At this busy time of year, a lot of issues arise in the book publishing supply chain. We just want to remind our readers and authors that, as a very small Boutique publishing company with an annual turnover of less than £200,000 - compared to Big 5 publishers who make 500 million pounds per year or more - we do not have 'vertical integration' - that is, we do not have our own printers, delivery trucks, shippers, or paper - we use distributors, Amazon and other online retailers, printers like TJ and Ingram, and shippers like UPS and Royal Mail, to print the books, then ship them and deliver them to distributors, then on to bookshops and Amazon warehouses.
The past month and a half has seen some of the worst delays in decades for these services, as petrol ran out, and a shortage of truck drivers, meant some deliveries have taken 2-3 weeks, instead of 2-3 days. On top of that, the UK still has the highest case load daily for Covid-19, in Europe.
We edit and publish books, but we do not handle the other aspects of delivery and sales ourselves, for the most part - we turn these over to large, better-equipped companies, with decades of experience. Sadly, even these big companies are very slow.
We are sorry for delays, but we are not ourselves responsible for them. Nonetheless, we are doing everything we can to constantly hurry things up, wherever possible. Please be patient, the next few months may be a bit bumpy, but we'll make it!
