Tips for Effective Online Marketing

In selling books on the web, the more details on a book that are available online, the more copies of that book you will sell. Here is information on getting information about your books to several online booksellers.

Spdbooks.org

Small Press Distribution is a not-for-profit wholesaler of literary books and magazines published by independent presses. SPD is located in Berkeley, California. Only books that SPD has on stock are listed on their site. See their site for submission information.

For all books released after Fall 1999, SPD will automatically scan covers and post them on the site, but there may be a lag time of six to eight weeks after the book arrives at their warehouse. If you have a book released in Fall of 1999 or later and do not see a scan go up within three months of shipping the title, email Brent Cunningham and he’ll make sure it goes up in the next batch.

For earlier books, you can email Brent cover scans. Send him GIF format images, 72 dpi, 144 pixels high. Please send no more than two scans per email.

The book descriptions on the site are the same as the ones in SPD’s catalogue. A book’s description appears online shortly after it shows up in a new titles catalogue in the fall or spring. If you’d like to help craft your descriptions, three to four sentence summaries (if they are not printed on the book) can be sent to Brent or Laura Moriarty. As of yet, they do not have a mechanism for posting further information, such as reviews, on the site.

Publishers are welcome and encouraged to use the site as their fulfillment avenue, linking directly to their books (just search for your book’s page, then use that URL in your order link). As with regular sales, publishers receive 45% of list for all books sold.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com’s publisher guide gives instructions on how to submit information to the online directory and how to add and enhance listings. It also links to information on their Advantage Program for independent publishers (give them a 55% discount for keeping a small stock of your books so they are always listed as “Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours”).

To enhance your listing, you can submit: Cover Art, Interior Art, Description, Excerpt, Table of Contents, Reviews, Back cover copy, Inside flap copy, Author biography, Author comments, Publisher comments

Submit author and publisher comments via the online content form,, ftp, or mail through the procedure described in the Publisher’s Guide or simply by clicking the "I am the Author/Publisher and I want to comment on my book" link at the bottom of your book’s detail page.

To submit via mail or FTP

Save the text for all the titles you are submitting in a single file saved in "text only" (ASCII) format. Name your file with the name of the publisher, or imprint, and the .txt extension. (Example: XWZPublishing.txt). Put your email address in the first line of the file.

In order to submit digitized files of a title's cover art, save the scanned image according to the following specifications:

TIFF or JPEG
24-bit RGB
648 pixels tall (9 inches tall at 72 dots per inch)

To name a file containing cover art, use the title's ISBN, followed by the format in which it was scanned and saved (for example, 0443567896.tif; 5454533237.jpg).

If you don't have access to a scanner or scanning service to digitize cover art, Amazon will scan your covers for a fee: $15 base fee and $10 per title. Make checks payable to Amazon.com.

To FTP files:
Server: ftp-1.amazon.com.
User name: catalog.
Email catalog-dept@amazon.com for the password.

If you plan to send the files on disk, they accept these media:

PC or Macintosh 3.5-inch high-density (1.4 MB) floppy disks.
Macintosh or PC Iomega ZIP cartridges.
CD-ROMs created with CD-R or CD-WORMs CD writers for Macintosh or PC.

If you choose to send the image file(s) via mail, clearly label each disk with your company and imprint name, phone number, e-mail address, and mailing address. Also include a printed inventory listing all the file names and what each file contains. Your disks will not be returned.

To submit materials through the U.S. Postal Service:

Amazon.com, Inc.
Attn: Catalog Department
P.O. Box 80727
Seattle, WA 98108-0727

To submit materials by another delivery service:

Amazon.com, Inc.
Attn: Catalog Department
520 Pike Street, 18th Floor
Seattle, WA 98101

Corrections

Send listing corrections to book-typos@amazon.com. Be sure to include the ISBN and a contact name and phone number. Do not submit corrections using the online content form, disk, or ftp. They will get confused.

Barnesandnoble.com

Barnesandnoble.com Publisher’s FAQ gives information on how to submit information, corrections, and images.

Information to submit: synopsis, publisher note, sample chapter, quotes about the book (jacket blurbs are fine), review excerpts, author bio, table of contents, price update, status update, and format information (trade paper, hardcover, mass market).

Those with more than 10 titles to submit should email tdsub@bn.com to have a ftp account set up.

Those with fewer than 10 titles can email the information to titles@barnesandnoble.com.

Corrections should be mailed to corrections@barnesandnoble.com.

Covers: Barnes and Noble scans every book that comes into a distribution center, so if your books are available at B&N then there should already be a cover scan online at bn.com. If your books are not in stock at B&N, then you can submit electronic images. Publishers with fewer than 10 books can send paper covers for B&N to scan.

Guidelines for scanning images

No smaller than 100 pixels wide (475 pixels tall is preferred -- do not send full-size scans)
Frontal cover scans (not the entire cover or a shot of the book with drop shadow)
72 dpi - 150 dpi
RGB (preferred) or Indexed Color
TIFF or JPEG
Bit depth no lower than 8
Filename must be the ten-digit ISBN, not the title or author

Borders.com

If your book has an ISBN and is listed in Books in Print, it should be listed.

Online form to submit changes to listings

Borders will review any additional content for your listing, and recommends submitting cover art, book synopses and reviews.

Specs for cover scans

Named with the 10 digit ISBN, in either JPEG (*.jpg), GIF (*.gif) or TIFF (*.tif) formats. JPEG and GIF are preferred. No larger than 150 dpi and, if submitted by email, no larger than 250K per image. Images can be submitted via email, floppy disk, CD-ROM, or zip Disk.

Submit files by email to corrections@borders.com or by mail to:

Borders.com Data Integrity
100 Phoenix Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

Borders will scan cover art for free. Mail it to the same address. They will not return anything you mail to them.