Non-Selling Title Charges

Non-Selling Titles Charge for Publishers

Every night the Central Books database runs a simple set of rules that determines the updated sales category of a book (see Details below). Currently the category for books that have not moved in the last 90 days is Q. These Q titles will not have moved for 90 days and maybe longer. It is very expensive for a distributor to hold and make available titles that do not sell or move for 90 days. We call these titles Non-Selling Titles. When we looked at all our live in-stock titles in early 2025, we found that over half were Non-Selling Titles. Having 17,000 such titles is a problem for our systems, our picking areas and our medium term storage areas.

In 2025 we are introducing a quarterly charge for holding stock of titles that do not move for 90 days.

Once a quarter (every 3 months) Central Books will look at each publisher's title list. For each title we carry in stock that has a no movements sales category for the last 90 days we will charge £5.00 a quarter.  We provide sales category data in the monthly sales reports we send to pulishers at the end of every month. Central Books can pulp or despatch the stock of such titles.

We began making this charge in July 2025.

We believe that our publisher clients make very little or anything from these non-sellers. If our client publishers use this incentive to clear out stock of non sellers there will be little negative impact on sales and it will reduce exposure to excess storage charges. 

At the end of this page there are answers to common questions on non-selling title charges.

Details

Every night the Central Books database runs a simple set of rules that determines the updated sales category of each book from category A (fast seller) to Category Q (no normal sales, gratis despatches or consignment supply for 90 days) to Category Z (no longer active titles). If a book is moving between 51 and 100 in the last 90 days it gets a sales category J. We now show these categories in publishers' monthly sales reports. Currently the category for books that have not moved in the last 90 days is Q. These Q titles will not have moved for 90 days and maybe longer. It is very expensive for a distributor to hold and make available titles that do not sell or move for 90 days.

We are having to use our picking space to make all of these very slow selling titles available. We are using a significant portion of our palletised storage to hold stock of titles that never sell or sell very slowly. If these books have not sold in the last 3 months, we have had zero distribution income to cover the cost of managing the stock in our picking area and our bulk storage. This is a charge for handling very slow selling titles; it is separate to our excess stock storage charges. This is not a charge for listing a book on our database. A title will incur a charge if we have stock at the time of charging and the category denotes no sales movement in the last 3 months. We will ignore new titles for a month after the publication date. For this purpose we are not counting returns / credits as sale movements.

As stated above, the charge per zero movement titles will be £5.00 a quarter. This charge will be invoiced and deducted from the Publisher’s sales revenue in the same way that other service charges levied by Central Books are deducted. This charge may change on an annual basis. The increase in the rate for zero movement titles will go up by no more than +2% above inflation (RPI).

The sales category of a book is dynamic and is updated every working day. If a book sold 1 copy on 15th March 2025 it will not be classed as a Non-Selling title for the next 90 days. If there are no more trade sales, gratis despatches or consignment despatches until 13th June 2025 it will become a Non-Selling title on that date 90 days later. Publishers can see which titles are listed as non-seller / sales category Q in thier monthly sales reports. See Question and Answer 3 below for more details.

Exactly what counts as a movement that affects the sales category:

1. An ordinary trade sale or Central Books selling to an individual.
2. A gratis despatch to an address the publisher or client asks Central Books to despatch to.
3. A consignment supply if Central Books manage consignment sales for your publications (usually Amazon but it can be other accounts). Note the activity that affects the sales category is the consignment supply not the consignment sales.

(Please note that pulping does NOT affect the sales category)

We will make the charge near the end of each quarter, of the quarterly months July, October, January and April.

The charges for pulping and despatching are available for client publishers on the Distributors’ knowledge base at https://www.centralbooks.com/knowledge-base.html.

Click the links for details and charges for pulping, gratis despatching or storage or knowledge base at https://www.centralbooks.com/knowledge-base.html.  

Common Questions and Answers

Question 1

If a publisher removes all their Non Selling Titles from stock will that be the end of Non Selling Title Charges.

Answer 1

Removing all the Non Selling Titles will have a big impact on reducing  Non Selling Title Charges. but a title that sells 1 copy every three months currently might become a Non Selling Title in future.  Please send rrequest asking us to send out titles to frees@centralbooks,.com.

Question 2

I am paying for non sellers do I have to pay storage. I am a publisher who has 4000 units in stock and has sold 3000 units in the last 36 months so I have 1000 excess stockl. If I am paying for non selling titles do I aslso pay for excess stock.

