Scaling Up: What to Know About Bulk Book Printing
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Episode #80 | Scaling Up: What to Know About Bulk Book Printing
With print-on-demand, you can print just one copy of your book… But you can also print 100. Or 500. Or 1,000. Or 3,159. You do you.
In this episode, Lauren & Matt talk bulk book orders; when you need them, how they work with print-on-demand, and all the logistics (and discounts!) you should know about.
Listen now, watch the episode on YouTube, or read the transcript below! Plus, find additional resources at the bottom of the transcript.
Contents:
Read the Full Transcript
Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. This is episode number 80. And today we are talking about ordering books. That's something we've never talked about before.
Matt: As funny as that sounds, I don't think we've actually talked about how to order books.
Lauren: We actually, we really haven't. We actually don't have a lot of content about this at all, even on our other content channels. And to be more specific, we're talking about bulk ordering books. Not just the process of going into your Lulu account and ordering one or two copies, or going into the bookstore and ordering copies of other people's books. But when it's time for you to order a large quantity of copies of books for yourself, your brand, whatever.
Matt: Well.
Lauren: Let's talk about that a little bit.
Matt: Yeah, we're going to talk about bulk ordering. But just to be clear, because we have gotten questions about this at events and in general emails or in conversations. And just to be clear, you can go into your Lulu account and order as many copies as you want.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So author copies is a thing. I don't think we've actually – I guess we just assume things quite often and we probably shouldn't. So for those of you that have just started using Lulu or you don't and you're ticking off those boxes when comparing services, you can absolutely order author copies out of your Lulu account, just like you could with any other service. And yeah, you still get it at the wholesale rate that, that you're paying from Lulu,
Lauren: Right.
Matt: You're not gonna pay the retail price for it.
Lauren: Right, right.
Matt: So, just wanted to make that clear. And then we're gonna go into right now, bulk ordering for the various different reasons you might wanna order bulk, how that's done, what you can expect from that process, all those good things.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, there's all kinds of things that I think you're right, that we maybe take for granted or assume that it's kind of understood. And when it comes to our attention that it's not, we're like, oh, right. Right, we should –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We should elaborate on that a little bit. Including things like, we talk all the time about how coolprint-on-demand is as a…design?
Matt: Process. Business model.
Lauren: Process. There you go, thank you.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Because it is something that you just print exactly however many copies you need. You can get one single copy if you're just ordering a proof copy for yourself or an editing copy. You only need one to share with somebody, there’s no minimums. But we always go in the opposite direction where we point out that you can order as many copies as you need. You can order just one copy, but you can also order 1,000 copies.
Matt: Yeah, I think people tend, well, people that know again, I don't want to assume too much. We'll start at the beginning. There's two types of printing, basically, right? There's the traditional kind called offset that's been around since Gutenberg's press. Offset printing, you need plates and all kinds of other stuff that go along with that. There's different types of offsetting. And then you have digital or print-on-demand. And so most people equate offset with large quantities, as they should. Most offset printers aren't going to set up their machines to print less than several thousand copies at a time. I think these days with the way things are going from an economical standpoint, in terms of the economy and geopolitics, I bet a lot of these offset presses are starting to lower their minimums, just to keep work coming in the door. But it's still going to be at least a couple thousand copies before they'll set their presses up to run. So if you don't need a couple thousand copies or more, if you're not Simon & Schuster placing a PO for 10,000 units of a book, you have one other option. And in our opinion, it's the better option. It's the more environmentally friendly option. And depending on how you use it, it's the more economical option. And that is print-on-demand digital printing. So that you can order one copy, 1,000 copies. You can get pretty good pricing and definitely bookstore quality up to several thousand copies at a time. So yeah, when we say bulk, we're talking about anywhere from, well, we measure it as 500 copies or more, internally. So if you want to place a bulk order at Lulu, it usually means you want to place 500, 500 units or more. But rules still apply, if you want a 100 copies, a 150, whatever. Right? So.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Offset versus digital slashprint-on-demand.print-on-demand, I think in most cases, typically really, like you said, it's more of a model, like a business model. Digital printing can be used in other ways besides just print-on-demand. So you say print-on-demand, most people just equate that as just digital versus offset.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Right. Yeah, I just I mean, I really just wanted to be clear about like, you know, we think about it so often as like a low quantity option.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But I would definitely encourage you to also think of it as a high quantity option. Especially if it is something that you are already sold on the ease of use, the quality, if you're already a Lulu customer, so your books are already in your account. It's so easy to just up that quantity number and place an order.
