Telephone: +44 (0)1323 521555
Discover more about the services that Gardners offer to our publisher and supplier partners. Our aim is to help you grow your sales to the book trade and beyond. Once your publications are listed by us as available they are instantly accessible to all our customers in the numerous global channel markets we work with.
Gardners has been supplying publications from both New Mainstream and Independent Publishers to 1000’s of retailers in both the U.K and Internationally for more than 40 years.
We offer the largest in stock range of books and the highest availability rates of any European wholesale distributor with 6 million units across 500,000+ in-stock lines and an extended catalogue of a further 2+ million titles.
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. The recent addition of full Distribution to our services mean we can offer publishers a whole solution to the book supply chain.
Gardners operates from two UK facilities in Eastbourne and Bicester, and we have international reach though our sister companies Gardners EU based in France, and Gardners US based in the United States.
Nielsen are the bibliographic agency that Gardners, booksellers, librarians and publishers use.
Publishers must be registered with BookData for us to be able to form a partnership.
Their helpline email is pubhelp.book@nielseniq.com.
Products must have a valid ISBN/EAN/visible barcode. Visit BookData here.
For us to consider stocking a title, suppliers must have a UK Sales & Marketing activity and have stock available from the UK. Please note that all POD titles and Special-Order titles are sold as Firm Sale
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
Waterstones are the only retailer who requires a separate account setting up for their business so theirs is the only application form you will need to complete.
Waterstones buy many of their books from independent publishers via Gardners. To sell to the Waterstones branches it is necessary to register with Waterstones, via Gardners. To do this please download the application form from Waterstones website. Once the form is completed, please return to us for processing, preferably by email to newpublishers@gardners.com
Please note that acceptance of these application forms doesn’t guarantee that Waterstones or Gardners will hold stock of your titles. You can submit titles to them using the webform on their website once the books are showing as available to order on their website.
Gardners Distribution Service offers publishers a unique one price warehousing model with no hidden charges for additional activities be it financial, data processing or stock movement.
This model means your full range will be exposed to our existing customers of over 15,000 booksellers and through Gardners Library supply partners to over 12,000 institutions and public libraries. We will make your titles available to all our UK and Global customers spanning 120 countries.
We have numerous advertising opportunities available, for further information please contact advertising@gardners.com. Unfortunately, we can only advertise publication that we proactively stock or will be available when published.
MVB replaced the Nielsen Teleordering system. For titles that we don't hold in stock (Special Order lines) we will send orders to you via MVB/Pubeasy when we receive an order from a customer. If you don't receive an order this will be because we haven't received one.
MVB will alert you to the order using your contact details held by Nielsen 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
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 independent publishers may only be able to offer us less than this. Any P&P charged by you will be paid by Gardners. However, these will be passed on to our customer so please consider absorbing these into your selling discount to Gardners.
As a minimum, we will normally pay you 30 days from month end of invoice so, for example, a January dated invoice will be paid at the end of February.
Unfortunately, due to GDPR and the confidentiality agreements that we have with our customers we're normally unable to tell you who has ordered your books.
Please don't list Gardners as your distributor with Nielsen or MVB as this isn't a role that we can fulfil for you and if you do so, orders won't be fulfilled. You need to list yourself or whoever is going to be sending copies out for you.
If you have further queries please email our independent publisher helpline newpublishers@gardners.com or MVB at supportuk@mvb-online.com.
Please ensure that your ISBN is registered with NielsenIQ BookData and then check if your ISBN is listed on our website www.gardners.com.
If your ISBN isn't listed with us, please email your book details to newpublishers@gardners.com who will add it to our listing.
If your title is registered with BookData and is listed on our website, you will then need to contact the retailer directly to ask why they don't list it.
We make all our data available to all our customers but how much they use and how they use it is their commercial decision.
Gardners are a Wholesaler and Distributor and as such we buy pre-printed books from publishers to sell onto our customers, we don't publish books ourselves.
Getting a publisher interested in taking your book on is hard but there are several publications that will help. We would recommend the "HYPERLINK "https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/"Writers & Artists Yearbook", this is updated annually and really contains all the information you need. Or we suggest that you make contact with the numerous Self-Publishing options that are now available such as Ingram Spark/CPI amongst others - many of whom trade with Gardners.
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 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.
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.
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.
CPI Download link: https://www.gardners.com/Content/Documents/Buying-Documents/gardners-setup-form.pdf
LSI www.ingramcontent.com Lulu www.lulu.com Spiffing Covers https://spiffingcovers.com IPG www.independentpublishersguild.com
If you can't see your titles listed on our website please complete the Excel spreadsheet available here and return to: newpublishers@gardners.com
Excel Spreadsheet link: https://www.gardners.com/Content/Documents/Buying-Documents/gardners-new-title-spreadsheet.xls
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
We normally only supply POD titles to order and do not hold them in stock.
However, should we see regular demand we will often make a commercial decision to proactively stock.
Our distribution team would be happy to talk with you more. Please visit our distribution page to fin out more. Insert link when we have it.
We're not responsible for the contents of our customers websites. We make all our data available to all our customers but how much they use and how they use it is their commercial decision
Gardners are a Wholesaler and Distributor and as such we buy pre-printed books from publishers to sell onto our customers, we don't publish books ourselves.
Getting a publisher interested in taking your book on is hard but there are several publications that will help. We would recommend the "HYPERLINK "https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/"Writers & Artists Yearbook", this is updated annually and really contains all the information you need. Or we suggest that you make contact with the numerous Self-Publishing options that are now available such as Ingram Spark/CPI amongst others - many of whom trade with Gardners.
No, you should list yourself or whoever is going to be sending out orders on your behalf.
If you list Gardners any orders will go nowhere as we can't order from ourselves so you will lose orders.
Can you help me with information missing from Nielsen?
It is the publisher's responsibility to ensure that Nielsen have all the correct, up to date information.
Working with Hive
Hive is a sister company to Gardners, it is a consumer facing website with a great USP - a commission from every sale on the site goes back to a independent bookseller signed up to our network.
Consumer have the choice of home delivery, or they can collect within a few days from their local bookshop.
There are a huge numbers of ways working with Hive can support you, from affiliate linking, sharing content, advertising,editorial content and much more. Find out more below.
Key benefits include:- Affiliate linking opportunities- Sponsored placement and campaigns- Editorial and merchandising supportLearn more about Hive
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