Self-Published Authors

Thank you for inquiring about placing your book at Byrd's Books. At this time, we do not carry self-published materials. I can tell you the reason why and I am sure it is more than you want to know, but it might help you navigate the book trade.

1) With self-published books we cannot get the discount to help keep us sustainable. We need to pay rent, staff and taxes and have an industry that makes it tough already, but we cannot sustain any further loss. Most often it is either you make the money or we do, and we support a culture where both of us can benefit- such as conventional publishing.

2) Self-published books do not come with the built-in advertising that major publishing houses provide. Most authors do not send their friends/customers to the bookstore but continue to sell privately on their website or on social media. Since we cannot do advertising for you nor do we place books face out unless they are high-demand titles, like bestsellers, you will get very little exposure. We carried two bookcases of self-published books for two years and nobody came to buy them- we only sold two copies. We did try, we want to support local folks.

3) We do consider cooperative or very small press publishing to be “self-published”. If you have paid to publish your book in any way, it is self published.

4) Many of the books are printed and sold by Amazon, and we simply do not choose to do business with a company that tries so hard to put independent bookstores out of business. In addition, we feel the money they pay their authors and publishers sets a poor standard for the industry by being so low.

Thanks so much for contacting us, and we wish you well on your publishing journey.

Alice