Matt: Yeah. And, I mean, you know, we won't turn this into necessarily a print-on-demand specific episode, but the other benefits there are print-on-demand are not just quantity levels and the flexibility in ordering the different quantities. The great thing about print-on-demand versus offset is regardless of the number of copies you need, whether it's 25 or 2,500, you're only putting up the money for the copies that you need necessarily. And in many cases, if it's a pass-through, and we'll get to some of these reasons why you would want bulk, but let's say you're a speaker and, you know, an event wants you to come speak and they're going to supplement your fee by also ordering 500 copies of your book to give to every attendee. Technically, you're not even putting that money out up front and they're just going to order the 500 copies from wherever your files happen to live, hopefully Lulu. Whereas in, again, offset, you would have had to have ordered thousands of copies to have them on hand and then have them sitting in a warehouse or your garage somewhere. So that when these bulk opportunities come up, you're able to then pack them all up and ship them out, so.
Lauren: Which is also an important detail that I think might get overlooked. If you're if you get some kind of last minute speaking opportunity and you're going to be you're invited to speak at an event in a month and you think that you're going to place an offset print order for a thousand copies of your book and have them at that event in a month…you might be in for a big surprise.
Matt: You're going to be in for a very big surprise. You're right. The logistics surrounding print-on-demand versus offset are also something you really need to take into consideration, based on what your preferred publishing and printing model is for your business. But if you don't have those books on hand and you are an offset publisher… Yeah, you need to allow anywhere from a month to three months for those books to be printed and shipped. You know, month on the good side, that means you've found yourself an offset printer in the US that does good work for a good price, and you could probably get your books within a month. If they're outside of the US. Well, A good luck with that these days. But, you know, you're going to add another month or two to that because of transit times. It's got to go onto a cargo ship or a container ship and it's got to get over here and then it's got to make it through the port and customs and all that other stuff. So if you're not really set up to be running offset and in high volume, it's just not worth it these days. There's just too many negatives there for a independent creator or even a small to medium sized business.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Logistically, sorry.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And again, we've spoken to the ability to have that quantity flexibility versus offset. The quality of it is another thing that people tend to harp on. And I agree, like back in the day, even, you know, less than ten years ago, most print-on-demand quality was questionable. Some was basically a dumpster fire being bound to cardboard, and some was better. These days, most of it is really, really well done. You're going to get some print-on-demand from places we won't name. Eight times out of ten it's garbage, you know, one way or another. But for the most part, most digital printers, they want to print just as good as you want them to print.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: That's how they secure more business. That's what they do. Most of these, these print shops, they're legacy trades people. They've been printing for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years, some of them. So the quality has gotten so much better with the technology. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. It's been a minute since we've plugged the life of a book video.
Matt: Oh, yeah.
Lauren: Which I'll link in the show notes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If you haven't watched it before, it's the video on our YouTube channel that shows from inception to delivery how a book is printed. And if you also haven't watched it and you haven't heard us talk about it before, both of us have had the opportunity to tour one of our print facilities. And one of the things that I just simply could not get over the entire time that I was there was the passion that everybody that worked there had for like… This is a craft that they care very much about. Like, everybody that worked there was somebody that has worked there for a long time, is very hands on – it's a very hands on process also, which is one of the things that I think is so striking about that video. Is that you see that every step of the process, somebody physically has their hands on your book. Because it is a very like, you can only automate it so much. It does actually have real people involved every step of the way.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And the people that are involved in it are people that are truly invested in the craft and care about the output and care about the quality of the product that they're putting out.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So that is absolutely something. I also just want to tack on the end here, because we mentioned a couple of times about ordering books from Lulu. And I do want to keep this episode kind of agnostic, but I want to just also point out that whether you're ordering your books from Lulu or another print-on-demand company, I guess, but obviously Lulu… These are different functions within a company like Lulu. If you are not selling your books through Lulu, but you want to use us to order 500 copies of your print book without having your book for sale in the bookstore or using our Lulu Direct plugin, you can do that. We have plenty of customers that use Lulu exclusively as their just book printer.
