Distribution and fulfilment
YPS are the distributor for a wide range of mainstream publishers. On a daily basis we are supplying orders to wholesalers such as Gardners and Bertrams as well as major booksellers such as Waterstones and Amazon.
If you choose to distribute with YPS, your books will be distributed alongside these mainstream publishers.
If you decide to handle the order processing and fulfilment yourself you will need to:
- Find somewhere to store your stock, like a spare room or garage. Books are bulky and heavy!
- Raise an invoice or receipt giving the appropriate discount for trade customers
- Major bookshops and wholesalers may be reluctant to order from you as you are unlikely to have an account with them.
- Purchase a range of packing materials for the different amounts of books ordered, pack the orders, which requires a lot of space
- Take the parcels to the Post Office or to the courier’s office if the consignment is too heavy for Royal Mail.
- Although we will charge you the freight charges, it is likely to be considerably less than you will pay yourself. We have negotiated significant volume discounts with our freight carriers. To deliver a box of books next day in the UK costs us less than £4.50, it is likely to cost you about £12.
- Process the payments, and take them to the bank.
- Chase up the customers who have not paid
- Keep accounts.
Coming soon - http://www.ypd-books.com/
This service is only available to publishers who distribute with YPS. Customers can go directly to the site or they can be linked from the publisher's site. Orders can be placed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from anywhere in the world.
We charge £30 per title, per month, minimum 6 months. This includes warehousing, full distribution, as well as title being featured on http://www.ypd-books.com/
Warehousing
We will store your books in our warehouse. They are still your books, but you will not have to store them in your garage or spare room. Your stock will covered by our comprehensive insurance policy.
Order processing
Your promotional information will direct orders from both the book trade and individuals to YPS (we can help you with this). Orders from individuals would need to be accompanied by payment; bookshop orders would be supplied on credit. We will process the orders, giving appropriate discount where applicable, and produce invoices and despatch notes.
Pick, pack and despatch
The invoices and despatch notes would be passed to our warehouse and the order speedily picked, packed in appropriate packaging and despatched to the customer.
Cash processing and credit control
We will handle all aspect of cash processing and credit control. YPS will pass on to you the full value of the sales every month after allowing 60 days for us to collect payment from customers. In the rare event we are unable to obtain payment the bad debt will be yours.
Reports
At the end of each month we will send you a statement, either by post or email. This will show how many books you have sold in the month and how many in the year and the value of the sales in the month and in the year. It will also show how many copies you have left in stock.
Costs
The cost of the YPS warehousing and distribution service is £30 per month, this also includes featuring your book on our online bookshop. There is also a variable charge based on £1.20 per book sold to cover postage and packing. We would invoice the fixed charge at the outset and invoice for postage and packaging at the end of each month.