For Authors

Congratulations on your new book! Thank you for thinking of The Whispering Shelf as a place to sell it. Please keep in mind that we evaluate tens of thousands of new books every year and field hundreds of event requests. 

Here are the guidelines we use when evaluating all books:

Stocking Requirements

• Are you local? 

• Do you shop at The Whispering Shelf? 

• Have you ever visited the store? 

• Are you familiar with the types of books we carry?

• Your book’s content must be pertinent to our community and be an item our customers would be interested in purchasing.

• It must be newly published; ideally we learn about it 2-4 months before publication.

• It must be packaged properly. We look at price, writing & editing quality, cover design, binding, and the general quality of packaging. No spiral binding or blank spines.

Purchasing Terms

• If your book’s publisher or distributor is someone we do not regularly work with, we are unlikely to carry your book. We have accounts with the following publishers & distributors:

  • Blackstone

  • Chronicle

  • Consortium 

  • Hachette Book Group

  • HarperCollins 

  • Hopkins Fulfillment Services

  • Independent Publisher’s Group

  • Macmillan

  • Microcosm

  • Penguin Random House

  • Scholastic

  • Simon & Schuster

  • Sourcebooks

• If the book is available at Ingram Book Co, it must be offered at Regular Discount, Returnable, and In-Stock at the IN or TN warehouses with reasonable inventory on hand.

• We do not offer consignment.

• We do not stock or hold events for books published through Amazon or any of their publishing units, including CreateSpace. We highly recommend IngramSpark, an Indie-friendly alternative to CreateSpace and other predatory book "publishers."

If you feel your book fits these requirements:

• Send an email to hello@thewhisperingshelf.com. 

• Include in the email either a link to or attachments with information on the book, author, ISBN, and publisher. 

• It’s important we receive the request via email and can evaluate the request on our own schedule. 

Thanks for understanding that we do not have the bandwidth to evaluate books via phone calls or drop-in visits. Unsolicited samples that are dropped off or mailed to us will be recycled.

Events 

• Send an email to hello@thewhisperingshelf.com. 

• Please note that our calendar is booked at least 2 months in advance, and it is unusual for us to host an event for a book that was published more than six months prior to the event date.

Thank you for accommodating these guidelines! Due to the volume of requests, we find it necessary to be upfront about all potential sticking points.