Take a published book that’s about to leave the publisher. It will have an ISBN, an edition and format, a price, and will be listed in the publisher’s catalogue. This doesn’t mean a reader can go out and purchase the book though. The book will need to get to market, and that will involve some combination of companies, data, and shipments before it gets to the customer.
The first choice the publisher will have to make is the distribution channel. It may sell directly to certain bookstores, or it may use a distributor, or it may distribute through a wholesaler, or it may sell through an online bookseller, or it may combine all three. This determines how orders are processed, how inventory is tracked, how availability is displayed, and how stock is replenished. In other words, you should think of book distribution not as a single path from publisher to customer, but as a graph of possible paths.
So before you continue, try sketching out how a book gets from publisher to customer. Pick a hypothetical book and record its key metadata: ISBN, format, price, and availability. Now let’s say a bookstore wants to order some copies. Follow the process from when the book first appears in the publisher’s catalogue until the bookstore receives a delivery. At some point there will be an order, and availability, and stock allocation, and dispatch, and inventory updates. What actually happens to the physical book is interesting, but equally interesting is the data that tells each party what’s going on.
The problem arises when you have multiple channels for the same book. The publisher may have stock that is available for direct sales, but it may also be distributed by a distributor to independent bookstores and made available through an online retailer. The numbers don’t mean the same thing, because the stock may be in different places, there may be outstanding orders that have already been reserved against stock, and the stock may be replenished at different times. The first step is therefore to learn how to map availability to a particular channel and stock record.
There is also pricing involved. The retail price shown to the customer is not the same as the wholesale price. A distributor or wholesaler or retailer may be working with trade discounts and margins, which affects how the commercial side of the transaction works. For now it’s enough to learn the difference between the retail price and wholesale price and avoid having to build a full business model. The important distinction to draw here is between retail price, wholesale price, and discount.
Also the distribution doesn’t necessarily stop once the book reaches the retailer. Some books sell, some don’t, and some may end up being returned. This involves sending information and stock back through the supply chain, and updating the stock record accordingly. This is worth considering because it gives us a fuller picture of book distribution, which involves more than just stock moving through the supply chain: it also involves stock being replenished, and unsold stock remaining, and returns. The supply chain isn’t static; it changes as orders and stock change.
So as you study any example of distribution, ask yourself where is the book right now and who is going to take the next step? You can ask this of a publisher, or distributor, or wholesaler, or bookstore, or online retailer. By following a book through this process you’ll start to see the logic behind it, while also understanding how different books can reach customers via different routes.
