Delivery Charge

Please note we have delayed the change to our handling fee for small orders from trade customers. We are listening to comments made by retailers, sales reps and publishers. 

We had planned to make the change 1st May 2025. We still expect to make a change to start in June 2025. After hearing from retailers, publishers, and sales representatives we have decided to drop the £150 minimum to £100. We will update this page before any change is made.

We will charge £6.00 for orders that are for less than the £100.00  minimum retail value (the value of the goods supplied before any discount is applied).

If you wish us to consolidate supplies to avoid this charge, please contact orders@centralbooks.com. We will try our best to consolidate orders so that retailers avoid these charges.

This revised delivery charge applies to trade customers based in the UK and those overseas customers that ask us to supply their books to a UK based shipper or consolidator.

Accounts based outside of the UK where Central Books deliver direct to the account are charged postage already and this delivery charge does not apply.

When calculating the value of the order we will take into account orders that we are able to record where the title is not currently available. However, we will not count publications that are not available at the time of ordering where we are not asked to record an order.

Magazine Customers

For magazine customers this charge does not currently apply to standing order releases. If you wish us to give a top up or restock orders, please contact your usual magazine contact at Central Books We will then add them to the next despatch of your magazine standing orders. Please note we are looking at system changes that will enable us to better merge book and magazine deliveries to customers that take both books and magazines from us. Once this system change is in place we may update how delivery charges for small standing orders release work. We will inform magazine customers when we make these changes.

A standing order for a magazine is where a shop has agreed to take a fixed number of each new issue of a magazine.

Questions and Answers

Question 1

What happens if a shop places an order for 10 books each with a list price before discount of £12.00, so the retail value if £120.00 but 2 of these books are not available. The retail value of the immediately invoiced books is £96.00 .

Answer 1

Provided the shop is happy for Central Books to record the order for later supply and the recorded books are due to be available in the future then when those books are released there will be no delivery charge. The total order of what will be supplied over time is over £100 retail value so no delivery charge.

Question 2

What happens if a shop places an order for 2 books each with a list price before discount of £10.00, so the retail value is £20.00 but 1 of these books is not available. The retail value of the immediately invoiced books is £10.00.

Answer 2

When the first invoice is raised for 1 of the books ordered the delivery charge is incurred but there will be no additional delivery charge when the recorded order is later released.