Anyone got experience of fulfilling Waterstones/Gardners with POD from IngramSpark?

[FibonacciEddie]

Hi Guys

I was hoping that someone may be able to check what I have written here to see if I have made a mistaken assumption.

I have a Paperback Novel (Emergence)
It is ~400 Pages (5by8 inches) and a Print on Demand title with IngramSpark
ISBN - 978-0-9930779-0-6

I have just sent off the Gardners Waterstones Trading Application Form - stating I will do a 45% Discount (I was advised that this is the minimum.)

My cover price is £8.99

So if Waterstones "place an order" ... perhaps via a Customer Walk-In Request at a local store.

Then I am not sure what happens:
a) Do they send the order to Gardners, who send it to me, and then I send a copy of the book to the Gardners warehouse?
b) Do they send a POD order to IngramSpark for direct fulfillment to the Gardners warehouse?

If (a), then the numbers are difficult...
If I have no inventory at home
IngramSpark will charge me £7.69 for a single print run copy sent to the UK
So I lose out £7.69 - (£8.99*55%)

If I have books in my garage ... I can order ~50/100 from IngramSpark (carrying the inventory risk myself)... a bulk order like that will cost me £4.50 per unit... but then Waterstones will only pay £8.99*55% = £4.94 - and it will cost me ~£1.50 to send the book to Gardners Warehouse

If (b) ... then I am not sure how it works either - but Amazon order my POD from IngramSpark and I do make 30p per copy ... so either (i) Amazon are not taking much of a percentage off the £8.99, or (ii) Amazon have a bulk-arrangement with IngramSpark to avoid all the extra (handling costs / per unit costs)

Anyway... if someone knows the Maths/Economics then please drop me a line here

thanks
nick

 

[Stephen Palmer]

As an ex-Waterstones employee, the only help I can give is this: no Gardners/Ingrams/Bertrams orders are ever placed except as customer orders. Waterstones simply can't afford to have non-returnable stock on their shelves. And that doesn't take into account the surprising number of customer orders that are never collected...

 

[HareBrain]

I have a friend who sells DVDs through Bertrams, and he doesn't wait for orders but delivers stock to their warehouse.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

As an ex-Waterstones employee, the only help I can give is this: no Gardners/Ingrams/Bertrams orders are ever placed except as customer orders. Waterstones simply can't afford to have non-returnable stock on their shelves. And that doesn't take into account the surprising number of customer orders that are never collected...

What stephen said. But if the books are available through Gardners an order should generate a print on demand request which should be where it's sourced from, on my understanding. To change that .i think it would lie with Gardners and they'd need to be set up to order from you. I have no idea how that's done, though.

 

[FibonacciEddie]

ah well - I will see what happens and then report back to here