What are distribution and wholesaling anyway? If you believe you only need to write your book to publish it, you're going to be disappointed at the sales once it's in the world. D&W are different in a significant way. Distributors do more selling on your behalf. Wholesalers take orders. In the broadest sense, Amazon is a wholesaler, moving one book at at a time.

Librarians rarely order from Amazon. They use wholesalers because the librarians are readers who develop their own tastes and trust their wholesaler to get the books shipped and invoiced.

A great series at Reedsy (where I've hired my editing and design pros) is keeping track of what an author and self-publisher needs to get the word out about their book. It's a short list with a long tail: you'll be doing these things the rest of your life, once you finish that book.

A lifelong list

Amy Collins of New Shelves Books sums up the list. She's writing about how to create buzz for your book to impress librarians and library wholesalers. You want to create demand, so your book attracts wholesalers. Libraries buy 90 percent or more of their books through wholesalers.

• Write articles for news and other print and online outlets.
• Create fun top 10 lists, listicles, and infographics. Get them published on blogs, other sites, and magazines.
• Get interviewed — appear in many venues across the internet and print media.
• Do a radio show tour. Include book giveaways.
• Develop a large online and social media following

Amy doesn't say this, but everything above gets you these golden nuggets

• Endorsements from famous authors or celebrities
• Reviews by quality, independent, respected media, and industry outlets.

She claims you should never pay for a review from a service like Kirkus or Clarion Foreword. It's not that cut and dried. Nobody who's in the industry, like a prospective wholesaler, will think those services are really independent book reviewers. You need to prime the pump, though. A radio tour might factor in some well-written paid reviews. Always excerpt the paid reviews. Never discount the power of any well-written review, either. A new author needs them. Set a budget for that sort of thing.

Librarians are going to need these

Collins has a specialty in getting into libraries. Acquisition librarians do the book buying and need to be sure the new purchases turn into borrows. The librarians' bottom line is their patrons' engagement.

Collins adds that "some of these ideas are much easier said than done. All of them can help a retailer or library see that you understand your book has a job to do. And that job is to make them money — or in the case of libraries, increase their total borrows." If you didn't know it, library borrows earn money for authors. The borrows also find an audience for a new author.

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