Writing Tip Of The Week..Let's Talk Distribution..

Alright so we all know that when I first started writing in 2007 there was no ebook distribution outlets such as Amazon "Kindle" or Barnes & Noble "Nook". There was only hustling your books on the street corners or acquiring distribution to get your physical book into the large bookstores like Borders, Walden Books (at the time) & Barnes & Noble. I must admit, this was the hardest part of my career. Now Ingram is one of, if not the largest distribution chains in the world and I was told that I had to prove that my book was "store-worthy" before they took me seriously because I only had one title at the time. It wasn't easy but I proved that "A Hood Chick's Story" deserved to be on the shelves of the large bookstores and boom, they were in stores across the globe. Now remember, as a self-publisher, you can't stop at one distributor because bookstores like "Books A Million" & others only order books through particular distributors so I had to go hard on my research to find them and get my books on the shelves of different stores in every state. Let me tell y'all, till this day there are distributors that owe me THOUSANDS of dollars, I still wanna smack them AND their mamas but as a business woman I had to charge it to the game and take note of who the snakes were. With that being said  here is my advice to you. DO NOT give your books away on consignment. Get your money up front. Don't get me wrong, there are some reputable distributors who will take your books on consignment and pay you for them, but there are others that will pay you once or twice and then end up going bankrupt or out of business and then who will pay you for your books? Be smart about your business, it's all about trial and error, learn from every business decision you make. I defiitely had to and now I'm here to share my knowledge of the game with y'all. The GOOD and the Bad... At the end of the day, when you deal with reputable distributors, there is no greater feeling then walking in the store and seeing your hard work on the shelves :)