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FAQ: How to Get Us to Sell Your Book, etc

Dear Author, Publicist, or Program Presenter,
Thank you for your interest in sharing your work with Charis. We are committed to supporting local independent authors and would not be the space that we are without you! While we make an effort to evaluate every book submitted to us for consideration, please understand that we receive a substantial volume of requests every day and may not be able to personally respond to every one of them. We are proud to be a small, mission-driven feminist bookstore that carefully curates our shelves. Each book must fit our store's mission and speak to the interests of the people we serve. Together with our non-profit programming partner Charis Circle, Charis Books exists to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. Knowing our store and the kinds of events we promote is the most important prerequisite to requesting the stocking of your book (it also helps to be a customer and program attendee!).  A friendly word of advice, Amazon.com is not an independent distributor, they are our competition, and we will frown at you if you suggest we can just "buy your book on Amazon." Please read everything below...

The basics of getting your book on the shelves at Charis:

  • The content should be a good fit for our feminist bookstore.

  • The book should be professionally edited, proofed, formatted, designed, and should already be published.

  • It should be priced reasonably and comparably to other similar titles and should have the title and author’s name on the spine and a registered ISBN on the back.

  • The book should not advertise Amazon or other competitors on the cover or within the pages of the book.

If the book is a self-published or a self-promoted small press title that fits our above criteria and you are local to Atlanta, we can carry your book on consignment. For local authors we offer a standard 60/40 consignment agreement where the author sets the price of the book and gets 60% of the sale and we keep 40% of the sale and pay the sales tax on the book. We sign a contract either for 90 days (renewable) or on a per event basis and we pay you for sold books within approximately 30 days of the end of the consignment period. We don't do consignment through the mail.

If your book is otherwise distributed by Ingram (regular discount and returnable) or the publisher with standard bookstore terms please let us know.

When we do stock your book, we request that you list our store name, website, and social media on your author’s website and social media pages and encourage your friends and fans to purchase your book from us.

If after considering the points above, you would like us to consider stocking your books, please fill out this form. Please do not drop off or mail a copy of the book.

Please email us at info@charisbooksandmore.com if you have other questions.

The basics of booking either an author or community event at Charis:
Together with Charis Books and More, Charis Circle, our non-profit, hosts over 270 public events a year organized around the mission of fostering sustainable feminist communities, working for social justice, and encouraging the expression of diverse and marginalized voices.  

In service of our mission we host a mix of literary, social justice, and popular education events designed to educate, inspire, and connect people of all ages and experiences. We encourage you to explore the kinds of events we host by checking out our events on Facebook.com/CharisBooks and on our websites (www.charisbooksandmore.com and www.chariscircle.org). We prioritize events organized by people whose stories and experiences are not traditionally valued or prioritized in mainstream literary and cultural spaces.  

  • If you are an author who would like to book an author reading/signing/book-talk, the first step is to make sure that we are carrying your book in the store by following the steps above and filling out the online form telling us about your book. Indicate on the form that you are interested in a reading/signing and answer the questions within the form about your desired event and we will follow up if it is a good fit for Charis Circle.

  • You don't have to be a published author or have a degree to share your knowledge at Charis. If you are not an author, please send us a short proposal via email (info@chariscircle.org) with an idea of what you would like to do. Keep in mind that all of our events tend to run no more than 2 hours so your idea needs to be manageable for that time frame or work as a multi-part series. We are especially excited to work with activists, organizers, teachers, and artists who want to bring their skills to a larger audience. We prioritize events organized by people whose stories and experiences are not traditionally valued or prioritized in mainstream literary and cultural spaces.  Don't hesitate to pitch the seed of an idea and we will help you shape it if it fits our mission and calendar. Because we are a 501c3 organization we cannot host fundraisers or informational parties for candidates running for political office. 

  • Please include in your correspondence the answers to the following questions: Who is the primary audience for the event? Why are you the one to present the information you would like to share? What will you do to ensure the event is a success? What methods will you use to promote the event? Please be specific. At what other stores, libraries, or institutions in our region are you planning to have similar events? How would a Charis event be different? Do you need A/V? 

  • Please note that we usually book events at least three months out, though we are on occasion able to make exceptions for travelling writers and artists. Please do not call the store for program requests.


All of the above are guidelines so that we can more easily make decisions about programming for our communities but if any of these requirements is confusing or represents a serious impediment to your sharing your brilliance with our community, reach out directly to our Executive Director, E.R. Anderson at eranderson@chariscircle.org and we will work with you to make the process as accessible as possible.

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