As I previously mentioned, there are two main book wholesalers: Ingrams and Baker & Taylor. If you have your book available in these two places, then it’ll be available virtually everywhere books are sold.

Baker & Taylor have a partnership program for small publishing houses. It’s costs around $300 to sign up for it; however, if you go through Lightning Source, your book will be available in both Ingrams and Baker & Taylor.

Lightning Source is the “distribution arm” of Ingrams, the largest book wholesaler in the nation. The cool thing about Lighting Source is that’s it’s more than a distributor.

It’s a printer/distributor rolled into one, and it’s the “self-publisher’s” (or micro/indie publisher’s) best friend.

After you have set up your business and gotten your ISBN #s, etc, you’ll want to set up a publisher’s account with Lightning Source. It costs less than $300.

Once you have your LSI team, you can submit a new title, which costs $125. You can download templates for your or your artist/layout designer to use for both the interior and exterior PDF files of your book. This is what you’ll upload to Lightning Source. $40 for each upload. Then get a proof ($30)… and your set!

Once you’re in the Lighning Source system, your book is available wherever books are sold, because they’re now in both Ingrams & Baker & Taylor’s system. If they’re there, then they’re available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc…

PLEASE NOTE: Being available doesn’t mean the bookstores like Barnes & Noble will carry your books on the shelf. That’s a whole different ballgame, which I’ll cover in the next post.

Being available means that they can type in your name, ISBN #, and/or book title in their system, and it will be available to order for the customer asking about it.

It’s still up to you to get the customers in the store asking for it.

However, they are automatically available from Amazon & Barnes&Noble online.

One of the other great things about Lightning Source is that they are a POD (Print On-Demand) printer, which means your book isn’t printed until it’s ordered.

This is a HUGE thing in today’s market. I’m a lifelong environmentalist, so this makes perfect sense to me.

Some Big Boys are in trouble because of the excessive book printing (100,000+ print runs) vs. bookstore returns (next post). Not to mention warehouse space costs, etc. Ultimately, books get thrown away (not even recycled in many cases), so POD is a no-brainer for me.

With LSI, they’re printed and shipped as they’re ordered within 24 hours.

They’re never unavailable through Amazon or any other bookseller.

Never again will I be in the middle of a huge promotional push and have my books unavailable. Although “selling out” looks really good in a press release, but what it really means is loss of potential sales.

People are impulse buyers. Only a small percentage will come back to buy something that wasn’t there when they wanted it.

Make sure your book is always available for your potential readers.

As a micro/indie publisher, Lightning Source is the way to go.

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