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wine shop/food related books


orla

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Hi - we are in the process of opening a wine and cheese shop. How the heck do I order books? We want to have a small collection (like 25 books) that we have read and would like to retail....Omnivore's Dilemma, Great American Cheese, etc...... How do we go about procuring these books at wholesale?

Thanks!

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  • 4 weeks later...

You can check out national book distributors. For example, National Book Network has a section on their website for book sellers. Firefly books is another. There are others out there.

The distributors and publishers will generally have catalogues they can send you.

You might have the choice of paying a certain % of the list price and being able to return unsold books, or paying a different, lower % of the list price with no option of returns.

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I would suggest talking to a book distributor like Ingram or Baker & Taylor (there are others depending upon what area of the country you are in) - they distribute books from all of the major publishers and many of the minors. You won't get the kind of discount from them that you might from a major (40% or less as opposed to 46 - 47%) but you'll be able to order one or two copies of a particular title and not have the kind of minimums that a major like Random House (or even Ten Speed, which has great books) would impose.

They've also all got various online systems to search inventory, ordering, etc, as well as return policies for whatever you don't sell (although you'll take a loss on shipping things back, but not as badly as if things just plain don't sell).

You could even use systems like this to special order things for your customers.

You might not make as much money as going through a single publisher (or many) but could be a lot easier and less time intensive for a small business owner who's got a lot of other stuff to be dealing with.

Just my many many cents. PM me if any of this sounds interesting to you but you've got more questions about it - nope, I don't work for any of them, just have some experience with it!

Ingram Book Company

Baker & Taylor

ETA that I should have noted that I'm agreeing with Pam R.

Edited by AnnaC (log)
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