AtlasBooks Distribution Blog

We would like to respond to a recent post we had regarding one of our trading partners and distribution competitors.

Anonymous:

How can I say this nicely? I can’t. My 2010 experience with New Leaf Distributors was an expensive nightmare. I would not recommend New Leaf to anyone after this experience. What I was promised did not happen and my financial losses may continue to mount for years due to working with New Leaf Distributors.

I had turned down 7 distribution offers for my award winning movie, and chose New Leaf because they were the only distributor who promised to honor my ongoing business with Amazon and NEVER compete with me.

The lady assured me that they would NEVER compromise my income but rather add to it. The submission lady also did the contract with me. After much discussion, she said she couldn’t put the Amazon promise into the contract but assured me her word was gold.

I signed on and had to invest $450 for an account opening ad. Sales were good that month, almost paid for the cost of the ad and graphic artist. Sales have been meager ever since.

In April my healthy Amazon business came to a sudden halt-NO SALES! I researched my account and learned that New Leaf had compromised their promise and were now taking ALL of my sales.

When I called the lady at the top, she apologized and said that the CEO of New Leaf did a blanket sweep of (many of) their client’s Amazon products in early 2010 without consulting the vendors. I was aghast!! She said I was not the only vendor who was upset and that another angry vendor HAD gotten their Amazon sales returned to them.

I thought New Leaf was integral and (somewhat) evolved. I was wrong. She apologized and said she would do what she could to get my Amazon sales returned to me-but it was too late. She no longer works for the company (coincidentally?) after being honest with me.

She told me on the telephone that she had personally walked my collection of award winning products into the CEO’s office and told him that she had made an agreement with me and a few other clients to NOT sell our products on Amazon, but still it happened.

She was instructed to give me a choice of giving New Leaf ALL of my Amazon sales – or sending all of my products back to me. I quit with them at once.

Not only was I invested $450.00 but I had additionally been asked to write a story for their Evolve Magazine about my work. It was pages long and full of gorgeous photos by the time I completed the third re-write for their editor. It took me days and the editor was delighted.

The punchline of my experience with New Leaf is that my products were returned to me (2 DVDs were missing and 4 DVDs had broken cases) and my Amazon movie pages said “CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE” for 7 weeks!! After many hours on the phone with Amazon lawyers and staff, my movie business is still damaged & deeply impacted by their CEOs poor business ways 5 months later.

The CEO of New Leaf wrote me a couple of very distasteful letters at the end. Rather than apologizing he denied all of his wrongdoings. He wrote,”Had you been selling TO Amazon, we would not have touched your business. You are selling THROUGH Amazon as a marketplace vendor, not TO them.” So he felt it was just fine to steal my sales and I have not seen a penny of my money in 5 months!!!

A promise means nothing to New Leaf. All that matters is the contract which says they can sell anything to anyone anytime.

Vendors beware if you have a healthy business before working with today’s distributors! They want your Amazon sales for themselves and offer very little benefit to your sales.

I have lost over a thousand dollars in Amazon sales so far, wasted $750 (includes the graphics cost) for the ad they made me buy, and wasted days writing the article that will NOT run.

New Leaf was a waste of time and money and my Amazon business is completely damaged due to their incredible lack of integrity and honesty.

If she had told me they would be selling my products on Amazon in the beginning I would have NEVER signed with them and she knew it. She no longer works there.

What they did – and are still doing is wrong!

Anybody else out there have a similar experience?

Vendors beware!!! You will not be paid (most likely) either.

Please note that this publisher was working directly with New Leaf in this instance, not through AtlasBooks. As a distributor, New Leaf is a competitor. However, because New Leaf is one of our trading partners as a wholesaler and we continue to do business with them, we want to take some time to dig into this comment.

First, here is a brief explanation of how a company can be both a trading partner and competitor.

New Leaf is the world’s largest wholesale distributor of books, recorded media and sidelines related to the subject areas of spirituality and metaphysics, natural alternative wellness, and conscious living. So as a distributor, New Leaf can interact directly with publishers (as was the case of the publisher who posted the comment above), or they can act as a wholesaler (as they do in their relationship with AtlasBooks).