Matt: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Lauren: Their books are in private access. They never see the light of day on a website through any kind of Lulu plugin of any kind, and they are just people that come and use us to print and ship copies of their books. And that's totally valid.
Matt: Yeah, I was blown away by that when I first came to work at Lulu.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: I just never thought about it. I just totally thought like, it's all, you know, fiction authors, right? It's all romance and, and horror, and poetry. And come to find out actually, no, it's not. Way more of what we do is in the nonfiction realm, but even more importantly, it's stuff that is all utilitarian. We're being used as a, as a printer. So whether it's for a marketing department at a tech company who needs to print, you know, a bunch of really cool manuals and things that they're going to take to a conference or a trade show or, you know, you name it. But yeah, it's not, it's not stuff you would ever see on a website for sale necessarily. You're right about that. I think us, for sure, and I think most of the others, if you just need to print books you can do it. And I would encourage that versus going to your local, what is it like, what are they called? Kinkos or something like that? Where you would go in and you know, back in the day, if you needed like one book made or like something for school.
Lauren: Yeah. Is that the right name?
Matt: I think it's like FedEx Kinkos or whatever you could go in and –
Lauren: God that was a weird flashback.
– they'd do a book and most likely you could only get it bound by coil.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But yeah. Anyways.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: People still do that though. Like I talked to somebody at a show earlier this year.
Lauren: So did I.
Matt: They do these particular events and like every month they have to go into their local kinkos and get like twenty of these manuals made that they have a file for and it was like… it was coming out to like 50 bucks a book and it was like whoa, okay.
Lauren: Yeah, I talked to somebody at London Book Fair that wanted to get samples printed of her books to show people when she was at London Book Fair.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And she had like three casewrap hardcover picture book samples that were like $50 a piece. And that was before like the shipping and delivery and all that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And I was like, girl.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So… Cause I too, when I started working here, my perception of what a self publishing company was and what the books that were gonna be like included in the people that were customers here was definitely like…coming from traditional publishing was like, oh, it's just all the people that didn't want to go through KDP, basically. And then it was like, that's a fraction –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – of what people are actually using this business model for.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So this is super relevant to anybody that is using print materials for something.
Matt: Agreed.
Lauren: Yeah.
Watch the Video of this Episode
[13:36]
Matt: What are some reasons people might want to order bulk?
Lauren: Well, I think one really, really good one is for speaking engagements.
Matt: Yeah. And let me just say that this episode was sparked by our friend Andrew Davis. He had a post on LinkedIn, he's a speaker – one of the best speakers, by the way – about ordering books bulk. This is something that's fairly common for speakers and we hadn't really thought about or addressed it. And quite frankly, Andrew hurt our feelings. But we're gonna go ahead and, and take care of this right now so that people understand where they can have this done and how it works. So thanks, Andrew, for the topic. We still love you.
Lauren: And I will say that he did get a couple of things right in there.
Matt: Oh yeah.
Lauren: You know, one or two, one or two things.
Matt: He got a lot of stuff right in there.
Lauren: He got a lot of stuff right in there. But one of the things that he did talk about was how valuable it is if you are a speaker.
Matt: Yeah, 100.
Lauren: To either offer to show up with books or just show up with books. But that is something that – and we've done an episode about, like public speaking and the value of speaking as part of your brand. And if you're using books as part of your gateway into speaking, or if you're using speaking as a gateway to promote your book.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Either way, there's a lot of value in there. So if that is something that you are interested in doing, where you're saying, hey, I was invited to speak at an event, I would like to bring a copy for every attendee. Or I would like to just bring enough copies for everyone that comes to my session. Maybe you're not a keynote speaker, but you're a breakout session speaker. And you say there's going to be forty people max in the room that I'm in, I want to bring forty copies with me and give one to everyone that comes to my session.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Or even, you know, not give them away, but we've been to a lot of events where on the show floor they'll have… like a local bookstore will be running a sales table that is just any speaker at the event that has a book that they wanted to have for sale there.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: They'll have that set up on the floor there.
