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Book systems, plus…quite a lot more If you want a straightforward distribution service for your books, we can give it to you. But so can most book distributors. Why is Book Systems Plus different? That depends on what you need… Read on for an overview of the sort of distribution service that you would - or should - expect. Then talk to us. What we do and the way we do things could make a lot of difference to your business. Book Systems Plus provides full distribution, invoicing and customer services to publishers from the UK and overseas.We provide a much broader range of services than just storage and fulfillment. From little acorns… The
company was established over 15 years ago and now comprises a team
of very experienced professionals from the publishing industry.
Many of our client publishers joined us in our early years and have
seen their businesses develop along with ours. Our aim has always
been to help small and medium-sized publishers become larger. That
way, we will continue to grow too. No, not our larger clients but our warehouse. It is very big, and not at all pretty. (We know, as our office is right next door…) But it is in a good place. Linton is just south of Cambridge and we have excellent access to London, the Home Counties, and the Midlands. We are also just up the road from London's Stansted airport, making a flying visit a real possibility. The warehouse is run by our friends and colleagues, Hoddle Doyle Meadows. Our two companies have been working together successfully ever since we started in the '80s. "Keep It Simple, Stupid". Orders come in and they go out - quickly and with no fuss. A prospective client once asked us about our 'order tracking' system. "Oh yes," we assured him - "we can find out on-line exactly what day and what time our UK trade customers get their books - and even who signed for them." But he was worried about tracking orders through our own systems and warehouse. We don't have an internal tracking system. We don't need one. Our orders are invoiced the day we get them and the books are nearly always despatched within the next 24 hours. Our Sweetens computer system keeps us at the leading edge of booktrade technology. Bookshops place their orders by 'TeleOrder' and they come straight into our order processing system 'untouched by human hand' (- or even Consignia, come to that…). We use EDI to send invoices electronically to the main trade customers so everything is as streamlined as possible. That all leaves us more time to pay extra attention to the orders that come in by post, fax, telephone, email, carrier pigeon… We have publishing clients in Canada, USA, Australia, Scandinavia…and the village down the road. Distance is no object to us. (After all, unless you want to see just how big and ugly our warehouse is, you probably won't want to visit us very often, if at all…). And we will happily export your books to all corners of the globe. We have accounts with all the major export freight service providers and, just like orders in the UK, we can track the books right through to the customer. The personal touch One of us will be assigned to your business and he or she will be the person you can think of as part of your own team. You will know who to speak to when you need a special job done, and who is going to get excited when a large order arrives. We all work as a team here too, so everyone has the back up of those responsible for the more specialist tasks. It doesn't matter how many books you have, we soon get to know them all. No bad debts, just more people to chat to We know our customers, and we keep in touch with them. That makes it easy for us to remind them gently when an invoice is overdue. We claim there are no bad debts in the book trade. Other distributors and publishers often disagree so perhaps we just get paid when others don't. Whatever…you get your money when you expect it. We won't keep you in the dark. If our standard (though comprehensive) reports don't tell you what you want to know, we can generate a special report for you. We have the technology! You don't even need to cope with mountains of paper as we can send the report to you electronically in a form for you to manipulate in your own spreadsheets. If you have a special business need (or are just a control freak) we can even set you up with your own on-line facility so that you can dial in whenever you want to see what is happening. The hidden extras that can stay hidden We think we know enough about the publishing business to be able to give you a fully-inclusive price for our distribution, invoicing, and customer services. If you don't surprise us with your stock levels, your returns, or the quantity of books you want to give away free, we won't surprise you with additional charges. We often include freight and postage charges also, so that the amount you pay us is always directly proportional to the amount you earn in sales. No sales? No charge. (But let's not be negative.)
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