Your Books, Our Shelves
We are proud of our history of supporting authors from our area and carry a wide variety of self-published, small press and print on demand titles. Locally published books often feature amongst our best selling titles each year.
Books that sell particularly well are non-fiction titles with a strong local interest. Self-published books for children generally don’t sell.
If you are a local author and would like to see your work on our shelves, here are some initial guidelines.
- We will only discuss your book via email. We cannot discuss your book in person, on our shopfloor which is dedicated to customers
- If you are not a regular customer of Red Lion Books, then we strongly encourage you to pay us a visit to get a feel for the character of the shop and the community we are in as well as the types of books we do and do not stock.
- If you need to contact us with regard to stocking your book, your book sales or to let us know about any promotional activity you are planning, please do so by email at us@redlionbooks.co.uk as you will appreciate we are on the shop floor and can’t always give you our full attention at the desk or by telephone during opening hours. Our priority on the shop floor is to customers
- Your book should be professionally bound, finished, edited and have an ISBN for us to accept it. Exceptions may be made, but remember that your book will be compared to all the other titles in our store. Having a spine helps its visibility. Your book also needs to be comparably priced to other titles of its size and genre.
- We do not generally carry books published by Amazon or their subsidiaries such as CreateSpace. Amazon has done irreparable damage to independent bookshops across the country and does not make a fair contribution to society through their international tax avoidance strategies. There are many choices out there to help you publish your book. Please take that into consideration before you sign on with any self publishing business.
- We cannot guarantee to stock every book that is offered to us. Self-published children’s books are particularly difficult to sell and unless there is a theme with a local link we are unlikely to accept it. There are an enormous number of authors in and around Colchester and our space is limited. Please don’t be offended if we cannot find space for your book – it may be that it is simply not appropriate for our stock range and customer profile or that we already have similar titles – but it might be just right for somewhere else.
- We do not generally run events in the shop to launch self-published books but if our diary and staffing allows there may be the possibility for you to hire our space. We can only support a few books in this way each year and we have to select those which are most likely to appeal to our customers.
- From time to time we also run local author showcase evenings where a number of authors have the chance to present their books. We will consider whether your book may fit one of these multiple author events.
- We have a standard approach to stocking self-published books by local authors which include a ‘sale or return’ arrangement and a normal stocking period of six months. To find our more please email us@redlionbooks.co.uk
- Once we have accepted your book you will be issued with a reference number and we ask that you don’t deliver books without this number otherwise you risk them being turned away. With 20,000 titles in store it is imperative that this reference number is used so that we can keep track of your book. Whenever you deliver it, we ask that it is collected in the following January or July (whichever comes first)
- It is the responsibility of the author/publisher to collect unsold stock at the end of this period. Collection is JULY or JANUARY. This is when outstanding payments are settled. Red Lion Books will not be responsible for reminding the author of this date. If books remain uncollected and no contact is made, the books will be held for one more month and then donated to charity. We cannot be responsible for books stolen or shop soiled during this period
If you are still interested please contact us via email
What you can do to give your book the best chance of finding readers
Encourage your friends, family and others to purchase your books at Red Lion Books.
Contact local media, send out press releases and use social media to get the word out.
Get involved with book clubs, libraries and any other organisations that would be a fit for your book.
We look forward to working with you!
The Bookseller’s Association has produced a very useful guide for authors which covers all aspects of getting your book onto the shelves of a High Street Bookshop
Getting-Your-Book-into-a-High-Street-Bookshop
Colchester has a number of writers group including the well established Colchester WriteNight. Link up with them here.