Consignment Program

BookPeople of Moscow is pleased to support local authors and artists by offering a consignment program for authors and artists. Please carefully review the guidelines listed below to be sure you qualify, before submitting your application.

Please do not call or try to talk in person with staff in regard to consignment issues as we are busy helping bookstore customers; an email to bookpeople1973 at gmail.com, to the attention of our consignment coordinator, is the ONLY way to reach us about all consignment matters. Thank you!

Consignment Requirements

  • BookPeople of Moscow pays authors/artists 60% of the retail price that the author/artist assigns to their items for consignment items sold. BookPeople retains 40% as sales commission. This is standard in the book industry.

  • Authors/artists participating in our consignment program must live full time within 60 miles radius of Moscow and Pullman. This includes Lewiston and Clarkston, the small communities in the quad-city region such as Uniontown, Palouse, Troy, Genesee, on so on. It excludes Spokane and Boise. If you do not live within this 60 mile radius, we're happy to make a suggestion to you about where your book or work might be consigned at a store more local to you.

  • BookPeople of Moscow is proud to carry consignment books as part of our overall inventory. As such, we hold consignment books to the same high standards as the rest of our book inventory. All consignment books must be professionally bound with legible titles on the spines (particularly thin books are exempt). They must also be accurately proofread and free of typographical errors. The book must have an official 13-digit ISBN number and scannable bar code on the back cover, and the retail price must be already marked on the book. If it is not printed on the book, the copies you provide to us must have price stickers already affixed to the back cover. We do not otherwise review or read your book, unless one of the staff is interested in it.

  • Accepting books and other items on consignment allows us to carry and feature a wider variety of books and gifts, including independently published and print-on-demand titles. Books must meet the requirements described above in the guidelines. Books as well as non-book items such as jewelry or greeting cards must be evaluated and approved by BookPeople's managerial staff before being accepted for consignment.

  • For non-book items: 1) please deliver a sample to the store with your full contact information included (email and phone), to the attention of "consignment coordinator." 2) Please fill out the consignment form and submit it to us online. Please submit one agreement per title or per type of artistic work (book, card, tea towel, etc). Please fill in blanks as required; we will contact you if additional information is needed. No need to print out this form to submit it. 3) We will respond within 30 days in most cases but occasionally there are delays. We will discuss how to display your items and how many you should provide for sale and how they will be priced. Please be reasonable and patient, consignment is very labor intensive. Please don't expect us to be able to have time to respond between Halloween and Christmas.

  • For books: 1) please deliver two or three copies only to the store with your full contact information included (email and phone) on a separate piece of paper, to the attention of "consignment coordinator." Be sure the books have the priced marked on them and are ready to sell. 2) Please fill out the consignment form and submit it to us online. Please submit one agreement per title. Please fill in blanks as required; we will contact you if additional information is needed. No need to print out this form to submit it. 3) We will respond within 30 days in most cases but occasionally there are delays. Please be reasonable and patient, consignment is very labor intensive. Please don't expect us to be able to have time to respond between Halloween and Christmas.

  • Consignment Form Link: The link to this form is here. You may wish to make a copy for yourself before you submit it, but please do not worry about providing us with a printed copy.

  • Authors who participate in our consignment program who have a website, MUST provide a link to BookPeople of Moscow's website that appears first, BEFORE any link to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. No consignment book will be shelved for display in the store until this link appears on the author's website. Authors who have a Facebook page are also required to "like" BookPeople of Moscow's page, and we will reciprocate.

  • It is your responsibility to market the book or artwork and spread the word that it is available at our store; we provide shelf space for it. Letting your friends and family know where to find your items for sale is a big part of creating a successful consignment.

  • BookPeople of Moscow agrees to stock books and other items on consignment (when accepted) for a 3-month period at minimum. The consignment period can end anytime after that at our discretion, or be prolonged at our discretion. Number of copies or items sold is one factor we will take into account, but definitely not the only one. If we decide to end the consignment agreement for any reason, we will email you, upon which you will have 30 days to pick up your remaining stock and final payment if any. Unclaimed items will be donated to a charity after 30 days.

  • We run sales reports for consignment items sold on a monthly basis. Every quarter of the year, BookPeople of Moscow will send any payment accrued from sales to an address that the consigner provides. Payment will be in the form of a check. If a quarterly payment is less than $50, we reserve the right to provide consignment payment in the form of a gift card to BookPeople of Moscow instead of a paper check.

  • BookPeople of Moscow will only pay for items that were successfully sold. Damaged or stolen items are the sole financial responsibility of the consigner.

  • We are great at selling books, but we don't know much about actually publishing them. Therefore we don't review manuscripts or offer advice on publishing manuscripts. If you're looking for information on writing a book, check out our great selection of books on writing, and for information on publishing we recommend The Writer's Market. For self-publishing, the program at Ingram Spark has much to recommend it, over CreateSpace, Lulu, or other options.

  • Whether or not your book appears for sale on our store website depends entirely on whether or not your book is listed in a books in print database such as Bowker and has an official 13-digit ISBN number. We are not able to list your book on a database for you; that is your responsibility. You can test to see if the book shows up on our website by searching for it by ISBN.