AI's [Advance Information Sheets] are critical selling tools for book representatives and targeted mailings. To work well and compete with other AI's all trying to get buyers attention they need to be;
Concise, simple and presented on A4 paper
Produced at least 4 months ahead of publication
Be accompanied by a cover cover rough
Include all relevant bibliographic details; Title, Author(s), Editor, Price, Publisher, No. of pages, Subject Areas covered and Publication Date
The book trade works in advance, not arrears. So you need to get details of the book you are publishing into the trade, well BEFORE publication of the book. Most sales reps work 3 months or more in advance of publication date - so when they visit a shop in March, they are showing titles due to be published in June or later.
An Advance Information sheet must be no longer than one side of A4, and should include all bibliographic data, plus clear, concise blurb about the title, and a little information about the author (eg if the author is an academic, say where they lecture and list any other books by her/him). You should always include a book jacket for the reps to show buyers, even if the cover you present to the reps is not the same as the one that eventually appears on the book.
Sales reps have very little time to convince a buyer to take a title, so they rely on high quality materials to sell the book. It is worth remembering that sometimes the rep will not be able to see a particular buyer for a subject area and will have to leave sales materials in the shop, for the buyer to read at a later date. Booksellers have very little time and small budgets - they will want to know why they should buy your title instead of someone else's. If your Advance Information sheet (A I ) is long-winded and there is no accompanying jacket, they will choose to spend their meagre budget instead on the title with a snappy, concise AI outlining key sales points and eye-catching jacket. We have produced a template for AI's in word format which can be downloaded by clicking here.
Getting the bibliograhic data for your titles on to, Central Books', Bowker's and Neilsen BookData's lists is probably the most important thing you can do to sell your book. You WILL lose orders if your titles are not logged on to any of these databses well before publication. Waterstone's branches will not order any title which they cannot find on BookData which means the sale is lost. You should now log titles on to these data bases at least 6 months in advance of publication - this will ensure that your details are on the system by the time the reps get into the shops. For more information on what Central Books, Bowker and Neilsen BookData need how to know about your titles click here.