SaskBooks is not a publisher! We cannot publish your book, but we have a list of publishers who do publish books, and we encourage you to take a look at our list of publishers to see who might publish what you’ve written. If you don’t find what you want, or if you’re interested in becoming a publisher, consider taking one of our introductory publishing symposia (presented in partnership with the Saskatchewan Writers Guild) that often focus on what sorts of things you’ll need to think about if you want to self-publish.
Once you have published a book, you may apply for membership with SaskBooks. You will get out of your membership what you put in to it – the more engaged and involved you are with your publishing business, the more active you will likely be with your industry association. Please note: SaskBooks can only promote books whose ISBNs are registered to a Saskatchewan business. The National Library of Canada’s ISBN search is how we assess where ISBNs are registered: https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/isbn-canada/app/index.php?fuseaction=public.searchPublishers&lang=eng
We can help!
SaskBooks can help promote your book, and we can provide professional and business development sessions. With more than 50 years’ experience and industry knowledge, the SaskBooks staff probably already know the answer to your question, and if they don’t, they’re guaranteed to know someone who does. The SaskBooks board of directors and members are all publishers in different stages of their own business development, and there’s an awful lot of experience and knowledge for you to draw on. As a member of SaskBooks, you will have access to our newsletters, a publishers’ listserv, numerous networking opportunities throughout the year, and an annual conference that brings publishing professionals from all over the world right to your door.
Common Forum
Our annual June conference provides a common forum for book publishers to get together and talk about their successes and their challenges. It helps us stay in touch with the people whose publishing businesses fuel our industry, and it helps our publishers stay in touch with each other and with publishing industry professionals from around the world. We also provide regular professional development sessions throughout the year that focus on industry and business development for publishers at all levels of activity.
SaskBooks should not be your primary (or only) marketing or sales outlet.
We can, however, help you market your books. SaskBooks provides a number of services to its members. Provided your ISBNs are registered to a Saskatchewan entity, and provided the business listed as the publisher in your books’ copyright page is located in Saskatchewan, your books are eligible for our marketing (catalogue, reviews, adverts, Saskatchewan Book Week) services and display and sales program. To see where your ISBN is registered, do an ISBN search at the National Library of Canada ISBN Search. If you have published with a vanity press or pay-to-print publishing service, please check the copyright page in your book as well. SaskBooks cannot promote or market books that have a non-Saskatchewan business listed as the publisher, even if you have paid for the production of your book.
Distribution
We provide Professional Development sessions, and usually at least one session a year is devoted to issues of supply chain management. SaskBooks is not a distributor, and can not distribute your books to vendors, wholesalers, or retailers.
Inventory Management
Your publishing business is your own domain! We want to support your business, and we can suggest best practices for things like inventory management, but with more than 40 members, we can’t do it for you. Similarly, with more than 1,000 individual titles in our database, we cannot price-check or data-check each title individually, so if the information you’ve provided us changes, please let us know.
ONIX Data
SaskBooks maintains a custom-made in-house database compliant with ONIX Bronze standards. Our database is capable of exporting limited ONIX records to our publisher members on request.
Metadata Management
The metadata in SaskBooks’ in-house database comes directly from the books themselves. We do not currently have the means of importing publishers’ metadata records (although that’s on our wish list!). To that end, SaskBooks cannot create or maintain publisher members’ metadata. We do provide numerous Professional Development opportunities that include metadata management best practices and opportunities to meet the people and businesses who do provide metadata management services.
New Books
We really need you to keep us in the loop when you produce a new book! We get super excited when new books make their way to our office, and it’s not uncommon for everything to come to a grinding halt while we inspect the gorgeous cover, the captivating interior design, (THE FRENCH FLAPS!), the smell of fresh ink…please don’t make us wait! When you have a new book, make sure SaskBooks receives sufficient copies as soon as possible.
Old Books
If you have a title that’s gone out of print, or if you no longer have any copies, please let us know. We will return out of print books to publishers (or will re-home them if possible), but we can’t re-home if we don’t pre-know.
Custom Payment Schedules
SaskBooks pays publishers an industry standard 60% of the retail price of the book (retaining a 40% commission). We do a physical inventory twice a year, and submit sales reports to our publishers following our inventory counts. We pay publishers out for the books we have sold after we receive an invoice (based on our submitted sales reports). With more than 40 publishers on our membership roster and over 1,000 of their individual books on our shelves, we simply can’t customise payment schedules.
