Sooo... I hope everybody gets that there will be ONE order I send in to Ka-Blam, and doesn't miss the deadline (December 4).
I do have to admit that I've not really gotten involved with how distributors and retailers use POD. I stick the books up at places like Lulu, and just send 'em there when they contact me.
I USED to try to work with them, but they want me to buy the books first and ship it to them (WTF?). The books are already up at wholesale on Lulu, including the full Desert Peach collection, and that's where I leave it to the happy little customers. They buy lots of them, and Lulu throws the money into my account. If the retailers want to get into the money loop, all they have to do is buy the same books and mark 'em up a bit. If they don't want to buy 'em, oh, well, that's a few more customers from their shop who go to their convenient laptop and get 'em direct. I mean, I love the stores, but I'm the bride and the customers are the bridegrooms. As much as we LIKE the yentas, they don't get to come on the honeymoon.
Barnes and Noble is squalling about getting cut off, but hey, they're not paying their bills. They USED to, but are showing signs of internal problems. Oh, well. There's always more yentas.
Amazon's Createspace is working hard to make the books available at wholesale for retailers (Lulu figured it out a decade ago, but I guess Amazon is kinda... slow...), but in the meantime, the customers can buy them. As an author, I'm one of many using many different POD companies, and if they make it at all hard or me or my customers, we just go off to somebody who wants to get out of the 18th century and into the 21st. Createspace is realizing this. Amazon TRIED to yenta us, but the weddings are being set up all over the net, with income streams, and anybody tries to gate-keep is just going to be cut out of the money.
There ARE up-to-date retailers who make it easy for customers to get their authors, but it's definitely a growth industry at this point.
Anyway, I'm crossing my fingers that ICBW is about the 21st century. It's a test for this year, and one I hope will work.
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Hey Donna! Great to see you posting on here. Since multiple people post on this blog you should introduce yourself quickly at the beginning of each post. I'm always struggling for a few sentences on your posts without that frame of reference!
ReplyDeletePrevious to right now, there really has been no way to get POD comics into retailers (through Ka-Blam or ComixPress, at least). The high per-unit cost makes it pretty difficult to even break even. Ka-Blam, and later ComixPress, have announced plans to market directly to retailers as a way to get around this, but they've been slow to get their plans off the ground. From what you say, it sounds like Lulu does this already. I've always found their high prices to be prohibitive. Has Lulu worked out for you?
I'll be sure to check out Lulu. I've had a real issue with having to print the book, ship it to myself, then pay to ship it to every store.
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