Hi!

All right, I have a question involving distributors of my book. To explain: 

Since I published my book with CreateSpace the main place I sell my book from is Amazon, therefore, I make the most royalties when I sell my book on Amazon as a paperback (with exception of ebook, of course). 

This system seemed to work out fine, except that a lot of external distributors seem to have been buying my book and selling it through their channels, which is also fine since I said that was okay, when publishing my book. 

The only problem is... I make less than a quarter of the royalties I usually make when a distributor buys my book. I don't really mind, but I was curious, anyways if that's abnormal or just typical. 

So, to clarify my question is: if, when bought by a distributor, I make less than a quarter of my typical royalties, is that bad? Should I stop CreateSpace from allowing it (which would also prevent the book from going into bookstores)?

Thanks!

Bethany Faith

First, it's AWESOME that you have distributors buying your book! Go Bethy!

Now, I haven't used Createspace yet (plan to), so I can't speak for how contacts work and whatnot. But I want to ask you - if you tell Amazon that distributors can't buy your book, are you going to try and reach these distributors another way?

Here's how I'm figuring it. If you let Amazon sell your book to distributors, your book is getting sold and you're making royalties. They may not be as high as direct sales from Amazon (since there's a middleman), but it is royalties.

If you tell Amazon that it can't sell your book to distributors, you loose those sales, period. Are you going to be able to generate those sales another way by going to directly to the distributors? How? Since you're publishing with Createspace, if you were going to market your book yourself to other distributors, you'd need to get copies printed somewhere, I think.

My personal opinion? Let the distributors buy your book and get those extra sales and distribution. You're probably making good money by doing it through Amazon, as opposed to marketing it yourself and having to swallow printing costs as well. And the more channels your book is in, the more it will potentially get read.

Thanks, Philly. That was my reasoning too, when I decided to leave them be, but I wanted second opinions.

Let me put it this way:

You're receiving a higher royalty from those distributors than you would from a traditional publisher.