
This continues our series from the end of Part Five.
The distribution part
As a POD published author and a self-published author, the biggest hurdle you face to getting your product placed in bookstores is the infeasibility of allowing your books to be returned for a complete refund if they aren’t sold. Not to mention the penalty you as the publisher get socked with for shipping costs. The alternative is for the bookseller to destroy the books. Both a financial waste and hardly an eco-conscious approach. But it’s been standard practice for a long, long time. Unfortunately, booksellers continue to insist upon doing this and traditional publishers continue to follow this practice, cranking out large print runs instead of finding ways to use modern technology to create new solutions.