Canadian book supply chain basics
If you're new to book purchasing, or if books are only a small part of the products you carry, you may need a bit of an orientation to the Canadian book supply chain.
Publishers
Publishers contract with authors to bring books to the market. They employ editors, production staff, and sales reps who sell their books into the market. Publishers also publicize and market their books and authors in the marketplace.
Sales Agents
Some publishers choose to sell their books through commissioned sales rep groups rather than employing internal sales reps. These rep groups typically specialize in book sales and represent many publishers. Most publishers will list their sales representation by territory or province on their website, or can put you in touch with their sales team if you contact them directly.
Distributors
Distributors are the companies that manage the order fulfillment to retailers and other buyers like wholesalers and libraries. Some publishers distribute their own products, but most small or mid-sized publishers work with a distributor to manage this part of the business, and distribution rights are exclusive to the contracted distributor in Canada.
You’ll need to set up an account with each distributor that you want to order from. Each distributor will have their own terms of trade, including discounts, order minimums, shipping, and returns.
Wholesalers
Wholesalers also fulfill orders to retailers. They purchase books from the exclusive Canadian distributor and resell to retailers. Typically, their terms of trade will be less favourable, but this source may be useful when popular books are out of stock at the distributor, or when a wholesaler may be able to ship to you more quickly.
CataList can help you determine where to send your orders! Read on for all the details.
CataList for retailers
CataList is a central location on the web where the majority of publishers with books releasing in Canada post their catalogues. These catalogues contain a wealth of bibliographic data about publishers' titles, including the distribution supply details.
You can browse CataList catalogues and use the search features to find information without logging in. If you want to get a general sense of what’s available or coming soon or if you want to do some initial research, this is a great place to start.
If you're interested in getting greater access to the full title list and retailer tools, like supplier availability details, interiors and samples, advanced reading copy requests, and order creation, you’ll want to sign up for an account. The best news? Accounts are free!
All you need to do is go to bnccatalist.ca and request an account.
You’ll need to provide your name and email address, the name of your store, and a link to your website, if available. We do need to validate that you are a book retailer, so please provide as much information as you can, and we’ll set up your access within the next business day.
Creating orders in CataList and submitting them to distributors
The CataList system facilitates information distribution on new and active titles in the supply chain, and allows retailers to create orders — but the actual placement and fulfillment of orders happens directly between you as a retail buyer and your sales reps or distribution partners.
If you're planning to create orders in CataList, you MUST contact each distributor you wish to order from, to set up an account which will determine the terms for your purchases, and determine how orders will be submitted.
How do I determine which company distributes a title?
CataList provides many ways to look at the publisher’s bibliographic data, but the key data elements to look for are:
Supply detail;
Canadian distributor; and
Stock availability.
In grid views, look for the distributor data in the Canadian Supplier column. If you don't see this column, you can customize your catalogue and search grids to display it.
On the title detail page, there is a Supply Detail box with the distributor's details in the left sidebar. If the distributor provided us with the current price and availability status, we'll display them in the Stock Availability section.
How do I place my order using CataList?
For help with how to create orders, see our user documentation on creating orders in CataList.
Once you have created an order, you should ensure that all titles on the order are going to the same distributor.
If you're working with a sales representative, confirm with your rep how they prefer to receive orders from you, and whether you need to also submit orders directly to the distributor. You do have the ability to submit orders to reps within the CataList system, but you should ensure the rep is expecting to receive orders from you using that method.
If you're working with a point of sale (POS) system, you may also want to export your order from CataList and import it into your POS to save manual data entry time. If you’ll be placing a lot of orders, you may wish to set up EDI ordering through your POS, which allows you to send orders electronically to suppliers — and for suppliers to acknowledge receipt of your orders, along with confirmations on product availability and current pricing.
If you're using WordStock, you can export from CataList directly into the WordStock POS system. Find out how.
Frequently asked questions
Have more questions? Check out these frequently asked ones! If your question is not answered here, you can send it to catalist@booknetcanada.ca.
Other resources for information
Here are some other resources that new booksellers may find helpful.
CIBA — The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association
RCC — The Retail Council of Canada
The Canadian Book Market — Get annual data on book sales and consumer book purchasing behaviour in this paid report.
BookNet Research — Get industry research reports, many of which are available for free!
BookNet Blog — Browse our blog to find recent data about book buyers, discover how to leverage the power of BookNet Canada’s tools and services in your operations, and read interviews with booksellers about a wide range of topics of interest.
Tech Forum — Looking for a deeper dive into bookselling topics? Review past presentations and panel discussions from Canada’s book supply chain conference, and sign up to hear about upcoming sessions.
Other tools that might interest you
Using Shopify for your store? Find out more about getting automatic bibliographic data imports and updates using BiblioShare’s Bookstore Builder app.
If you’d love to dig into all that Canadian book sales data more directly, as a retailer you can get access to SalesData reporting by contributing your own sales into the system.
Get detailed bibliographic data, including prices and supplier details for any ISBN on any web page, with the Bibli-O-Matic browser plug-in for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
Do you like tech (almost) as much as books? There's lots more bibliographic data available from BiblioShare's web services.