Bulk Sales Purchases
Many authors make use of the fact that they are contractually allowed to purchase as many copies of their book as they’d like at a deeply discounted rate. This kind of special sales arrangement can be very useful for marketing purposes, especially if you’re buying copies in bulk to promote your book.
Author Discount Pros:
The author discount enables you to purchase copies at a deeply discounted rate, in the range of 40%-70% off the full retail price
You can purchase copies in bulk, and Shipping & Handling is usually free to any destination
You can pre-order copies before the book is published
Your friends, family, and companies and organizations can ask you to purchase copies at a discounted rate for them
Author Discount Cons:
Copies sold through this channel will often not count towards national bestseller lists (New York Times, USA Today, etc.)
The sales will not be reported to Nielsen’s Bookscan for numbers tracking
These sales are generally considered non-royalty sales. (They will not count towards your earning back your advance.) However, a notable exception is BenBella books, which pays full royalties on sales to authors.
Independent Bookstores
One solution that’s worth considering is to contact your local indie bookstore (these tend to be more amenable than bigger chainstores) and see if they’d be interested in selling your books in bulk at a discounted rate. One such store (which does in fact report copies sold) includes:
Skylark Bookshop, Columbia, MO
Alex George, Owner; Carrie Koepke, Manager
mail@skylarkbookshop.com; (573) 777 6990
We can usually offer a discount of at least 20%. Sometimes, when we are able to negotiate a better rate due to particular circumstances, we will pass some of those savings on to the purchaser. We can ship directly to the customer. Shipping costs will depend on quantities but is often paid for by the publisher. Skylark bookplates can be sent to the author ahead of time for signing, if required.
For inquiries, please send the following information to mail@skylarkbookshop.com:
Title & Author
(ISBN if known)
Quantity desired
Location to be drop shipped or shipped
Purpose (how the books will be used)
Date needed
Is purchaser tax exempt?
Skylark reports to Bookscan, ABA, and NYT.