Matt: I think there's a lot of different ways to do it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And just depending on the event, the industry that it's in or associated with. But in many cases, yes. If it's not being offered as part of your speaker compensation, i.e. here's some money and we'll order enough copies of your book for all the attendees, you can offer something like that up. Like, hey, you know, if the speaker fee is 2,500, how about we do 2,000, you get a couple hundred copies of my book and make sure everybody gets a copy of it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You're really doing yourself a favor there because instead of having that extra 500 cash, if you convert just one or two of those attendees through your book to a paid consulting client or whatever it is that you do, you're definitely gonna rank more than that $500 that you're – you know what I mean? So there are ways to negotiate your book getting into the hands of attendees and that might be something like that. It might be where they just say, you know what, you can bring however many you want. You're responsible for getting them into the hands of people, but you're more than welcome to put them on every seat in your session or whatever you want to do. Or some places do a dedicated swag bag and they'll say, hey, yeah, we'll put one in every swag bag for you. Or, you know, you just have to ask, like, what are your options? And I think it's a great way to get that thing out there as an asset to whatever event that you're speaking at.
Lauren: Maybe even if you're not speaking, I think we've seen a couple of examples –
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: – of people that weren't necessarily speaking at an event, but as part of their sponsorship package. They said, hey, instead of putting a pen that someone's going to throw out on day two or like a half sheet or collateral in the swag bag, can I put a copy of this book in the swag bag? And everybody at the conference gets a copy of this book.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like, that's a great option. And you don't even have to be speaking.
Matt: 100 percent.
Lauren: For that.
Matt: So in those instances, I think it's important, you know, again, the rest of this episode is going to talk about how you would facilitate that, but. Speaking engagements are just one of the reasons why you might need to place a bulk order with your publishing slash printing company. Another reason is you might be going to a physical event that is geared towards selling books or book signing or something like that. An author event where authors can have their own table, they can have books for sale and they can sign and do those things. There's lots of other reasons why you might need a bulk order. Something more along the lines of a corporate book club. Or again, we talked about Justin Moore an episode or two ago. One of the things he does is he allows for a bulk purchase of books at the checkout screen when you're buying on his site. That is so universities or businesses or libraries or whoever, if they want multiple copies for one reason or another, they can get them. So there's a lot of reasons why you might want a bulk order of your books beyond just speaking. Or even an author event.
Lauren: Yeah. That is something that, that you can do for sure, whether it's a corporate event or even just a local book club or something, a library group, something like that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: A school, and I don't necessarily even mean school like a high school or middle school or something. If there's a community college nearby that offers like… not adjunct classes, but like when you can take…like you can just take a single class without being like, a fully enrolled student.
Matt: I forgot what it’s called, yeah.
Lauren: There's a word for that, right?
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Or even just like local, like, you know, I want to take a weekly class on bookbinding or something. And people find your workbook and are like, hey, this is a great resource that we can offer all our students for this class. Even if your book is a reference guide or a manual or in some way something like that. That, you know.
Matt: It's called auditing in class.
Lauren: Thank you.
Matt: I had to look it up, because it was driving me crazy.
Lauren: I knew there was a – And for some reason, I kept thinking of matriculated students, which is somehow a much more complicated word.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But yeah, there are plenty of opportunities where people might want copies of your book, regardless of whether or not you are speaking –
Matt: Right.
Lauren: – to them, and where they will need quantities that are 50, 100, 200, whatever, that are not necessarily something that you're gonna wanna do an offset print run for, but you're gonna need a bulk order placed.
Matt: Yeah, definitely. And you know, some of these things you'll also find in older episodes where we talked about sales tactics and marketing tactics for selling more books. Finding some of these events that might be local, regional, or even, you know, national. A workshop series, let's say, or something like that, that deals with whatever topic you wrote about, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter, and just reaching out to them and just saying, hey, here's a copy of my book. You know, I'd love for it to be included in your workshop series. If so, if you're open to that, please let me know. There's a number of ways you could potentially get your book included in those types of activities that would garner bulk sales.
Lauren: There are so many events that I am surprised, and then I ask myself why I'm surprised, when I see people selling books at. Every street fair that I've ever been to. There's been at least one vendor –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – that is a group of self-published or indie authors that are all there together. Last year, I went to the Renaissance Faire out in Charlotte and there was a…like an organized table of three or four different authors that were all like fantasy, steampunk, historical authors.
Matt: I've never been to a Ren Faire but I always assumed there were a lot of tables of books being sold that were fantastical in nature.