Answer 2

Yes these are two seperate charges. There is a cost of holding a title and making it available that we can not cover if no one orders the title in a quarter. There is also a charge for holding more that what we sell on a publishers behalf in a 36 months perdiod.  See https://www.centralbooks.com/knowledge-base/book-publishers-information/storage.html .   A publisher might sell 3000 units in 36 months but have only 2000 units in stock. There would be no excess stock so no excess storage charge. The same publisher might have 10 books that never sell so they would pay for Non Sellers.  A different publisher may encurr both non selling and excess stock charges, whilst another publisher might  just encurr excesss stock charges as none of their titles are non sellers they just have a lot of stock.

Question 3

How can a publisher know which of their titles are non sellers. 

Answer 3

Open monthly report “booksales” in the csv format  Every publisher gets sent a number of reports each month. These include a book sales report that can be opened as a spreadsheet that reports on each titles activity in the month the report have names like  CENTRRbooksales31032025.csv.  If a publisher opens this report in Excel and follows these instruction they will be able to isolate the relevant Non Sellers  that are in stock. 

1. Open your NNNNN31032025booksales.csv file in excel
2. Use the Freeze function in View to be able to keep the first few columns on the left visible
3. Apply a filter to the sheet
4. In the column Report (column N) Filter by STK titles only in the Column  Product Category (column AU)  Filter by Q. 
5. Now you should only be seeing your non seller titles.

Question 4

I am a publisher with 4 titles that are non-sellers , I have 10 of each of these titles in stock. Will I pay 4 x £5 = £20 a quarter or will I pay 40 x £5 = £200 a quater?

Answer 4

We charge this Non-Selling charge per title not per unity. So we would charge 4 x £5 = £20 for these non-sellers. 

Question 5

If I send a copies of a new title to Central Books will it be charged if it does not sell. 

Answer 5

It is very rare that once a book is published that it does not sell a copy in its first 90 days. A single copy sale every 90 days would prevent it from being classed as a non-seller . We also give grace on a new title for a month, so there will be no charge for a title until it is over a month old.

Question 6

What can a publisher do with a non-selling titlesto avoid paying a forthcoming charge. 

Answer 6

If a book sells a single copy or a single copy is sent  out as a gratis despatch  for the next 90 days the book will not be classified as a Non-Seller. However  if in the following 90 days there is no activity the book will become a non-seller 91 days after the single copy activity. If  a publisher asks Central Books to send all the stock somewhere else or asks Central Books to pulp all the copies of the title there will be no stock and therefore no non-seller charge. Please send rrequest asking us to send out titles and/or for pulpng to frees@centralbooks,.com.

Question 7

When should a publisher act to avoid July's charges.  

Answer 7

Central Books will normally charge for Non-Sellers in the full last week of July, October, January and April. For example sending pupling instructions for all the stock of a relevant title to frees@ before the 18th July should mean that title avoids the charge in July.

Question 8

If a title has been in stock as a Non-Seller for most of the time leading up the charge date will it be charged as a Non-Seller?

Answer 8

Only books categorised as non-sellers on the day we run the report, as near as possible to the charging date will be charged. If a book was a Non-Seller from February 1st to April 24th but the last copy is sold, pulped or sent somewhere on the 25th,  then a report run on April 26th will not list the book for charging. 

Question 9

I have been charged for No-Selling titles , how do I know which books I have been charged for. 

Answer 9

We will use the ISBN13 of the book we are charged for as invoice line "customer reference" for each charge line.

There are titles for whcih there is no ISBN13 in these cases we use our bookcode if you  need a list of  your  publications and their book codes please get in touch.

We recommned that you look at the question 3  "How can a publisher know which of their titles are non sellers" above as well as this answer. 

Question 10

I have been charged for Non-Selling titles , do I have to pay the invoice serperately or how will it be deducted?

Answer 10

If a publisher wishes to send payment for the charge that fine with us but the normal process would be for us to deduct the charge from the next payment for sales. We would reference the charge in the email we send explaining the payment.

Question 11

One of my books has a negative sale in the last 90 days. Will this book be charged as a Non-Selling title.

Answer 11

If there are no other activities except the return in the 90 day period the title will be charged as a Non-Seller. When we calculate sales categories, we are looking at what has been invoiced, supplied as gratis copies, or supplied to a consignment account. We are not taking into account returns. Example 11a, if we supply only account one copy of the book in a 90 day period and a different shop returns one copy the net sale in the last 90 days will be zero but the "sales movements" will be 1 and the book will have a sales category P not Q.  Example 11b If we have supplied the book to anyone in the90 day period but an account has returned a copy in the 90 day period, the "sales movements" are zero, the net sale in the 90 days period is minus 1.  It is the sales movements" being zero that makes the book Q and therefore Non-Selling. Example 11c we have supplied 3 copies of the book to shops in the 90 day period but we have had 5 copies returned in the same period. The net sales for the 90 day period are minus 2 but the books has had a "sales movement" as we supplied 3 copies so it will not be a Non-Seller in the 90 day period.