Five Things You Can Do To Get Your Books Into Stores

While presenting at the Backspace conference, I had the pleasure of watching a number of other panels and presentations. One panel, “Buying and Selling: From Publisher to Bookstore,” consisted of publicist Dana Kaye Litoff, Agent Colleen Lindsay, Random House Book Rep Ron Koltnow, and Bookseller Dustin Kutz. Author A.S. King moderated the panel.

 Here’s five things these fine folks had to say about how to get your books into stores:

1. Find out who your local book rep is from your publishing house and introduce yourself to him or her. — Ron Koltnow

2. Trust booksellers to know where to place your books. Introduce yourself to them and make yourself known. — Dana Kaye Litoff

3. A lot of buying is reactive (to publicity, reviews, etc.) not proactive. Find stores where you have a connection to the people who shop there and ask the booksellers to stock your book once you make that connection known to them. — Ron Koltnow

4. Authors should tour their publishing house and meet the editors, publicists, etc. Putting a face to a name makes a big difference. — Dana Kaye Litoff

5. Say thank you via e-mail to your publicist, editor, bookseller, and everyone else who helped in the making of your book. —  Colleen  Lindsay

What ideas do you have about getting your books out there to the public? Have you done anything interesting to get your book known? What great advice have you heard at a conference or from another writer, editor, agent, publicist, or bookseller?

3 Comments:

  1. Great information, Janice. Thanks for the scoop. Hope someday soon I will be able to put it to good use.

  2. J. Thomas Ross

    Thanks for sharing the tips!

  3. Lorie Greenspan

    Great advice from the experts – thanks for sharing.

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