IndieBooks website to sell titles from independent publishers

On Tuesday, Legend Press will launch a new online bookshop dedicated to independent publishers.

The project, entitled IndieBooks, will be selling a range of just fifty titles from a variety of independent presses. Each month, the twenty-five lowest selling titles will be replaced with new titles, while the other half are carried over to the next month—in effect, creating a situation where half the stock is editorially selected, and the other half determined by sales figures.

Orders will actually be fulfilled by the publishers themselves, so IndieBooks won’t be holding stock. They will take a 20% cut of the sales.

Publishers that have expressed an interest apparently include Tindal Street, Honno, Reportage, and Alma Books (the current project from the founders of Hesperus Press).

There are a few interesting things here:

• They’re relying on a very small range, so effectively they’re handselling every title. If they get a reputation for choosing consistently great books – thus making a blind purchase from their range a safe bet – this could go down well as a kind of book club. If they don’t get that right, it’s hard to see the benefit of shopping with IndieBooks over Amazon or The Book Depository.
• Apparently, the publishers will be setting the prices, with no kind of promotional discounting from IndieBooks, meaning that they’ll be observing RRP.
• With a range as small as – or smaller than – that of a single indie press, what will IndieBooks offer that the publisher’s own site doesn’t? Maybe a good way of discovering new publishers.
• At 20%, IndieBooks will get a much lower cut than traditional retailers. It’s very slightly higher than Amazon marketplace. With such a small range fulfilled by a wide variety of publishers, there will probably be a lot of single-title orders. I suspect margin will depend rather heavily on how postage costs are worked out, and whether there are any participation fees. (There don’t seem to be.)
• According to the press release, “In addition to the wide range of books, covering fiction and non-fiction, the website will include features on authors, publishers, event listings, and advice for writers. IndieBooks is set to become the centre for those looking for quality writing and that something extra.” It’ll be interesting to see how much value they can add through editorial content, and how well they tie this content to the individual titles on offer at the time.

While restricted by the small range, this should be an interesting project. It’s great to see people experimenting with different kinds of bookselling. The site will go live on Tuesday December 1st at www.indiebooks.net (as of Friday, still a GoDaddy holding page).