger (once they’ve been printed). When you buy from the VP website, there’s all sorts of admin involved, as well as a physical trip to the post office; it takes time, and whoever’s doing it needs to be paid. There’s also the very real overhead of keeping a few copies of each title to hand. However, it all works out wonderfully when you pay full price (or when authors pay 20%-45% less, as set out in the contract), and I really value having our own web shop – so I’ve no plans to abandon that part of the business anytime soon.

You’re now thinking: “Hmm, I wonder if Heinz sell individual cans of beans through their website, and if so, are they asking for the full RRP?” Oh… you weren’t? Me neither, of course.

Alright, I checked, and they don’t, but impressively they do offer a map function (available 24/7) in which you can enter your postcode and find out where your nearest beans are located. Here’s mine (plus, spot the origins of my company’s name):

Sadly it’s not practical for me to add a similar feature to the Valley Press website, but it’s reassuring to know there are always beans within walking distance. (Perhaps the key lesson here is actually “don’t blog when hungry”.)

Okay, let’s do publicity – and for better or worse, it’ll be quick.

What is the publicity process of Valley Press, and who is responsible for it?

As I may have mentioned before, our sales and marketing effort is outsourced to an organisation called Inpress, who work tirelessly all year round to promote the titles of their many amazing clients. Becoming a member of Inpress in 2012 was a huge turning point for my business, giving the books a lot more exposure and accelerating my journey towards becoming a “professional” publisher.

Inpress employ various “sales reps”, both national and regional, who either meet with head-office buyers or call into small shops and remind them that Valley Press “means beans”, so to speak. Even in 2023, I find this process of connecting booksellers to our titles far and away the best means of promotion. Inpress are also the reason why we have a 52.5% discount with Gardners instead of 60%; when all those small publishers come together with one voice, they have some real clout.

However, it is widely recognised within our industry that sales, marketing and publicity are three different things, and Inpress only do the first two. So what publicity will I be doing? Well, to be quite honest with you, most of my publicity time is now focused on this blog – I seem to have captured a committed readership in the four figures, and expanding that seems like the best way forward. I’ve read many times that it’s better to really excel at one promotional channel rather than dabble in twelve, so let’s give that a try.

However, I will also send out a few promotional copies of every new title to influential people, with a nice note – for example, poetry books to people who review poetry in the national papers, interesting memoirs to BBC Radio 4, etc. etc. Even though this rarely brings results (and then the results don’t bring results, as Fly on the Wall recently blogged), it still feels a necessary part of a publisher’s service. Authors deserve it, and expect it, and they’re right to. Even if these people don’t give your book a platform, they might still tell their friends, who might themselves be influential; I feel the same way about entering prizes, which is my other big publicity commitment. At least we’ll know the books are being read!

But – what am I missing? Is there anything else you’d expect a publisher to do for you, publicity-wise, that you’re horrified I haven’t mentioned? This is the time to say something; either via the contact page, the comments section, or whatever email address for me you have to hand. Next year’s authors will thank you for your service.

Speaking of thank yous – we’ve made it to the end, you’ve survived an extended monologue about the supply chain of baked beans (an appropriate sequel to finding out “how the sausage is made”), and hopefully learnt a few things about publishing along the way. This was a free post, because I really wanted to have something to link people to in the future re: distribution, but if you think you’ve learnt anything valuable (or suspect you might in the next paid article), here comes an oh-so-convenient subscribe button:

Many thanks – and see you soon!