Lauren: This was actually… I can't recall ever seeing them at the one that I used to go to in New York, but that one's also a really big one and it's a little bit harder to like, get space at it? But I was, I was, like –
Matt: So, did you dress up and carry a sword?
Lauren: I did not carry a sword, but I did dress up. I mean, it wasn't.
Matt: Can you post a picture in the show notes?
Lauren: Yeah. It, I mean, you won't be that surprised. It's me in black leggings and black knee high boots and like a black flowy shirt and a black cape. It's, it's not – other than the cape, it's not that much different than what I would wear any other time.
Matt: What were you dressed up as and all of that? I mean, I don't think they even wore that much black back then, did they?
Lauren: Well, I had to make do with what I had in my closet.
Matt: Okay. So. What were you supposed to be?
Lauren: I was a rogue.
Matt: Oh, I was going to guess an executioner with all that black, but…
Lauren: No, I didn't have a mask.
Matt: Oh, okay.
There are plenty of things that you could – be whatever you want.
Matt: Interesting.
[22:10]
Matt: All right. Well, for all of these opportunities or most of these, I would say you're going to need to supply the books yourself.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So again, that's where this episode is going to come in handy and understanding the different things you need to know about bulk ordering and things to look out for and costs and stuff like that. Last thing we'll mention about these types of events is that, yay, BookCon is coming back.
Lauren: Oh yeah!
Matt: Disappeared in 2020 thanks to COVID, but BookCon was a lot of fun. It was held yearly in conjunction with BEA in New York at the Javits Center, which was a big publishing industry event.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: BookCon was a public event similar to Comic-Con. It's coming back next year, 2026. So look it up. You'll see us there. It's a lot of fun.
Lauren: Yeah, I'm, I’m – Matt and I were both really excited about that announcement. This episode comes out in a couple of weeks, so it might be old news by then. But in case you haven't heard it yet.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: BookCon is back April of 2026, back up in New York at the Javits Center. And I am super excited about it.
Matt: Now, the last reason you might need to order – or that we'll talk about, that you might need to order bulk books or books in bulk – would be if you're running like a Kickstarter or pre-order campaign. This, this can be a slightly different type of bulk though, because you're going to have multiple addresses. So instead of traditional bulk, where you're going to order 500 copies and you're having them all sent to one place, you might pull down your CSV file from your Kickstarter once it ends and you've got to ship 500 copies to 500 different addresses. As far as I know, we're the only one that has a solution for that maybe. And basically we've built a tool where you just upload that CSV file and we ship out all 500 of those copies to all 500 of those addresses and it's all taken care of. So, you know, with Kickstarter and even pre-orders, where if you're doing your own pre-order campaign, you're going to have a couple hundred books or more, hopefully. And then corresponding addresses to ship every single one of those to. So slightly different type of bulk order per se, if you're doing it through us or trying to automate some of it. If you're doing it the old fashioned way, you're going to pull down your Kickstarter or pre-order campaign CSV files. You're going to see that you have 800 books that you need to order. You'll place a bulk order for 800 books to ship to your house and then you'll pack every single one of those.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Boo, by the way. If you're lucky –
Lauren: Sounds like a lot of work.
If you’re lucky, yeah, you can talk family or friends to come over and help.
Lauren: I just –
Matt: But –
Lauren: I just had a very vivid memory of the episode where you talked about having a pizza party to do that and then the books getting greasy with the pizza grease.
Matt: Character. It adds character. But there is an easier way to do it. That's the point, right? Just upload the spreadsheet with Lulu –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – and we'll ship them all out for you. You never have to touch them. Also part of the beauty of print-on-demand technology. So yeah, there you have it. The main reasons why you need bulk are speaking gigs where you're going to take a bunch of copies, you want to give them out to attendees or do a signing or something. Physical events, you know, especially in the author world where it's some sort of a book event or an author signing or a conference or something like that. Schools, libraries, organizations. Businesses oftentimes have a need for bulk amounts of books for particular reasons, and then lastly crowdfunding and pre-orders.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Yeah.