The benefit of working with AtlasBooks and having New Leaf as a wholesale distribution partner through our distribution program is that the publisher has access to not only the full reach of New Leaf’s customer base, but also the many other outlets that AtlasBooks provides. Also, the relationship with New Leaf falls under the same guidelines set in the AtlasBooks agreement so the publisher doesn’t have to worry about setting up terms, payment schedules, etc. with various trading partners. And instead of having to deal directly with New Leaf, the publisher has their assigned AtlasBooks customer service representative who can assist the publisher with questions about any of our trading partners.

So what about all the negative comments in this post? Does the publisher experience these from New Leaf while working with AtlasBooks? To me, it sounds like aside from discontent over the way sales are handled, an underlying cause for the frustration the publisher experienced is lack of communication. This person says they weren’t notified when a policy changed, they didn’t understand how the relationship with Amazon worked, and something a sales person promised did not make it into a contract.

I cannot speak for New Leaf, however at AtlasBooks communication is key. At the set up of every account, the publisher is assigned a customer service representative. That “live” person is there for any questions the publisher may have via telephone. We also communicate with our publishing partners through several means including email, direct mail, our newsletter, and even this blog. We also have a publisher resources section on our website that explains a lot of the questions we hear frequently from our publishing partners.

Whenever we can’t promise something to a publisher, we let them know. Due to our representation agreements, we are unable allow every selling channel exception a publisher may request (which sounds like the case with Amazon in the publisher’s complaint above, please check back later this week for a discussion on how AtlasBooks works with Amazon). However, we let the publisher know that we cannot accommodate their request. Because even when we can’t do what a publisher wants, we think it is important to explain the situation so that we can have shared expectations with our publishing partners.

It is our intent to be open with our publishing partners because that is what we are, partners. As our mission states, our mission is “to offer the book publishing community the best and most comprehensive services in a profitable, team-oriented environment.”

Again, please check back at the end of this week for a discussion of how AtlasBooks partners with Amazon and how the publisher is effected. Amazon is a big player and they operate under various systems, so we feel it is important to give you information to better understand this key player in the book industry.

As the summer draws to a close, readers may be finishing out their summer reading lists. What makes a book good for summer reading lists? Lots of places put out their lists, often tagging them as summer beach reads, cool books, and the like. Here are a few examples for adult books:

Good Housekeeping
Oprah, of course, has a list
NPR has a special series for best summer books in different categories
Reader’s Digest

But what is it about these books that make them good for summer reading? Summer is generally a time for vacation and relaxing. Many people use the summer (or at least want to use the summer) for their light leisure reading, the books that don’t make you think too much, where you can just follow along with the plot. They want the storyteller to do the work, letting them relax and enjoy the ride.

And so most summer reading lists are populated with fiction. They are page-turners filled with adventure and romance. They are often plot-driven, and to me, it seems that they rely on character stereotypes in order to keep the plot moving faster.

These are not the preferences of all readers, of course, but as a publisher, it could help you plan your publishing schedule. Have a non-fiction book? You might consider publishing the book in the fall, when consumers are looking for topic–specific books to give as gifts. But a fiction book backed by a summer reading marketing campaign could be a good idea. Check back soon for ideas on how to market your summer-publishing book.

Each week we highlight and expound on a question or section from our Publisher Resources page on our website. The more you know, the better you can publish, so we invite you to check out the information we offer.

This week we will look at step one of six steps we offer for a successful book signing.

Step One: Six weeks in advance of the signing, make sure the bookstore manager has the ordering information for your books. They can order directly from BookMasters, Inc. at 800-247-6553 or from wholesalers such as Baker & Taylor or Ingram. Be aware that they may have to backorder the books from the wholesaler to get an appropriate quantity.

Fall is a great time to plan book signings. The summer months are busy with vacations and generally disrupted schedules. In the fall, kids go back to school and the weather starts to turn sending more people indoors. Also, lots of major publishers publish some of their biggest titles in the fall. While more people head into stores for these books, it is a great time for you to plan an event.

As we say in step one, you need to pursue a signing at least six weeks in advance of the signing. The store should have ordering information by then, so you can even start planning six weeks plus. Six weeks from now puts you in the middle of September, so it is prime time for planning your fall event. Check with local stores to see if they would be interested in doing a signing or event involving your book.

