And it’s called The Merchant’s Keep. We’ve created it to offer a place for small presses to have their books sold, and not at the 50-55% off retail that so many bigger stores insist on taking for each sale.
Small presses just can’t survive like that. With good enough sales, they can eek along but there isn’t much room for growth.
Buying direct from a press offers the best support to them and their authors, but with so many other presses out there taking people’s money without providing the product, it’s getting harder for customers to trust that route.
So we decided to expand a bit, creating a separate store environment from the Skullvines site, so others could be included. We take much less of a commission per sale so the presses make more profit.
And here’s the thing: we’ll only put a book on our site if we have it in our hands (sorry, no pre-orders), so customers can buy with confidence that they’ll receive what they ordered. The site even says exactly how many we have in stock (it’s near the “add to cart” buttons).
For now, it’s still a work in progress. We’ve already got a little over a dozen presses preparing to get some titles to us, but the site isn’t 100% finished yet.
So why are we mentioning it now? Well, presses of any genre are welcome to get with us, and we’d like them to know about it. But also, we’ve switched the Skullvines titles over to it and now have them available over there. There’s no sense in us running two bookstores (at Skullvines and The Merchant’s Keep) when they’re both coming from the same place. So you won’t find the bookstore here anymore, only the book descriptions and links to their product pages at The Merchant’s Keep where you can buy it. We wanted to clarify this in case there was any confusion.
Buying Skullvines titles from The Merchant’s Keep is the exact same as buying from us. It’s just that, in the very near future, you’ll find other titles over there from other publishers, broadening your shopping experience, also available straight from us!
We’re excited about this and think it’s a great way to expand as we come along our third year in business. CLICK HERE to visit the site, and keep an eye on it as it grows. Don’t mind the occasional mess. It’s still taking shape.
Also, the forum is going strong, so check that out, as well, by CLICKING HERE.
