Small Press United Distribution
Leigh Goodison
Leigh
Maggie Lynch
SPU has a decent reputation for what they do,primarily based on their mother company IPG being the third largest distributor in the country. However, there are several things to consider before signing anything with them. The first is if you will be accepted. Their acceptance rate is only 20% of applicants. Because I don't know you or your books, I can't say what your chance is of being accepted. The acceptance is based on an evaluation of your book sales to date (if you have any) or of what they perceive the book sales will be. Not that they are looking for bestsellers. But they are looking for solid sellers in specific markets.
Other things to consider are:
- What is their commission/fee? Most distributors take 30% of net. This means if you sell a book at Amazon, SPU get's the 70%, then they take their 30% out of that before giving you your payment. At other retailers it is less because the net will be somewhere between 45% and 60%. I don't know what SPUs fee but I wouldn't be surprised if it is 30%. I don't know any middleman distributors who are less than 25% and 30% seems to be the going rate. I couldn't find their fee structure anywhere (always a concern to me). Then are there other fees as well? Catalog fees, warehouse fees, return book fees?
- I noticed that at SPU you MUST buy a minimum of 50 print copies to start off (I assume that is for their warehousing) So you are already in the hole for that cost. On a typical 300-350 page book that is $300 or so for 50 books. Ask around to people in NIWA, how many sold 50 books of a single title in a year? Not many people I can tell you.
- .What is their percentage on eBooks? I noticed that they want to distribute both your print and ebooks. I don't know if it is required that you do both with them. Again, most distributors take 30% of the profit. As ebooks must be sold at a significantly lower cost than print, it is again eating into your profit. Most indies count on their ebook profit to make up for their lower profit and sales on print. So, you are giving up your most profitable portion to them.
- What is their marketing? They say they have relationships with "90 important booksellers." Who are they? Ingram has relationships with 22,000 booksellers who automatically download their database and use it as their primary ordering system. If SPU distributes to Ingram (which they would have to do), your net their ends up even less. You already get Ingram's relationships through using Createspace Expanded, Ingram Spark or Lightning Source yourself. So, what additional relationship is SPU giving you with those 90 important booksellers? What does their marketing consist of? Who are they personally visiting? They say they have thousands of titles now, where would your title sit in their catalog and what are the chances of it getting much push from sales?
All this is not to say that SPU is bad. I suspect that if you are a solid selling author who puts out two to three books every year and already pushes a lot of print books, or you have a small press that pushes a lot of books and you don't have the staff to handle all the uploads, then MAYBE it makes sense to give up another 30% instead of paying staff. Time is money.
However, there are other ways to get your books distributed (even if you don't want to do it yourself) for significantly less money. Smashwords or Draft 2 Digital will distribute ebooks for a 5% take. Book Baby will distribute ebooks for a 15% take. Print book distribution through Createspace ranges from a 20%-60% take. Print book distribution through Ingram Spark or Lightning Source ranges from a 20%-45% take.
I don't have the answers. Just questions. For myself, I have 7 indie titles out and by the end of this year will have 13. I upload directly to Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and B&N. I use either Createspace or Ingram Spark for print. I also run an author cooperative with 70+ titles. So far, I don't see any reason to give up 30% more in profit and wouldn't recommend it to any of the authors in the cooperative because I don't see that the sales would increase significantly to cover that 30%. Maybe there will come a time in the future when the time it takes for me to do my own uploads is so involved that I will have to look at the cost of hiring an assistant vs paying a middleman 30% of my profits. But so far, I haven't reached that level.
Good luck with your decision process.
Maggie
Caitlin Diehl
Caitlin Diehl