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.
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.
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.