Book distribution during the Covid-19 crisis
BookBaby is proud to continue helping authors bring their books to the market during these difficult times.
Our office, design, editorial, and prepress teams are online and working from home. Our New Jersey headquarters is fully operational and will continue to manufacture your books. Safety has always been our #1 priority, so on top of following the latest CDC guidelines, everyone in our print shop is practicing additional sanitation protocols throughout our entire facility. This includes handling all packages with gloves and wiping down all machinery after every shift.
You devote a significant amount of time to finishing your book. You give even more effort into building a publishing career. So we’ll continue to dedicate ourselves to supporting your publishing project—all the way to the finish line.
eBook Distribution Network
The BookBaby global eBook distribution network continues to be fully operational and at this time is not disrupted in anyway from the Covid-19 crisis. New eBooks are being listed and are seeing brisk sales around the globe.
POD Distribution Network
New print titles publishing during the Covid-19 crisis are being made available to our wholesale book printing network as usual and product pages for these new titles are being created on Amazon and elsewhere.
New print titles entering presale on Amazon will have a presale period of up to 90 days. This will ensure that during this crisis those who want to purchase a printed copy of your book from Amazon will have the ability to place an order. However, we recommend that during this crisis you primarily promote your eBook and your printed book through the BookBaby Bookshop.
During these unprecedented times of COVID and supply chain constraints, printed book formats may go out of stock at Amazon and the product page could display stocking messages such as “Currently Unavailable” or “Temporarily Out of Stock.” We understand that this is not ideal, and Amazon wants to sell your book as much as you do! As Amazon (and others) work through their delays, these statuses will eventually update, and show as available.
BookBaby Bookshop
Bookshop is fully operational for both print and eBook formats. BookBaby is receiving and fulfilling orders for books through the Bookshop retail store all day, every day. The Bookshop is the most author friendly retail outlet on the planet. We pay 85% royalties on eBook sales and 50% royalties on printed book sales and we pay those royalties to authors weekly. Additionally, our Bookshop sales reporting is robust and provides your buyer’s location and their email address if they choose to share it with you. BookBaby promotes our Bookshop online bookstore through email and social media to help you sell more books. We always encourage authors to promote their Bookshop sales page first, and that’s especially true right now. Using Bookshop as your preferred point of sale is your most effective and stable option during this Covid-19 crisis.
What should authors do?
Authors should continue to write and publish new books! The world needs books more than ever. You should work with your BookBaby Publishing Specialist now to build a publishing plan that includes both eBooks and printed book formats for your titles. BookBaby looks forward to remaining the most stable and effective way for authors to publish their books through this crisis and beyond.