Doing an event at a bookstore can be a cool thing for an author. Or a complete dud, depending on the store and the number of people the author invites.
Authors should visit the stores you are interested in, introduce yourself and show them printed copies of your book. Use your tip sheet as the leave behind calling card, as that will distinguish you as a professional author.
Most brick and mortar bookstores will not order books for an event or the shelf unless they are returnable. This means the store pays for the book, but can then return it years later for a refund. This hurts authors and publishers. Barnes & Noble stores may also make up deceptive criteria about POD and self-publishing, but the truth is they just want the books to be returnable, and sold at their wholesale rate.
Because of this Koehler Books has a standard NO RETURN policy in place for bookstores, which means they will not order your book.
The best way around this is for you to get the store to agree to your bringing books to your event and selling them to the store at their wholesale price. At the end of the event, you get paid by the store for books sold. For example, if we sell your books to you at $7.00 each, you bring them to the event and sell to the store at 40% off of the $19.99 list price, or $11.99, giving you a profit of $4.99. The store is happy, and so are you. Boom. Easy as pie.
Many of our authors (and thousands of authors worldwide) have been doing this for years as a means of having events at bookstores while avoiding bookstore returns.
We make an exception for authors if they fulfill the following criteria:
1) The author has planned and confirmed a book tour with multiple stores (at least 5) lined up. A book tour shows a professional level outlook and ability.
2) The books are primarily being used for events that are part of the tour, as well as inventory.
3) The author agrees to take home books that did not sell at the event, or buy back inventory before it is returned.
The advantage to the author when the store orders your book is they take care of the transaction, and those orders count towards your royalties. Be advised that if there are significant returns we will shut down returns on your book.
Remember that organizations, book clubs and companies who want to order boxes of your books may buy them directly from Koehler Books at a 30% wholesale rate with no returns allowed. Just send them here. Wholesale orders count towards your royalties.
Thank you for your attention and consideration of this issue