Gardners is one of the leading wholesalers of books to retailers around the world. As part of our distribution feeds, we send a copy of your title to Gardners, and request they stock it, however this does not mean they will.
Due to the accessibility of print on demand, the world has seen an unprecedented rise in published books, which has caused some challenges for retailers and distributors.
Previously, retailers have been used to receiving feeds with a couple of million titles, this has increased to 10’s of millions. Because of this, Gardners have amended their approach to distribution to still make books accessible to the retail partners they work with. This can be simplified into 3 categories:
Stocked By Gardners
Titles that sell a large amount of volume and are deemed as ‘frequently moving stock’ are stocked within Gardners warehouse for quick dispatch. This means they place an order and keep a specified inventory level within their warehouse and use them as and when orders come in. Due to the books being physically stored, it means there is only room for a limited quantity, so only around 100,000 titles fall into this category.
Extended Catalogue
The next bracket of products is for titles that are currently making good sales. There is no magic number to fall into this bracket, it’s just based on sales of your title at the current time in comparison to others. With this, they have to limit their listings to around 5.7 million titles. This is on the limit of what retailers will accept, hence the specific number. If Gardners deem that your book fits into this category, it doesn’t mean it will be stocked, however it will be added and shown as ‘Extended Catalogue’ on their website. This means they use the feed we give them to keep the price and details up to date, and when an order comes in, we’re able to send the titles to them in 24 hours (bookvault handles this at no extra cost).
Special Order Line
If your title doesn’t fall into the above 2 categories, all hope is not lost. Your title is still available to order through Gardners by retailers, they just can’t guarantee the information until an order is put through. On the Gardners website, for titles added before these changes, they’ll show as ‘Special Order Line’ any titles after this will show as ‘Not Available’.
It is worth adding, the Gardners website is a trade only website and not intended for consumers. Even though a title is shown as ‘Not Available’ on the website, all retailers have access to tools to place orders for your titles. In this instance, when an order is placed, Gardners will reach out to the listed distributor on the Nielsen record of your title. It’s worth also noting, images will show as unavailable for these titles. This again is to reduce the amount of data Gardners has to store, and can only be changed if your title falls into the other two categories.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I do to get my books listed?
At the end of the day, the best way to get into Gardners as a stocked or extended catalogue item is to have good sales data to prove the value of the title. Every publisher and author is competing for a spot on their catalogue and they’re only likely to give a spot to well selling titles
There is no image showing on the website?
Due to the large number of titles on their website, they only store data for titles that are either on their extended catalogue or stocked items
My book is showing 'Not Available' on their website?
Only books in their extended catalogue or stocked items are shown as in stock on the Gardners website. The website is for trade people only and should not be used as reference. As long as the title has been registered on Nielsen and has a distributor set on Nielsen, your title will be available for retailers to order