independent publishers guild

Trade reps are either salaried (plus, usually, a company car) or work on commission for several publishers (who are not large enough to warrant them employing salaried reps). The commission will vary from 10% to 15% of publisher’s net receipt. Sometimes commissioned reps work in teams to cover the UK (4-18 to cover the whole of the UK plus Ireland). Reps visit bookshops to sell in new titles, usually using a single A4 sheet AI – Advanced Information sheet – plus a book cover; several titles presented like this are bound together to form a “blad”. Some large publishers are now giving their reps electronic blads on lap-top computers, from which much more elaborate presentations may be made. The rep will also remind the bookseller about steady selling backlist titles, and may offer point of sale material such as posters and counter packs (cardboard structures holding several copies of the same title). Bookshops are usually visited a minimum of three times a year, but more frequently for inner city large bookshops. The rep may negotiate the discount the bookshop receives from the publisher, although this is more usually done by the head office of both the bookshop (in the case of chains) and the publisher – usually the rep’s boss, the Sales Manager or Director.

Rep access to some of the larger chain bookstores is becoming increasingly difficult to arrange. Some chains have a policy of seeing reps from only their largest supplier publishers, Others have more variable policies across the chain. It is seen as increasingly important to back-up the work of your rep team with other selling techniques such as direct mail to bookshops, tele-sales and e-mail and web marketing.