Dover Introduces Flat Discount for Booksellers  

By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 6/8/2009 8:55:00 AM

Dover used last week’s BookExpo America to introduce a new discount schedule aimed at making it easier for independent booksellers to do business with the company as well as REA and Creative Homeowner, the two other publishers that are part of Courier Corp.’s publishing operation. Effective immediately, indie booksellers that do $2,500 worth of business annually with Dover will get a 50% discount “on any order, any time,” said Eric Zimmerman, head of Courier’s publishing operation. Zimmerman explained that under the old discount structure, booksellers would often hold orders to meet minimum requirements, a tactic that often meant lost sales for both the store and Dover. In addition to doing $2,500 in net sales, the only other qualification to received the 50% discount is ordering $150 in net frontlist sales per season. Booksellers that do $1,250 in annual business with Dover plus order $100 in seasonal frontlist get a 48% discount.

Zimmerman said he was “delighted” with reaction to the program at BEA where the company signed up a number of accounts and made plans to talk to others. Under the program, booksellers that qualify for the Dover offer are also eligible to receive the same discount for Creative Homeowner and REA titles. Booksellers that sign up for the deeper discount will also become eligible of new service through which Dover analyzes its sales data to determine which of Dover’s 9,000 titles best fit with a particular store’s need. The new discount plan follows the restructuring of the Dover/Creative Homeowner/REA sales group into a single unit that now sells all three company’s titles to their accounts.