by Jay Hartman
There’s no question the pandemic has caused all sorts of upheaval in the shipping of goods worldwide. Whether it’s a lack of raw materials to make items, the postal service and other shipping services taking longer to get the goods from Point A to Point B, or container shortages to hold those goods, production in most industries is seeing some real struggles.
This also holds true for the publishing industry. Paper is in high demand and somewhat short supply, following the runs (no pun intended) on toilet paper and paper towels last year. UPS, FedEx, and the Unites States Postal Service are still reporting extended times for basic delivery. Cargo containers are not making their way back to China, Vietnam, and other book-producing countries, leading to massive delays in new releases making their way to other countries.
Many major publishers delayed publication of their key Q4 titles due to not being able to get the titles back from overseas printers. Recently, Ingram reported they expect delays to increase in printing and shipping due to a lack of paper, shipping resources, and employees to do the actual printing. Current lead times for Ingram can be upwards of ten business days from receiving an order to shipping. Lead time for Amazon print-on-demand through KDP is also running around ten business days.
With Q4 typically the busiest time of year due to holiday gift-giving, what will help ensure you’re successful?
- Make sure your paperbacks and hardcovers are available via print-on-demand from Ingram Spark and/or Amazon KDP. I recommend you do both.
- Order early. The sooner you get orders in, the sooner they ship out. Don’t rely on last-minute orders to reach your customers or gift recipients. Currently no print-on-demand printer offers expedited service this holiday season.
- If you’re ordering batches of books, order multiple smaller batches instead of one or two large batches. It is far easier and less time-consuming for printers to produce a batch of 25 books than a batch of 100. With our two most recent paperback releases at Untreed Reads, we found Ingram filled our orders as follows: individual customer orders first, then bulk orders of ten or less, then orders of 25 or more.
- If you’re going to do offset printing instead of print-on-demand, stick to a printer in your own country rather than relying on a service in another country. You may pay a little more, but what you lose in cost, you’ll gain in availability. Remember the two keys to successful publishing are visibility and availability!
- If you have the ability, offer the eBook edition for free with the purchase of the paperback. We recently offered a free eBook edition of Monkey Business: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Films of the Marx Brothers to people who preordered the paperback, so they enjoyed the stories while waiting for the print version to arrive. What we found is not everybody who preordered took advantage of the offer, but those who did were very grateful. Remember Amazon no longer offers the eBook for free or reduced price when ordering a paperback or hardcover. This may be something you have to offer from your own site or from your publisher’s site if they’re game.
Don’t let the current state of printing and shipping get you down! There are plenty of options to take care of your readers and have a very successful holiday season.
Jay A. Hartman, editor-in-chief at Untreed Reads Publishing, founded Untreed Reads to promote ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.
