As some of you may have read earlier this week, Tyrus Books just signed with Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.
This is great, great news for us. But it occurred to me that maybe blog readers would be interested in reading about the purpose and function of a distributor. So, here we go!
Consortium will be helping get Tyrus books in front of more bookstore buyers. A distributor, true to their name, distributes. Naturally, Ben and I have a little bit of personal experience with distribution, from our time with Bleak House Books, but here's something we learned: Sales is a full time job.
And, um, so is running a publishing company.
Consortium will help us immensely by mobilizing a sales force to disseminate information about our titles on a per-season basis. They'll include us in their catalog (they distribute books for over 100 other publishers, including Busted Flush Press, Akashic, and SoHo!), and they'll receive and ship orders for our books.
A distributor is a great partner for a publisher -- especially an independent publisher -- because they help take on the burden of word-spreading. It's exhausting and entirely necessary, and it's great to know that they're in our corner.