This week, we will start with the question and answer first.

Can I get a list of stores you sell to?

You can track who is buying via your Account Management page. For a broad list, we sell to all the major wholesalers and retailers (for example: Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million) as well as regional wholesalers and retailers (for example: Partners West, Powell’s). We also sell to independent bookstores, libraries, and specialty markets.

This week’s publisher resource question is another general housekeeping topic. We encounter this question most frequently when a publisher is considering AtlasBooks as their book distribution partner.

While we could hand out a list of every bookstore that buys our books, that isn’t necessarily the point. The underlying question is, how broad is the distribution channel? As stated in the answer, AtlasBooks sells to a wide range. We work with everyone from large wholesalers and retailers all the way down to individual consumers. The possibilities are almost endless. A consumer can go to pretty much any bookstore and that bookstore would have the ability to get the book to the consumer.

A logical follow-up question is then, “where will my book sell?” This is where our Account Management system comes in handy. BookMasters shares detailed information about where your books are sold via a real-time reporting system.

I love checking out cover images. I remember my grade school librarian telling me the old adage that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I think in the current age that you can tell a lot more than what a book is about by the cover. For instance, a poorly designed cover indicates to me that the publisher didn’t take time to do things right. I assume that they may not have professionally edited the content, and may not even have taken the time or spent the money for a proper proofread. And a book buyer may assume that if the publisher didn’t spend money on a decent cover, they probably didn’t save enough back for marketing and publicity campaigns.

Of course a poorly designed cover doesn’t mean all the rest, maybe the publisher just has bad taste in design. But an unattractive cover reflects on the book, and people could assume any of the things above and this does not bode well for the book.

So my first word of advice is to use a professional cover designer and to respect their advice. You may love the picture your cousin drew to use on your cover, but only use it if you would rather keep your cousin happy than sell your book.

My next word of advice is to check out trends. This is as easy as walking in a bookstore, or even browsing online. And keep in mind that trends change not only from year to year, but also with the time of year (for example, books coming out after the beginning of the year tend to use more blues and purples while books coming out for summer and fall generally have warmer brighter colors like yellows, oranges, and reds). Make sure to check trends for your genre.

Finally for today, I want to recommend a blog post from Elizabeth Bluemle who writes for Publisher Weekly’s “ShelfTalker.” Elizabeth hits on some popular trends that she sees from working in her bookstore, The Flying Pig Bookstore in Charlotte VT.

And here is a plug for BookMasters. As a part of our range of services, we offer cover design. Our team of cover designers also works with our marketing and sales team to ensure that our cover advice is best for the publisher both stylistically and design-wise. Call your sales executive for more information.

ForeWord Reviews is now accepting entries for the 2010 Book of the Year Awards. This time-honored book award celebrates the independent spirit; it’s open to independently published books which have been or will be released in 2010.

ForeWord Reviews‘ Book of the Year Awards program was established to bring increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors. ForeWord is the only review trade journal devoted exclusively to books from independent houses.

The deadline to enter is January 15, 2011. To enter and find out more about the award categories, eligibility guidelines, and judging criteria, check out ForeWord’s Web site: www.forewordreviews.com.

If your books expand a reader’s world, introduce a voice society needs to hear, offer practical knowledge where none existed before, or simply entertain so compellingly that all distractions fall away, they should be submitted for the Book of the Year Awards!

This week’s Publisher Resources highlighted question is general housekeeping, but following our advice can be very important to the success of the book.

Having enough stock in enough time for the release of a book ensures that stores that order the book will have the book when they expect it and they can start tracking sales in those first vital weeks of a book’s life. Many stores will decide whether to keep the book in stock or make it special order only based on the first several weeks the book is available.

Many new publishers make the mistake of equating the day the book is done printing with the publication date. This is not correct. The publication date should be the date stores can expect to stock the book, and all marketing and publicity should support this date.

And now, here is the Publisher Resources question of the week (this and other questions and answers can be found here):

When should I send stock to the BookMasters warehouse?
Your title should be in our warehouse at least 30 days before your release date. We need at least 2 weeks to ship to all the accounts.