[25:28]
Matt: Okay. So if you're going to place a bulk order, let's talk about some of the things that you need to know in terms of the process, what to look for, are there things you can negotiate depending on who you're working with, those types of things.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to say first and foremost, even though this is not the order that I put them in on here, I'm going to say the number one top priority is to make sure that you are planning ahead. This is not something that… I don't care how many copies you're ordering. If today is Monday and you have an event on Saturday and you haven't ordered your books yet, you're going to have a bad time.
Matt: In most cases, yes. That's a tight window. We've definitely seen a turnaround there. We're to get into this, but planning ahead 100%.
Lauren: I said you're going to have a bad time. I didn't say that you're going to definitely not get the books, but you're going to stress yourself out this whole week trying to get those, make sure those books get there on time.
Matt: Yeah, you're going to have a bad time. That's, that's for sure.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But nothing is necessarily impossible with print-on-demand. The general lead time, since we're talking about planning ahead, is two to three days production time for paperbacks and between four and five days for hardcover. The caveat here is that that does not include Q4, meaning the months of October, November, and December You can add probably a day or two at least onto those production times for Q4. But if you're in the first nine months of the year, yeah, the average paperback, whether it's one copy or a thousand copies, that order could be completed in probably three, three days, and then shipped. So if you place the order on Monday, you need the books by Sunday, if it takes three days to print them, and you paid for overnight shipping, you more than likely could have your books before the event and they'll look great, because they've had sufficient time to be produced and shipped. But overnight shipping is not cheap.
Lauren: No.
Matt: Some places charge a rush fee. We do not. But nonetheless, plan ahead is absolutely correct. Part of that planning ahead, though, and understanding these, these different things we're to talk about is, you need to know exactly how many copies you're going to need. Again, are you ordering something that's paperback or hardcover? Does it have special embellishments that might require an extra day of production time? You need to understand some of those things before you place that order so you can have a realistic timeline of when you could expect to receive them.
Lauren: Right. And I can hear people making an argument for how am I supposed to know exactly how many books I need for some of the events that you've just outlined or some of the opportunities that you just outlined? And that's totally fair, because there are some cases where, you know, it's going to be yes. You need to order a hundred copies specifically, because we are giving them out to an event that has a hundred people signed up for it. Okay. And then there are some times where you're going to hear, okay, you're selling books at an author event where there's going to be fifty other authors also selling books at this event. And we can't tell you exactly how many books you're going to sell because we don't know, that's kind of up to you. You still have to figure out a way to estimate for yourself –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: How many books are you going to need for that event. And there are a variety of different ways that you can do that. You can try to get a feeling for how many tickets have been sold for the event. If it's not the first year they've done it, how many people have gone in past years? Are other authors that have been there before… We actually did a whole episode on what to do as an author before, during and after an author event. I will have that linked in the show notes if you want to dive deeper into that one. But there are a lot of events, even if it's something like a conference that you're invited to speak at as not an author but a speaker and you're saying, you know, I'm not sure. I want to bring enough for everybody that comes to my session to have a copy and then also have some leftover to give out to people. But how am I supposed to know how many people are going to come to my session? There's ways for you to get information that will help you ballpark estimate that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But not if you wait until three days before the event to find that out.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So. You know, that's something that you want to be proactive about and get a good understanding.
Matt: Yep. Part of planning ahead too is understanding the logistical aspects of these orders. Depending on the quantity, you could be dealing with a couple of boxes or you could be dealing with a pallet full of boxes of books. It just depends on how many you're ordering. So in that instance, you need to know, can you ship directly to the event? Can they receive an order of the size that you may be sending? It's perfectly okay to ask your print provider, by the way, for the quantity of books you're buying, roughly how many boxes is that going to equate to and what size are they? If it's going to equal a pallet, ask your print provider, you know, what are my shipping options? If you're shipping to a hotel, that means they have a loading dock. That means you can more than likely use a freight shipper or an LTL. It does cut down on the costs. It might add an extra day to ship times, potentially. Sometimes it'll knock a day off. It just depends. But you need to understand all of the logistics around dropshipping your books, so that the goal is to not have them come to your house, or your place of business, and you have to turn around and reship them. The goal is to have them shipped directly from the print facility to where they need to be, cut out as much of that space as possible.
