How Trade Books Get Sold

As I’ve noted before, there is a long production chain for a book to get published: manuscript acquisition, (copy)editing, layout and design, printing, and marketing. However, even if you do all of those things right—right meaning highest quality for the best cost—you can still wind up with thousands of books sitting in your garage for the next ten years if you don’t have one, last key element in place: a book distributor.