A crucial part of book sale success for independently published authors is developing and utilising an author platform. To help you establish your platform, we offer services that will equip you with the tools you need to market your book successfully.
Promotional Material
We can design and print promotional materials that will help you to advertise your book and leave a lasting impression with contacts. Whether you need advertising flyers, business cards for networking, or bookmarks or sticker sheets to go along with each purchase, we can produce impactful promotional items that will benefit your marketing strategy.
We also offer pull-up banners, vinyl banners, A-frames, sticker sheets, one-way car window stickers, fridge magnets, wide-format corflutes and other signage, and more, so if you have something in mind, let us know.
Website Creation
A website is an essential promotional and sales tool for any author. Having an online presence gives you access to more readers and potential book sales. We can create a custom design website tailored to your needs, which includes the purchasing of a unique domain name and 12 months of domain hosting and website management.
Your InHouse-built website will give you a domain to funnel all enquiries to as well as acting as an easy landing platform where customers and contacts can find all the information they need about your book. Your website will feature a link to purchase the book, host your blog (if you want to write one), display your book reviews, list news and upcoming events, allow readers to contact you, and much more!
Press Release for Email Campaigns
When contacting bookstores, retailers, and local media outlets, it’s important to make an immediate impact and grab the attention of your contact. Our marketing toolkit will help you present yourself professional when undertaking promotional email campaigns.
Our marketing toolkit package includes a professionally designed New Release sheet, which will communicate the essential details that retailers and media want to know when you contact them regarding purchasing, stocking, or promoting your book. We supply a professionally designed email signature to add to your author emails, a contact list of a few local independent bookstores in your state to get you started, and a guide on how you can best utilise your marketing toolkit to pitch your book to bookstores.
Distribution Channels
To help you reach your audience, we can list your book on the InHouse Bookstore and advertise through our wholesale channel, which reaches thousands of libraries, distributors, and book shops across Australia. Unlike many other large book distributors, we only take a very small fee to cover our administration costs, with the goal of giving you an immediate online platform to sell your book.
We also have partner distributor companies that offer expanded channels through their network of independent bookstores and retailers, chain and specialty stores, as well as online suppliers, at a reduced author royalty rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely not. As mentioned, we only take a small administration fee (20% from each sale) to cover our time – shipping out the orders, hosting and maintaining the bookstore website, calculating and processing royalty payments, and advertising and marketing the books on our bookstore.
Yes, of course! Our distribution agreement is non-exclusive, so you are free to sell your books yourself (in-person, via email, or on your website), through your own channels, or through an additional company (as long as they are also non-exclusive).
No. You can choose not to be listed in the wholesale catalogue. However, our best customers are our library distributors, with orders coming in weekly, so it is in your best interest to be listed in the catalogue.
Some bookstores, like Dymocks, make one-off purchases from us through our wholesale network. However, we do not offer our books on consignment, which most large stores (like Big W and Target) expect. We sell on a firm sale basis to ensure the purchase is guaranteed, and so that shelf stock is not returned to us damaged if it does not sell. If larger stores would like to stock the books on consignment, we forward the enquiry to you to enter into an agreement personally, if you wish to do so.
Overseas postage costs can be very expensive—even for just one copy of your book. If you have a large customer base outside of Australia, we recommend purchasing our Amazon print-on-demand set-up service. With the Amazon print-on-demand model, a physical copy of your book is available internationally through Amazon.com, .uk, .it, .fr.
The files for your book are uploaded to Amazon and copies of your book are printed only when they are ordered through Amazon. Amazon ships the customer’s order from an Amazon printing warehouse within the USA or Europe.
If you select this service through InHouse Publishing, we set up your account for you and upload your book, then pass the log in information and account management over to you.
Royalties from book sales made through our InHouse distribution channel are paid via bank transfer. Please ensure we have your current and correct bank details to make payments (see Distribution Form). Royalties are paid to you following the end of each sales quarter (January–March, April–June, etc.).
- InHouse bookstore: We store physical copies of your book here at our office. When we receive an order through our online bookstore, we post it out to the customer. (The customer pays for their postage costs—it is not taken out of the book sale price). We take a small 20% commission from each sale to cover administration costs and pay our authors the remaining 80% quarterly.
- Wholesale distribution: (Optional) We list your book in our wholesale catalogue, which we send out to our network of libraries, distributors, and book shops quarterly. An industry standard wholesale discount of 40% applies to all sales made through the wholesale distribution channel. We post out the order and take a 20% commission from each sale.
Our distribution services are exclusively for authors who have published through us. The aim of our bookstore is to give our InHouse authors another avenue to sell their books, to help support them and their work. We only take a small administration fee to cover our costs (20% from each sale) such as marketing.
We built our distribution network to support our authors and facilitate their success. It’s a win-win for our authors and our business. We want our authors to sell so many books they run out and come back to us for a reprint!
If you would like to apply for an ABN, you can apply here: www.abr.gov.au/business-super-funds- charities/applying-abn If you don’t have an ABN and you feel you don’t need one, please ensure you are eligible to provide a Statement by a supplier here: www.ato.gov.au/forms/statement-by-a-supplier-not-quoting-an- abn/ and email us the completed form when you return your distribution form.
- On our online bookstore, which has online traffic daily www.inhousebookstore.com.au
- At our physical shopfront address in Underwood, Qld.
- In our wholesale catalogue, which goes out to over 1,200 distributors, bookstores, and libraries (40% wholesale discount applies).
Due to updates to Australian tax rules and regulations, you are now required to provide us with your ABN
information in order to receive your royalty payments from sales.
Wholesalers such as bookstores purchase books to resell them in their own store. They need to make a profit on the sale in order for it to be worthwhile for them. They require a 40% discount so they can then list the book at the retail price in their store. If they don’t receive the discount, they might list the book at a highly inflated price. If the book doesn’t sell at that high price, they won’t order again. If it does sell, they will continue to purchase.
We strongly recommend offering the 40% discount but choosing your listing price carefully to account for this discount.