Lauren: Right, right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And hopefully there are different ways for you to be able to do that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I would highly encourage any time that you are attending any kind of event like that, that you find out ahead of time. Is there a way for me to ship it directly to the convention center or the event space? If not, is there a way to ship it to the hotel that I'm staying at? Are the event organizers doing something where they have somewhere that you can ship things to and store them there? Because there is also, I mean, we do understand that sometimes your delivery window is an exact specific date and you can't always control that, you can't say I guarantee this will be delivered on this date. And you don't want to cut it too close because what if it's delayed and it comes late?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But there are ways to work with that, and there are ways to work around that. If that's an option for you where you can have your books shipped directly to the event, especially if you're ordering from a company that has more than one print location.
Matt: Yeah
Lauren: And they're able to fulfill orders in the most globally logistical… Well, nope. I don't know. Somewhere – that went somewhere. If you're able to –
Matt: I think we all know what you mean.
Lauren: Yeah. Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But you know, we don’t have to –
Matt: Print and ship locally.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: How about that?
Lauren: Yeah, there you go. There you go.
Matt: I think the point Lauren's trying to make is that you need to make sure that whoever you're using, you have that ability. Not every company has facilities like we do around the globe.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So you want to make sure that whoever you use is not going to print 500 copies of a book and then ship them to Amsterdam for you. That's going to be expensive. It's probably not going to make it because customs is probably going to give it a hard time. And even if it does make it, it's going to take a little while. So again understanding logistics, dropshipping, where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, what your options are with your preferred print provider? I think that's the point.
Lauren: Yep. Yeah.
Matt: Okay good.
Lauren: Thank you for translating that for me.
Matt: No problem.
Lauren: It’s a very Monday Monday.
[32:26]
Matt: Let's move on to the most important piece, and what most people want to talk about, which is pricing.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So most of the time when you're dealing with print-on-demand and small quantities, you don't have a lot of leverage to negotiate pricing. The price is what it is. Print-on-demand pricing is a little more expensive than something like offset or whatever. There's trade-offs there. So justifying that price can break down into many forms, but a big part of that breaks down into automation, ease, convenience, it's better for the environment, all those types of things. We won't get into that, but. The beauty of bulk ordering is that you oftentimes will have some leverage to negotiate. Not every company will. We do offer volume discounts. They're not posted on our site anywhere per se, but if you're gonna order 500 or more units, right? A bulk order of 500 or more books, it is in your best interest to reach out to us via email or however you feel comfortable, but –
Lauren: I actually have linked in the show notes for this episode, a link to the landing page that has a contact request form –
Matt: Oh good.
Lauren: – on it.
Matt: So we have a whole –
Lauren: So feel free to go check that out.
Lauren: We have a whole team that deals with bulk orders and things like that. So if you're, if you're placing a bulk order, we're happy to take a look at the project. Consider a number of different factors, the type of paper you're using, all of those things. And in most cases, you will receive a volume discount based on the size of that order.
Lauren: Which I would also argue is absolute proof that this is something that people do all the time.
Matt: Yeah.
vSo if you think this is an out of box idea of like, why would anybody order print-on-demand bulk instead of offset printing, we have a team in house –
Matt: A process and a team.
Lauren: – that is dedicated to handling this.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: Like, clearly this is something that is a big enough part of our business that we have a process and a team –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – in place for it. So. Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: And even if you're not working with us, I would encourage you that whoever you're working with, if you're going to place an order for 500 or more books, you should absolutely reach out to them and ask for a volume discount. And if they won't give you one, you can come see us.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But you should do that. Obviously, just like offset printing or any other, you know, honestly, manufacturing industry, the more we print, the more room we have to work on that pricing with you. So that's something I would definitely ask about. I think sometimes people are a little afraid to do that. And then others will come in and be like, hey, can I get a 75% discount? That's a hard no from us, dog.
Lauren: I love the audacity sometimes though.
Matt: That's a good word for it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I do also want to remind people that even if you're ordering under 500 copies, our regular promo codes still apply to that too.
Matt: Yeah. I mean.
Lauren: So.
Matt: If you're subscribed to our email, you're getting – we send a weekly promo out, in any, in any given week, you know, there's 10 or 15% off in the market probably.
Lauren: Right. And if you're not, what are you doing? Subscribe to our emails.
Matt: I don't want to know what they're doing if they're not subscribed to our emails.
Lauren: They're really good emails.
