Timeliness and reliability versus higher discounts.

First, a little orientation for you.

There are basically five major publishers who distribute their own titles today. They're called the Big Five. These publishers have more or less bought up every important imprint there is. 

They are: Penguin Random House, Simon and Shuster, Macmillan, Harper Collins, and Hachette.

Meanwhile, there is one major distributor who handles all the others' books: Ingram. 

I have been ordering the majority of my books from Ingram even though I get up to 13% better discounts by ordering direct from the publishers.

Today, I got in a measly small box of some of the "a" titles from a major publisher/distributor. The fill rate was actually less than I get from Ingram. 90% of what I ordered still hasn't arrived twelve days after I ordered them.

I still haven't heard from the other big publisher/distributor that I applied for. The western rep hasn't bothered to answer my email. (The eastern rep has been very nice and responsive, but she's not MY rep.)

I'm thinking I'll need to keep ordering from Ingram on these titles for the next couple weeks unless things change. Waiting a couple of weeks to get the material and then only getting a 50% fill rate: well, that 13% extra margin looks a lot less appealing.

It seems like I have to learn the same lesson over and over again. Timeliness and reliability outweigh an extra discount every time. Not to mention the extra work it takes to keep cross-checking the different distributors and keeping records of what I have or haven't ordered. Basically, I won't know if these two new publisher/distributors have something in stock until it does or doesn't arrive.

Well, screw that.

Don't get me wrong: getting a higher discount is helpful. It's why I'm constantly tempted by the possibility of it. It's just that almost every time, the lower cost provider is much less helpful, accountable, efficient, timely, and reliable. 

One of the big distributors I ordered from is the actual publisher of the books I ordered and yet they had a lower fill rate than Ingram! How is that possible? How is it possible that these giant corporations are so bad at it? Honestly, I have to resort to Google and Amazon to search for titles because these big publishers and distributors' search engines absolutely suck. 

A bad fill rate is not great, but not knowing what the fill rate is going to be until it actually arrives is intolerable. It basically doubles the shipping time that is already twice as long a time it takes to get the books from Ingram. That 13% better discount doesn't look so good for books that never arrive or arrive two weeks later than they need to. 

So ease of use, taking less than half the time to order; knowing what's in stock; getting the product a minimum of a week, more often two weeks sooner

Versus 13% extra margin.

In the end, I find the former better than the latter. Certainly a lot less aggravating. I chased margins and goals throughout 2024, only to fall an exasperating small margin short. The 13% is still very attractive, so I'm going to continue to tinker with the process, try to make it easier and more reliable. But I'm also going to use Ingram as my bedrock.

So...back to more of the way I was doing in 2022 and 2023. We were doing gangbusters business just by ordering from one wholesaler. Easy-peasy.