One Way to Tell If a Publisher Actually Has Distribution

If you spend enough time talking to publishers, you will hear the same phrase repeated again and again: “We have distribution.” Sometimes that statement is accurate. More often, it is used loosely enough that it becomes difficult for authors to evaluate what it really means.

The challenge is that distribution has become one of the least clearly defined terms in publishing. When authors rely on the term alone, rather than understanding the underlying systems, they often make decisions based on potentially misleading language instead of reality. In practice, distribution requires infrastructure.

A more useful approach, then, is to ask a different question: What systems are actually supporting the book once it is in the market, and will you have visibility into them?

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