by Aishah Macgill

Many indie authors ask me:

“How do I get my book listed for sale on the Book Depository?”

There is only one criteria.

Your book must be in print and it has to be listed with either Ingrams or Neilson Book Data.

If your book is listed on either of these databases, the Book Depository will list your book. That doesn’t automatically translate into sales, but at least your book can be found via a search on the Book Depository website.

Great news for indies, if your book is POD, Print On Demand, the Book Depository will list and sell your book.

I wrote to them to have this clarified, here is an extract of their email to me:

“We’re pleased to list independent authors on our site. In order to do so we need biblio data, we collect this from Nielsen Book Data as our main source, and also from some of the wholesalers we use, such as Ingrams.

We source books from distributors rather than directly from individual publishers, so provided the books are distributed by one of the key UK, US or selected European distributors or wholesalers we can access them.

We source POD titles from Ingram and from Lightning Source.”

This is great news for Indie Authors! One more good reason to have your book available in print and listed with Ingrams, either via Create Space or Lightning Source, or both.

Once your book has been published on either Create Space or Lightning Source or via a publishing house, it takes 6 to 8 weeks for your book to be listed on the Book Depository, as long as it’s listed on Neilson’s or Ingrams with a unique ISBN. If you cannot find it after a couple of months, send them an email via the contact page, with your ISBN number, and they will check for you why it’s not showing yet.

For your general information, the Book Depository, started in 2004 and is now owned by Amazon. They purchased it in 2011 amid some controversy over the issue of fair trading.

The Book Depository is Europe’s fastest growing bookseller and the UK’s biggest online bookstore.


For a great deal on self publishing packages for indie authors, check out my publishing services website, Finite Publishing.

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