How and why we do what we do with bookstores:
From the inception of Homofactus Press, we have dedicated ourselves to paying authors a fair royalty for their work. To this end, we pay our writers a 30% royalty. However, in order for us to do so we have chosen to discount our books at 30% through Ingram and Lightning Source—who distributes our books using print-on-demand technology. Meaning our books are printed one at a time while most publishers print offset - 10,000 or 5,000 copies at a time. These publishers receive a lower cost per book but have more money tied up in inventory. Though our cost per book is higher we have no money tied up in cost-of-goods-sold. Out of the remaining 40%, we have to pay copyright, legal, accounting, shipping, marketing, advertising, web-hosting, printing fees, software costs, and other business expenses.
Because we do not take the industry standard of 55-60%-which would bankrupt us- Ingram can only pass on a 5% discount to bookstores. Thus we have devised the following terms in working directly with bookstores:
- 40% discount off cover price to bookstores plus shipping.
- We require payment up front as we pay for printing our books in advance.
- We do not accept returns.
We have attempted to find a way to work with bookstores in order to meet their profit needs while being accountable to our authors and our business. We are also open to paying for shipping after a certain threshold is met, but we would need to review such requests on a case-by-case basis.
Since we require payment up front, we have suggested that bookstores only purchase what they believe they can sell; there is no minimum and repeat orders can be made. If one of our authors is performing in your store we suggest obtaining additional orders at the time of the reading. We would be happy to create a talking-points list to give to your customers, if that assists in explaining our practices and intentions. We are trying to cut back on unnecessary waste and are open to suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your thoughts and ideas.
We believe in doing business differently, But that also means transforming the way we conduct our financial affairs. Homofactus Press' relationship with the authors and our commitment to fairly compensate them for their work is not something we can afford to jeopardize. Independent publishers are going out of business because they have unstable financial practices. They exist on credit, floating, and when they cannot pay their bills it's expected that the authors will decline their royalty payments.
Our wish is that together we can generate options that will work for us and for you, the independent bookseller. The first tenet of Homofactus Press is that we are in business to enhance the well-being of all involved with us in this book-making adventure. We look forward to working collaboratively with independent publishers to find fruitful and beneficial solutions to our common goals.