Distribution

Distribution is the process of fulfilling orders.

In other words, receiving orders, raising invoices, packing, shipping, receiving payments and calculating royalties.
When your book is ready for publication, we will discuss the distribution with you and explain all of the possibilities.

Most book sales take place on Amazon.
Books on Amazon are normally printed on demand by Amazon’s own printers in the US, UK and Europe.
Standard books can be printed and despatched within 1 working day to Amazon Prime members.
Amazon act as a retailer - they charge 40% of the cover price as a commission.
They also charge for the cost of printing the book.
Your selling price needs to take this into account.
YouCaxton will upload your books to Amazon and provide you with a quarterly sales report.

For special books that Amazon can’t print such as hardbacks or art books,
we can make them available on Amazon in the UK through The Great British Bookshop - or through Amazon Seller Central.
Short-Run printing is the name given to the process of printing a small stock of books
typically between 25 and 250 copies.
Most Authors require a small stock of books for themselves and for local sales.

It isn't economical to print one book at a time because of the delivery and admin charges.
On the other hand, you don’t want to print too many books that might not sell.
We recommend ordering only what is required plus a small additional stock.
Once a book is set up with a printer, the turnaround time from order to delivery is about 2 weeks.

We work with a number of printers depending on the type of book and the territory (where the books are going to be sold).
Some printers can accelerate the printing and delivery process by paying for an express service.
YouCaxton manages the printing for you and resolves any issues that might arise.
Delivery from the printer to the author is charged at cost price
(typically £10.00 for up to 50 books).
Most Bookshops, including Waterstones, place their orders through a wholesaler such as Gardners or Bertrams.
If you are using a YouCaxton ISBN, we register the ISBN with the Nielsen book database.
This will mean that orders are sent to YouCaxton for fulfilment.

If you anticipate a significant number of bookshop sales, it is advisable to ensure that YouCaxton has sufficient stock to fulfil the orders.
If you only anticipate a few orders from bookshops, we can stock as few as 3 copies and top up the stock as they are sold.
You should be aware that there is usually little or no profit when selling single copies of books to wholesalers and you are not compelled to fulfil the orders.
However, we recommend fulfilling orders to bookshops as it is good practice and can result in further publicity and sales.
An author webpage is an effective way of selling books to individuals or special customers as well as promotional and pre-publication sales.
The webpage will usually include a PayPal option to buy directly from YouCaxton as well as a link to your book on Amazon
We recommend that you include the link to your author webpage in the signature of any emails you send and in other social media as this can be an effective way of making prospective readers aware of your book and it also makes it easy for them to make a purchase.
YouCaxton charge £35 to set up an author Webpage and we fulfill any orders that arise.
For normal Online Sales, it is usually best to use the Amazon option.
However, if you anticipate having to ship bulk orders to the USA, Canada, Australia, China or Brazil we can arrange for books to be printed on demand locally in those coutries.
The set-up charge for this facility is around £100 but the the delivery costs are then much less than shipping from the UK.
Once you have finalized the printed version of your book, we can produce a Kindle version to sell on Amazon. When Amazon sell a Kindle eBook, they pay a 70% Royalty if they have exclusive eBook rights.
If Amazon do not have exclusive eBook rights, the royalty payment is only 35%.
The amount paid will vary from country to country.
Unlike printed books, Amazon are required to charge VAT on eBooks at the local rate.
Where this happens the VAT is deducted from the sale price by Amazon before the royalty is calculated.
YouCaxton can help you to set up a personal Amazon Kindle account which will allow easy monitoring of eBook sales.
Or you can register your eBook with the YouCaxton Kindle account and we will provide sales figures at the end of each quarter.
If you are planning to print a large number of books, we will manage the printing and proofing of these books but you will need to think about storage.
Litho printing typically becomes viable if you are printing more than 1000 books and there are typically significant discounts if you print 2000 books.
However, you need to think about the cost of storage.
Secure storage with insurance can cost as much as £500 per year for 1000 books.
We can arrange storage for you and we will discuss the best arrangement dependng on the number of books.
Managing the distribution of books is a complex business.
If YouCaxton manage the distribution for you, we calculate your sales and royalty figures at the end of each quarter and pay any amount due within two weeks provided the amount due is over £25.
If the amount owing is less than £25, we roll it over to the next quarter.
We do not make any standing charge for managing distribution; instead, we charge a small handling fee on each book sold.
We will provide you with a schedule of these fees before you decide to use our distribution service.
If you want us to keep more than 50 books in stock for you, we may have to charge a small storage fee depending on the amount of space required - typically £100 per year to store 250 books.