CartCaravan for Booksellers
The Caravan Project can help you:
- Expand book sales to a wider audience looking for alternatives to hardbacks and paperbacks
- Increase your ability to offer a larger inventory in a wider variety without adding an inch more of shelving
- Interact more efficiently with your distribution outlets
- Eliminate unsold inventory and the hassle of returns by more closely matching supply with demand
- Continue to nurture the unique, personal relationships readers value in an increasingly faceless marketplace of exchange
Selling a Caravan Book Is Easy!
When you sell a Caravan book to a customer, this site becomes your order interface. We’ve made the process intuitive and easy.
- Log into Caravan using your Caravan UserID and Password
- Help the customer select the appropriate book and format
- Add the selection to your Cart
- Checkout by supplying the customer’s fulfillment information
- Print out the invoice/order form
- The customer takes this form to the register to pay
If the customer has purchased a download product, the invoice includes the download authorization code. The customer will receive an email with a link to the Caravan Download Center. Please alert your customer that the mail from Caravan may arrive in their Junk or Bulk mail folders. If that happens, the customer should mark the mail "Not Junk". All future mail from Caravan will arrive in their In Box. The customer can access the download center to retrieve purchases at his or her leisure.
If the customer has purchased a tangible item that must be shipped, the Ingram Book Group produces the item using audio-burn or print-on-demand technology and ships the product to the customer.
You, the bookseller, get to do what you do best: help the customer find the reading material they want. (And ring up the purchase!)
It really is that easy.
Brick-and-Mortar Bookselling
The ambiance and personal qualities of the corner bookshop are a cherished tradition in our culture. Booksellers have coped with the evolving marketplace since time immemorial, and now they want to serve the needs of their media-savvy customers who prefer to read books in alternative formats.
From the smallest store to the national chains, the digital revolution has to be recognized. Committed though they all may be to the value of providing serious non-fiction, booksellers can’t overlook their customers’ preferences and power of choice.
Caravan Believes in the Valuable Role of Bookshops
From the beginning, one of Caravan’s prime goals was to keep brick-and-mortar booksellers in the business of selling alternative print and digital formats to readers. Of course there will always be readers who turn to online sources, but these outlets will never satisfy the needs of all readers. A bookstore experience is very different from an online experience!
We believe a bookstore is the logical place for customers to look for books regardless of format. So many bookstores, seeing the need for and value of their roles in the community, have already gone beyond basic merchandizing and given over space to community learning, social gathering and artistic expression. We want to help nourish that trend.
Peter Osnos, the visionary behind The Caravan Project, often talks about what has happened in similar industries as they’ve confronted the digital age. Record stores are going out of business at an alarming rate as listeners turn to buying and downloading their music online. Movie theaters and video rental stores are in decline with the advent of businesses such as NetFlix and video downloads. Perhaps these events were avoidable. It is our hope bookstores have the opportunity to remain vital and viable by jumping on the digital content bandwagon.
We believe we can make this happen! And along the way, we’ve garnered some impressive media attention. We’ve also received the full endorsement of the American Booksellers Association.
How Caravan Helps Booksellers
In essence, Caravan is giving you, free of charge, a way to sell the book formats that will help support your viability in the digital age.
The Caravan Project works closely with publishers to help them convert traditional formats into digital and large print formats. We have the dedicated support of the Ingram Book Group, Ingram Digital Group and Lightning Source, Inc,. for fulfillment, content management, digital delivery and print-on-demand services.
For smaller booksellers who remain more traditional in their selling methods, we provide extensive support, visibility and marketing materials about the benefits of the project. In our demonstration phase, we will work closely with booksellers, Ingram and BookSense.com to refine our working model for bookstores to sell digital content and connect with Ingram as our reliable fulfillment resource.
All the materials and information you need to help your customers get the book they want, when they want it, in the format they prefer, are collected in one place – this site – and made available through one fulfillment resource.
It couldn’t be simpler.
What Caravan Makes It Possible for You to Sell
The publishers currently participating in The Caravan Project represent a prestigious group of trade and university presses that publish quality non-fiction for serious readers. This is a market many media and digital content providers ignore.
These publishers have selected a unique collection of books for the demonstration phase of Caravan and produced them, at minimal cost, in a variety of popular alternative reading formats. The majority of these are simple downloads.
E-book Formats
All e-book formats allow you to sell the entire book or chapters from the book. The ability to offer “granular” access to books will be of interest to students, travelers and others who want only part of a book. A by-chapter offering can be a valuable way to recommend a book without requiring the reader to purchase it immediately in its entirety.
- Adobe PDF Download
- Microsoft Reader Download
- eReader (formerly Palm) Download
Audio Formats
- Audio Download
- Audio SD Chip (shipping required)
- Audio CD (shipping required)
Print Format
- Large Print Paperback (shipping required)
To help you better understand your customers’ digital book needs, we have provided an explanation of these formats and their associated hardware.
Selling a Caravan Book Is Easy!
When you sell a Caravan book to a customer, this site becomes your order interface. We’ve made the process intuitive and easy.
- Log into Caravan using your Caravan UserID and Password
- Help the customer select the appropriate book and format
- Add the selection to your Cart
- Checkout by supplying the customer’s fulfillment information
- Print out the invoice/order form
- The customer takes this form to the register to pay
If the customer has purchased a download product, the invoice includes the download authorization code. The customer can then perform the download at his or her leisure.
If the customer has purchased a tangible item that must be shipped, the Ingram Book Group produces the item using audio-burn or print-or-demand technology and ships the product to the customer.
You, the bookseller, get to do what you do best: help the customer find the reading material they want. (And ring up the purchase!)
It really is that easy.
Would you like to join The Caravan Project?We encourage you to read more about Caravan here:
Then contact us using the form below. We would be more than happy to discuss the possibilities with you.