Are you local...?

We love to support local authors!

Here is some guidance to help us help each other.

What kind of author are you?

Traditionally or Self published?

What’s the difference?

By ‘Traditionally Published’ we mean published by a traditional publishing house where your book has been sold to the publisher through a Literary Agency and you have been allocated an ‘advance’ on your book before publication, with editing, management and marketing done by the publishing house. In other words, you have been paid for your book.

By ‘Self Published’ we mean either you have paid a service provider to produce (typeset, edit, cover etc) your book, or you have done this yourself. Publishing in this way often focuses on digital platforms for distribution plus print on demand for print copies. In other words, you have paid to get your book out there.

Why does it matter, and what should i do?

If you are Traditionally Published, then we would expect to deal with your publicist. Normally, your publishing team will work with us to help promote your book. They will have a budget for materials and events, and they will help to market any event that we do together. They will also provide copies of your books on a sale-or-return basis, so we can order in a good quantity at manageable risk to us, the bookseller. For the books we sell as part of the collaboration, we would receive a good discount, negotiated as part of our contract with the publisher. We like to lean-in on this kind of arrangement as there are benefits for all parties, and these events are always successful at Goldfinch. If this is you, and you write fiction or non-fiction, and if you are interested in an event or a collaboration, please get in touch with gary@goldfinch-books.com

If you are Self Published, then we would expect to deal directly with you. Even if you have paid a service provider or subsidy publisher (eg Matador, Austin Macauley, Pegasus and others), these providers do not normally deal direct with bookshops because they don’t necessarily have the marketing budgets. Normally, we would not expect any support from these publishers for event materials or marketing support of any significance. We would expect to receive books from these organisations on a sale-or-return basis (perhaps with some limits on numbers), although this is not the case with all self published books. For books published in this way, we do not typically receive as good a discount from suppliers (often a fraction of that received from the Traditional Publishers). An arrangement like this, therefore, offers little financial incentive to Goldfinch. THAT SAID, we still love you, and want to support you in your writing and publishing endeavours where we can…see below.

Please use the following approach:

  • Get in touch by sending an email to gary@goldfinch-books.com and tell us about you and your book(s), and, at about the same time, drop a copy of your book (a ‘reading copy’) into the shop if you can, so that we can have a read. We need to do this because as a self published book, it will not have necessarily had the reviews, scrutiny and publicity that enable us to be sure of the quality that comes as standard with books that are traditionally published.

  • As long as this reading copy is suitable for Goldfinch (professionally produced, covered, and edited - and a subject matter and quality that fits our values and standards), we will offer to have it on our shelves. When we make sales, we would replenish stock through our normal supply chain - typically through our main distributor, Gardners. You would receive your cut through your arrangements with your publisher or printer (eg Ingram Spark or Book Vault). Note here that we would not get any significant discount through this route so we are not making any/much money on sales, but we nevertheless want to support, and understand the value in self published authors getting their books into shops.

  • What about an event? With limited publisher support, events can be challenging (in terms of generating public interest), but can also be very successful. If you’d like to have an event at Goldfinch, please write a short email with your thoughts on the kind of event (a talk, a book signing), when it might happen (day and time), how we might get people to come, how we will get hold of books to sell, and what the financial arrangements might look like. If the proposal makes sense, and we can accommodate, then we can fix a date and make it happen.

  • We no longer enter into arrangements directly with authors for supply of books because we don’t have the resources needed to manage multiple such arrangements. If this is difficult for you (because of limited alternative distribution means for example), please speak to Gary about it and we can see if there is something we can do together.

  • If you are interested in broader or more specialist support (writing groups, courses, clubs etc) then we have these, so please check out the other pages of our website, or pop in to have a chat. We love meeting local creatives and want Goldfinch to be a place for you to meet like-minded people and develop your craft.