Stores and distributors

A supply arrangement records who carries your books. Amazon KDP selling your ebook, IngramSpark printing and shipping your paperback, a wholesaler covering one country — each is one arrangement. No rights move. This is delivery, and what the company keeps for doing it.

Supply arrangements are part of Contracts, in the Business section of the sidebar, alongside your rights contracts. You need editor access or higher to create one.

The quickest start

If your workspace has no contracts or arrangements at all, the Contracts page shows a tick-box list headed Or start with common companies. Once you have records, the same list is still available. Above the table, the link Set up KDP, Kobo and other common companies opens a page called Common companies.

Tick the companies you use and click Add ticked companies. For each one, Pubblish creates a People entry for the company. It also creates a supply arrangement covering every title, worldwide, with typical terms already filled in.

Two things to know about those terms.

They are typical figures. The page says so: These are typical terms — check your own agreement before relying on the numbers. Each company’s note explains where its figure came from and tells you to check your own dashboard or account. That note is copied into the arrangement’s own Notes, so it stays visible afterwards.

Everything is editable afterwards. A quick-start arrangement is an ordinary supply arrangement. Open it and click Edit to change the cut, narrow the formats, or limit the territories.

A company you have already set up appears in the list with its box greyed out and the note Already set up. When every company is set up, the page says so instead of showing a form.

Creating one by hand

Click New supply arrangement at the top of the Contracts page.

The arrangement

Field What to put in it
Name What you call it — the distributor’s name is usually enough
Company The distributor, wholesaler or store, from your People list
Store or distributor Which of Pubblish’s known stores this company is. Optional.

Store or distributor matters for one thing only: the ONIX export (the metadata file sent to retailers), which is a paid add-on. With it set, the file can tell retailers what kind of supplier this is — a distributor, an aggregator, or a retailer. Leave it on Not one of these and the file still names the company as your supplier, but cannot say what kind. It changes nothing else.

Their cut

Two boxes, Our share (%) and Their cut (%). Fill in either one and Pubblish works out the other. You do not have to make them add up yourself.

This figure is for reference. Royalty runs work from the sales reports you upload, which show what you actually earned — not from the cut recorded here.

What they carry

Tick Every title to cover the whole catalogue, including books added later. Or leave it unticked and pick books in the Titles box. One or the other — both, or neither, is refused.

Formats is the list of formats they carry. Leave it empty and the arrangement covers every format.

Where

Territory mode is three radio buttons:

  • Worldwide — they serve everywhere. No list.
  • Worldwide except… — they serve everywhere except the territories you tick.
  • Only these territories — they serve nothing but the territories you tick.

The territory tick-boxes appear when you pick one of the last two. Switching back to Worldwide clears them.

Exclusive says nobody else supplies these titles in these territories. The ONIX export sends that to retailers as an exclusivity claim, so leave it off unless your contract says otherwise. Amazon KDP Select, for example, should be ticked.

Dates and Notes are the last two fields. Both dates are optional. An arrangement stops naming a supplier in the ONIX export once its end date passes.

Click Add arrangement.

The arrangement’s page

The page shows what they carry, in formats, in territories, and whether it is exclusive. On the right, an Arrangement panel holds the company, the store or distributor link, Our share and Their cut side by side, and the dates.

Edit is there for editors and above. Delete is there for administrators and the owner only, and cannot be undone.