What Is the Australian Book Group?

The Australian Book Group (ABG) is a book distribution company committed to facilitating successful Australian publishing by offering participating publishers high-quality, cost-effective national book distribution.

The Australian Book Group was formed in 1992 by a number of independent Australian Publishers and has developed into one of Australia’s largest independent national book distributors by offering participating publishers high-quality, cost-effective book distribution.

Who Can Join?

Any Australian imprint with a commitment to full-time, professional publishing and a developing list of titles, will be considered. This includes publishers who can demonstrate such a commitment, even if that goal has not yet been achieved. The decision is made by the Group's Board of Directors who are appointed by the shareholding publishers.

Information For New Publishers And Self - Publishers

To be considered for distribution you need to be an established publisher with marketable books, or at least be a new publisher demonstrably developing a publishing list of interest to the retail book trade.

This means you will probably be operating under a registered company name and, if you are Australian-based, will be the holder of an Australian Business Number (ABN) and be registered for GST.

The dilemma all distributors have with small publishers is that book retailers are entitled to return books for a period of nine months. Larger publishers have established publishing lists with on going releases, so the refunds to retailers can be offset against continuing sales. However with small publishers, there may be insufficient on-going sales to fully fund these returns so the distributor runs the risk of being unable to recoup those costs.

To viably consider distribution of your titles, we may need to withhold a percentage of payments to small publishers until the end of the retail returns period on each title. We appreciate this is not an ideal situation, but the alternative is that no distributor can otherwise economically afford to distribute on behalf of small and first-time publishers.

Retailer attitudes to self-publishers

With thousands of titles released every month, the choice of investment in stock means the difference between success and failure for a book retailer. Known authors come with a track record in sales and are more favourably considered. First time authors of non-fiction titles are more favourably looked upon by retailers than first time novelists because the non-fiction work can rely on its subject matter to appeal to readers. Unknown authors of fiction have to do battle on a much less level playing field.

Retailers are increasingly wary of self-publishers and first-time publishers because, too often, they represent an unknown, unsupported author and/or the quality of production and editing falls short of the professional standards of the established publishing houses. Self-publishers are also less likely to put the same marketing know-how or publicity into their books.

This is not to say that your production standards fall into this category, but it may be useful to read some of things that make books look as though they have been self-published: