What is the difference between...

I use Google to search the web so much that I often forget that there are other search engines that may be more suitable for uncovering the information that I am after. For instance, I was looking for the difference between a book distributor and a book wholesaler but was not coming up with a site that told me anything about what a book wholesaler does that a distributor doesn't or vice versa.

I did find some interesting information. Book Marketing not only offers a page on the top independent book distributors in the US but appears to be a great resource for all kinds of information on marketing your book(s) for authors and publishers.

But I still didn't have my question answered. Then I remembered Ask Jeeves. Could they still be around? So I Googled "Ask Jeeves" and sure enough, Ask Jeeves is now Ask.com. I plugged in my question "what is the difference between a book distributor and a book wholesaler" and I found CLMP, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. In their FAQs I found my answer.

Most unpublished writers of book length manuscripts, I would venture to guess, suffer under the delusion that if we could just find an agent or a publisher for our book, life would be grand. And it would be grand until we discover that marketing that book is the bigger issue. Getting published is easy compared to getting your book sold beyond your personal circle of friends and family.

When you are getting ready to sign that publishing contract, be sure to ask who the publisher's distributor is and check them out on line. Distributors have representatives who actively sell your book to retail outlets and can even get your book on the new release table, in a point-of-sale display, faced on the shelf, and can arrange for events and placement of your book in airport book stores and the like. This all starts well before your release date--4 to 6 months before your release date!! So getting a good distributor is important.

There is a lot to learn in this business and while we, as writers, don't want to have to do anything more than be sure we have a great plot and good characters, it behooves us to learn a bit about the industry we are trying to break into. So for every writing class we take or for every how-to-write book we read, we need to be taking a class or reading a book about how to market our book once its published.