Selling to us

Why Gardners?
Customers
Services
Advertising
Waterstones
'How to' guide

Contact Us

Why Gardners?

Gardners have been supplying retailers around the world for the past 30 years and our experienced team work hard to simplify and enhance the supply chain for all involved, through a proven combination of extensive product range and innovative supporting services.

Our customers

Our global customer base covers the following key sales channels - independent, chain, specialist and online retailers and school & library suppliers. This makes us ideally placed to work closely with suppliers on both broad & targeted campaigns, to reach these channels.

Supplier services

We offer a variety of value added services and opportunities for suppliers, including our hugely successful Independent Booksellers Affiliate Programme and annual Trade Show in the UK, as well as customer specific opportunities around the world.

Advertising opportunities

We offer suppliers advertising opportunities across both print and digital, at prices to suit all budgets, to market their titles. We will work closely with you to tailor any advertising to meet your requirements and complement your existing sales & marketing. Download our current Media Pack here.

Access to Waterstones

Waterstones buy many of their books from small publishers via Gardners. In order to sell to the Waterstones branches it is necessary to register with Waterstones, via Gardners. To do this please contact the Independent Publisher Coordinator by email ipc@waterstones.com and ask for a Waterstones Trading Application form. Alternatively, the form can be downloaded from www.waterstones.com. Once the form is completed please return to us as instructed on the form.

For help notes on completing the form & what happens next please click here.

For FAQ’s on supplying Waterstones please click here.

You may be wondering "How do I get my products stocked or listed with Gardners?"
We have put together this guide to give you the criteria you need to meet, and next the steps.

NIELSEN / WEST10

Publishers must be registered with Nielsen.
Entertainment suppliers must be registered with West10.

ISBN / EAN NEEDED

Products must have a valid ISBN/EAN /visible barcode.
Visit the Nielsen ISBN website here.

UK SOURCE

For us to consider stocking a title, suppliers must have a UK Sales & Marketing activity and have stock available from the UK.

What to do when you receive an order from MVB

For titles that we don’t hold in stock (Special Order lines) we will send orders to you via MVB teleordering when we receive an order from a customer. If you don’t receive an order this will be because we haven’t received an order.

MVB will alert you to the order and you should acknowledge the order on their site. Please then send us the number of copies that we have ordered along with an invoice as soon as you can.

The invoice should contain the following information. ISBN, order reference (this will begin with a D), retail price, discount percentage to us, any P&P charges and method of payment. BACS is our preferred payment method so please include your bank details.

The discount you offer us should be as attractive as possible to encourage repeat sales. We normally ask for 60% discount off the RRP but realise that small publishers may only be able to offer us less than this.

Any P&P charges will be paid to you by us but we will pass these onto our customers so you need to decide whether to absorb these costs into your discount.

We will pay you 30 days from month end of invoice so, for example, a January dated invoice will be paid at the end of February

We’re unable to tell you who have ordered your books due to GDPR and the confidentiality agreements that we have with our customers.

Please don’t list Gardners as your distributor with MVB as this isn’t a role that we can fulfill for you and if you do so orders won’t be fulfilled, you need to list yourself or whoever is going to be sending orders out for you.

If you have further queries please email our small publisher helpline, sph@gardners.com

What do I do if my books aren’t listed with a retailer

Please ensure that your ISBN is registered with Nielsen and then check if your ISBN is listed on our website, www.gardners.com

If your ISBN isn’t listed please email your book details to sph@gardners.com who will add it to our listing.

If your title is registered with Nielsen and is listed on our website you will then need to contact the retailer directly to ask why they don’t list it.

All our customers have the ability to access the information found on our website, we cannot comment with what they then choose to do with it.

Society of Authors

The SoA (Society of Authors) is the UK’s largest trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers. We have been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for more than a century. Being a member of the SoA gives you access to a wide range of benefits, including:

Also:

Membership of special interest and regional communities
Lobbying and collective negotiation on behalf of authorsAccess to a vast range of events from the purely social to workshops focusing on specific topics, both live and on zoom; and podcast and audio recordings of such events
Free ALCS membership
Offers on specialist insurance, including professional indemnity insurance and tax protection insurance
The Author – the SoA’s quarterly journal
Up to 25% discount on books at selected retailers
Access to a free tax helpline provided by the accountants HW Fisher & Company

If you want to find out more about the work that we do, visit our website. More information about our advisory service can be found here. If you have any questions about joining and membership, you can contact our membership team via email or phone (020 3880 2230).

Thinking of Self Publishing?

Getting your book accepted by a mainstream publisher is extremely difficult so lots of authors are now publishing their books themselves.

There’s a number of of publications that we would recommend to you to help you get started. The main one is the "Writers & Artists Yearbook", this is updated annually and really contains all the information you need. The ISBN for the current edition is 9781472991300.

We are not able to offer any direct advice but these are the contact details of a number of organisations you might find useful to find more information

Clays www.clays.co.uk

CPI Books – Independent Publishers and Authors IPA@cpi-print.co.uk - Click here to download the Publisher Set Up Form and find out more

LSI www.ingramcontent.com

Lulu www.lulu.com

Spiffing Covers https://spiffingcovers.com

IPG www.independentpublishersguild.com

However, there are a number of stages to be considered, and you may prefer for all these to be collectively provided for you by our partner. We work in close association with The Self-Publishing Partnership (SPP) who can advise and manage the whole process. See the SSP website for more information or download more information here, and they will be happy to discuss possibilities with you.

In addition to the above Nielsen are now offering a Self publishing package as below

Whether you are a self published author or just starting out in publishing, they have put together some of their most popular publisher services into a special package to help you publish and promote your book.

Self Publisher Pack:

1 ISBN - the key book identifier for retailers and libraries
1 Barcode - create a barcode from your ISBN for the back of your book
1 Book2Look 'Look Inside' biblet - to support your social media and online promotion
1 Year's subscription to their Enhanced Service - add rich descriptive content to your book record

All for £270 + VAT

We also have a Self Publisher Plus package available, for more information click here.

Should you require any further information once you have contacted these organisations and have your book ready to be sold as per our selling to us guidelines then please email your questions to sph@gardners.com

Good luck and we look forward to selling your titles!

Gardners is a leading digital distributor of eBooks and e-audiobooks, and our digital content service can help you enhance your offerings, and maximise revenue in this expanding digital market. With an easy one-stop packaged solution for digital content, Gardners digital content services enables you to expose your titles to millions of end users through thousands of retailers, public library and educational & academic institutions worldwide, with direct to consumer purchase and library loan services under multiple licences

Find out how to get your digital products listed by Gardners below

ISBN NEEDED

Products must have a valid ISBN. Find out more here

FORMAT

To be listed, eBooks need to be in PDF / ePub format.

COMPATABLITY

eBook files need to be Adobe Digital Editions compatible.

Bibliographic submission

If you can’t see your titles listed on our website please complete the Excel spreadsheet available here Excel Spreadsheet and return to: sph@gardners.com.

Jacket images

To enable us to promote your products to the maximum effect, we endeavour to include as many book jackets on our website as possible. You can submit your jackets via FTP - please email dataservices@gardners.com for details & we will set this up for you.

Specification is as follows:

PC format (or PC formatted file if using a Mac)
24bit RGB colour
Full front view of cover (no borders)
Minimum of 640 pixels tall
Books saved as ISBN13.jpg - ie: 9781234567890.jpg
Film & Music saved as EAN13.jpg - ie: 5051234567890.jpg