Very recently I received an email about  Red Pepper Books,  which is a South African online bookstore – “South Africa’s friendliest online bookstore” they advertise. Both The Magic that’s Ours
and The Power that’s Ours were registered with Kalahari. net over a year ago but I couldn’t remember what was required to register books on online sites. I  wanted to register on their site and decided to test out how friendly Red Pepper Books were by emailing them and asking them how I go about getting my books onto their site. This was their very detailed, informative and friendly response.

Dear Gary,

 

Great to hear from you and many thanks for your interest in our company!

 

We would love to sell your books!

 

In order to have any book listed on Red Pepper’s web site, a book would need to be part of our book data feed which we receive on a monthly basis. Red Pepper’s data feeds are supplied by Nielson Bookdata in the UK. Nielson Bookdata is the biggest book database company in the world, and they are responsible for accumulating and consolidating the bibliographic information of every new book that is published onto their database. Their database is sold to booksellers and libraries worldwide in CD format, and more importantly, they provide the same information to online booksellers in the form of electronic datafeeds.

 

In order for Red Pepper Books to successfully list any book, it is imperative that the book is listed with Nielson Bookdata. Fortunately, they have an office in Cape Town who will gladly assist any author or publisher in getting their book (s) listed. There is a nominal monthly fee involved in having the book (s) listed, but the cost pales in comparison to the exposure that an author or publisher would receive by having their book listed on this huge database.

 

Red Pepper Books is more than happy to manually load a title on to our database so that it is instantly available (listing with Nielson would mean a delay of approximately 1 month in terms of seeing it on the new database, depending on when the book is listed with them). The only drawback with us loading the title manually is that it will initially not be categorised correctly (i.e. instead of being listed under “Self help and motivational books” it would be listed under “General”) until such time as it is part of our feed. In addition to this, the title may be overwritten and deleted if the new datafeed arrives before the title is actually listed on it. It is therefore imperative that the book is listed with Nielson Bookdata as quickly as possible.

 

We also recommend that your books are stocked and sold through a South African Book Distributor. This saves us time in terms of placing orders, and we also know that the book distributors will market your book independently on your behalf, which is great for exposure. We work closely with On The Dot, who stock and wholesale to bookshops worldwide. They are based in Cape Town and can be reached on 021-918-8810. We would suggest that you give them a call ASAP. If this is not economically feasible for you right now, let me know – you could possibly let us have copies on consignment.

 

To get in touch with Nielson Bookdata’s local offices, please contact Freda Van Wyk as follows and she will advise you further:

 

 

Alternatively, you may contact their UK office:

 

Telephone: +44 (0)1438 746 764. Fax: +44 (0)1438 745 578. pubhelp@nielsenbookdata.co.uk

 

The next aspect to consider would be the cost of the book.

1.         We would require a trade discount (amount to be determined) on the retail price of your book in order to list it on our web site. Please confirm your pricing model prior to us listing the book.

2.         Please confirm whether there are any handling or postage fees involved should we place an order

3.         Please advise whether you are able to supply us with stock on consignment

 

To get your book loaded up on to our web site in the meantime, please could you urgently provide me with the following information:

 

1. Full title and sub title
2. Full author (or editor) names
3. Publisher
4. ISBN and EAN
5. Year of publication
6. Country of publication
7. A comprehensive description of the book (one that we can copy and paste, no PDFs or JPEGs please!)
8. A low resolution JPEG or GIF of the FRONT cover of the book only

 

Looking forward to your feedback!

 

Warm regards, Phillipa Mitchell Founder and CEO RED PEPPER BOOKS If it’s out there, we’ll find it! Tel Local: 0861 000 RED (0861 000 733) International: +27 (11) 958 2474 Fax Local: 0861 FAX RED (0861 329 733) International: +27 (11) 958 2383 Fax to email: 086 524 2095  Mobile: +27 (083) 288-8252 Skype: phillipa.mitchell Email: phillipa@redpepperbooks.co.za  Red Pepper Books P.O. Box 22764, Helderkruin South Africa, 1733 Web: www.redpepperbooks.co.za View Privacy Policy