• Retailers will only take your books on sale-or-return terms. This means you give them X books, and sign a pro forma contract that says in Y months, they owe you X books, or the selling price of your book for each book they’ve sold minus their cut. If no books sell, the retailer doesn’t lose anything other than the shelf space the book was occupying, and you get the books back. This is why you deal with indies and small chains; do you have the cash to ship 1000, or 10,000 or even 100 books to Waterstones with no guarantee you’ll see any return? Do you have the room to store 1000 returned books? I know how much room 100 books takes up – believe me when I say you don’t have room for 1000.
• Retailers take a cut based on a percentage of the cover price. This is typically 35%. I don’t want to say it’s always 35%, but I’ve not met anyone asking for more or less, so I’m assuming it’s always. I’ve also never felt the need to haggle on that deal; as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair.
• Retailers will take a quantity of your books based on their opinion of how well it will sell to their customers. They know their customers better than you – it’s their job to know – so you have to accept their appraisal of the marketability of your book. You don’t need to pitch the book like you would to an agent/publisher, but they’ll want to know the setting/target market to get a feel for whether it fits their customer type. As an extreme example, you probably wouldn’t be able to get erotica into a children’s book shop (unless as part of an elaborate and tasteless practical joke).
• The above point doesn’t mean that you should accept a retailer’s assessment without question; catch someone on a bad day, and they might view your book in an overly negative light. If you truly believe your book could find a market in their shop, ask if they’ll take a single copy and gauge interest based on that. Your book might tap into a market they’ve not found yet. As with all things, however, no means no, so don’t be pushy.
• Your book has to be able to stand on the shelves next to its mainstream brethren without looking like a dog chewed it. It has to be a quality publication.
• The retailer hasn’t the time or inclination to read your book, so needs to make a gut call on whether it’s a) any good, and b) well-edited and proofed. Their only way to do this is to look at how you present yourself, and infer the attention to detail you’ve paid the book from that. You don’t have to wear a dinner jacket and top hat; just be yourself, but make sure it’s a clean, tidy, laundered and polite version of yourself. Oh, and I know this seems obvious, but take a copy of the real, printed book along; no one is going to make a call based on a copy of the manuscript, nor on your word that the book is awesome.
• Get business cards printed, and make sure you have some with you. The retailer needs to be able to contact you to re-order or to return the books, so make it easy for them. Also, when choosing your design, don’t go for glossy cards, or those new “tiny” cards that are the fashion; the one thing most people do with business cards is write on them, so make that possible.

And that’s it. I’ve been following this advice for a couple of weeks now, and have placed the book in three of the five stores I’ve tried (with a couple more in-progress). The two who didn’t take it thought it wouldn’t sell to their market, which is fair enough, and brings me to my final point; the relationship between a writer and direct retailers is more like a partnership than a buyer-seller arrangement. Placing a book in the wrong store hurts the retailer as well as yourself; find the right store and everyone gets paid. Be polite, but remember that you’re in a position to make them money if your book is good and you work hard to market it. You’re offering them a business deal as an equal, so enjoy the encounter, meet someone new, and do some good business.