[35:31]
Matt: The last thing I'll touch on here, before we start to wrap up, is that, you know, there's another way to do this. Especially if you're a speaker or somebody who uses books as a, as an asset or a lead magnet, or somebody who has a book that just naturally lends itself to be ordered and consumed in bulk. You can sell direct. And the way that you can automate all of this is really cool. We've seen people do this with any ecommerce platform that you're using, whether it's Shopify, Wix, or even building something, you know, off of WordPress or whatever that might be. Even if you're using something like Framer or one of those others, there is the ability to create password-protected pages or private pages. And on those pages, you can have those titles or those books set up that are typically ordered in bulk by organizations, churches, schools, events, conferences, whatever. And anytime you're in a situation where one of these entities needs to order a bulk order from you, they can go to that page. You would have given them a pre-setup password for their procurement department or whoever to log in. They can order the copies directly from you if you want them to have a discount, right? Like if you’ve not set the price lower there, you can give them, you know, a custom discount code that they can type right in and the checkout process and the books are ordered and printed and shipped directly to them. They're going to put in the shipping address where they want them. So you can actually automate this entire process. You could have pre-negotiated your discount through us on your account and you could have set up a portal for people to order bulk from and automate everything. You never have to touch a thing. That's the beauty of ecommerce technology and print-on-demand technology having caught up to where they're at right now at this intersection of time. You can also do it the same way our friend Justin Moore does it where, you know, on your normal book product page of your website, you give options for bulk with better pricing. You could have an option that you've built out, a variant or an option where it could be something for, you know, a conference or an organization that has a built-in discount code for, let's say, 300 copies or something along those lines. So there are ways to actually automate this as well. So I would encourage you to get creative depending on your needs.
Lauren: You can also realistically, if you don't want to build out your own website to do that, you can set that up on the Lulu bookstore as well. You won't get quite as much of a benefit from it as selling direct, because obviously we're always going to argue in favor of selling direct, but you can create private access or limited access pages on the Lulu bookstore. If you want to just have your book available, but only to people that you specifically share the link with, so that you still have some control over who has access to that content, but then they can order however many quantities of it they want or need.
Matt: Yeah. The beauty of direct is you keep all that customer information.
Lauren: I mean, obviously.
Matt: And you control the discounting, which you cannot do on Lulu.
Lauren: But I do think that at this point, if there's anybody that's still listening to this podcast who has not been convinced about the benefit and value of selling direct…
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Then we might have to start over.
Matt: That's fair.
Lauren: So.
Matt: Should we start over and rename our podcast direct sales 101?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Direct to you?
Lauren: No.
Matt: No?
Lauren: I don't like that one.
Matt:: All right.
Lauren: Too direct.
Matt: It's on the nose. I got it.
Lauren: It's okay. It’s all right. I like Publish & Prosper.
Matt: Yeah, me too. I'm just saying if we had to start over and focus on nothing but direct… So that is buying books in bulk. Why you would want to do it. The things you need to look out for.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I don't know if we missed anything.
Lauren: I don't think so. I think that was actually a pretty tight, clear cut episode, which is unusual for us.
Matt: If you still have any questions around it, just email us. We're happy to answer them.
Lauren: Yeah, we're happy to answer them or to put you in touch with our team here that can answer any questions.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: Either way.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But reach out to us. Check out the show notes. I did link to some…some resources on the Lulu website that will help you out there, but also some other episodes that we've done that kind of tied in with this one. So go check that out for sure.
Matt: Awesome.
Lauren: Yeah, I think that's it.
Matt: Like subscribe.
Lauren: Yeah. Like, subscribe, leave us a review. Check us out on YouTube if you're not already watching this episode there. Say hi to us on Lulu's social media. I think that's it.
Matt: It's weird recording on a Monday. It feels like a Monday.
Lauren: It does feel like a Monday. And our last few ones have not been on Mondays. So now we're back on the Monday schedule and it definitely feels like it.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Well, hopefully you're listening to this on a Wednesday and it doesn't feel like a Monday.
Matt: Great point.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Let's end it like it's a Wednesday.
Lauren: Perfect.
Matt: Thank you, everybody.
Lauren: Thanks for listening, everyone. And hopefully you come back for next episode next week. There was a word missing from that sentence –
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: But I'm just going to keep going.
Matt: Later.
Lauren: Bye.
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