Family-owned BookMasters Inc. in Mansfield, Ohio, began as a book printing and binding company, but has since added order fulfillment and distribution to its menu of services. "We currently represent 800 publishers, from independents to university presses," said co-owner Dave Wurster, whose parents started the company 30 years ago. "We have two services—regular pick, pack and ship and our full-service program. We started getting into the distribution side when Ingram announced that it was not going to do business with small presses."
BookMasters handles accounts receivable, shipping and customer service for full-service clients like Purdue University Press, Kent State University Press and Marquette University Press, and features their books on its online store (www.AtlasBooks.com). In addition, BookMasters provides a 24-hour toll-free order number that the presses can give to their clients and offers digital printing, both e-books and print-on-demand. BookMasters takes a few percentage points less from its clients than most distributors, but then it offers fewer frills: There is no print catalogue or rep group. "We're finding just being up front about our service—you still have to do the marketing and publicity—we've actually had a lot of independents come over from other distributors," Wurster said.
Putting composition, design, printing and sales under one roof may not be a typical distribution model, but, according to Wurster, it works. "BookMasters' biggest sales point is the one-stop shop. We can do POD or offset. Between our BookMasters.com Web site and AtlasBooks.com, we receive over a million hits a month," he noted. "Our sales this year are up 26% across the board. We're attributing this to our ancillary products."
