VISTABOOKS DISTRIBUTING: MORE ORDERING INFO FOR RESELLERS

WHOLESALERS: Please inquire for special discounts: email@vistabooks.com.

SHIPPING--UPS, Parcel Post or Media Mail?

Generally we ship FedEx Ground because, as part of their standard service.

• we and you can track shipments
• their office is convenient to us and they deliver to your door.
• they rarely damage packages (we can't remember the last).

We remember the days when bookpost (now media mail) was the best way to ship books and we were among the last holdouts to continue using it. The concept of  media mail is that the cost should be the same to ship across the country as across the street, and we understand the original reason for this was to ensure information and knowledge contained in books could be made available to the widest audience rather than having a geographic restriction imposed by the cost of shipping. Other types of parcel delivery include a factor for distance in their charges.

Over recent years, however, bookpost/media mail charges have increased substantially. And so it is that if one looks today at the rate charts of the different shipping options, one finds that nearer shipments made by UPS or parcel post are cheaper than if made by media mail. But a point is reached at some distance out where the flat-rate of media mail becomes cheaper than UPS or parcel post. Because we sit more or less in the middle of the U.S., however, that factor is less than if we were shipping from one coast to the other. Besides, if we were to ship media mail, we would have to add in the cost and/or time delays of running to the post office, and this would not serve any of us well. We do add a fee per shipment to recover part of the cost FedEx would charge us to come to our door.

Single-copy or small orders

We would be pleased if someone could help us find a way to ship single-copy or small orders of our titles. Most of our titles are priced low, typically 3 to 5 dollars. There is not enough margin in a sale of a single copy or a few copies at these prices to justify the expense of shipping. Yet we want to have our books reach interested audiences. Most book publishers, we note, publish books that are in the 10 to 20 dollar and more range, and so they can better afford to ship single-copy or small orders.

We also note that most retail catalog companies charge minimum amounts for shipping and handling. The compromise we have reached, therefore, is to offer to ship small orders, but with  a shipping/handling surcharge ($6.50 business, $7.50 residential, $actual foreign) to defray our time and costs.

Your ideas, please!

Order Processing Time

We are a small company and are not always able to ship upon receipt of an order. Sometimes we are out for a few weeks traveling gathering new material or marketing. Thus it is important for resellers to plan ahead in placing orders so that we can get shipments out while we are here. This is especially true during their peak selling periods. If stock runs out at such times, sales are lost permanently. And this leads to the next topic.

Inventory Management

Nowadays it is the hallmark of a well-run merchandiser to show a good turnover rate of merchandise. One of the ways to do this is to keep inventory low. The trick, of course, is to keep inventory low but not out. When we ran a retail outlet, we found an easy way to have stock on hand at all times and thereby increase sales. We did this without generating excess inventory by noting from prior-year records when we ran out of stock, then estimating what we would have sold of that item if we always had it in stock. We then based future stock orders on this projected total rather than actual sales. We thus bought more, but we had it to sell, and we sold more.

Related to this is our need to know of resellers' projections for coming years. We, too, need to project ahead so we will have reprints available when you need them, and if you expect an increase in orders from recent past years, sharing that with us will help ensure we will get titles reprinted in time to fill your orders for them.

Purchase Summary and Reorder Form

Annually--usually in the spring--we provide summaries to you of your purchases and include a convenient inventory checklist and reorder form so that you can better track sales of our titles and get more of the ones so indicated. We can provide these purchase summaries at any time you request, too.

VistaBooks, 0637 Blue Ridge Road, Silverthorne, CO 80498-8931
Phone/Fax: 970/468-7673........email@vistabooks.com

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This "More Ordering Info"  page is vistinfo.htm. It waslast modified 05/25/2008. Copyright ©VistaBooks 2008.