FAQs

Grants are available to authors but applications can only be submitted through a publisher. For further information, please see our Publishing Grants  and our Information for Authors pages.

You will need to find a publisher, but any author is welcome to contact the Grants Department for advice on this – including publisher recommendations and suggestions on how to present your work to publishers.

We can’t provide you with that information as our Distribution Centre’s contracts with individual publishers don’t allow us to disclose any sales information to a third party. However, if you contact your publisher, they should be able to help. 

Your contract with your publisher should stipulate the amounts due and the payment schedule as agreed by both parties. In the case of non-payment, you should immediately contact your publisher. The Books Council of Wales can intervene on your behalf, in the case of grant-aided books, but only when you have failed to get any satisfactory answers from your publisher.

The Books Council is very keen to hear from anyone who wants to become a publisher, and advice is available from several Departments. What we want to hear are ideas for publishing a strong programme featuring the work of other authors, and not solely or primarily your own work. That’s it – no need for a large press or loads of storage space; you can get started with just an idea and an interest in publishing.

Please start by contacting the Publishing Development Department by clicking on the ‘Contact’ link above, and they can help direct you to other Departments as required.

Please contact the Manager of our Distribution Centre distribution.centre@books.wales and/or the Corporate Department on sales@books.wales. They’ll be able to outline the services the Books Council can offer bookshops in Wales.

All you need to do is email the Secretary of the Friends castellbrychan@books.wales and they’ll send you the details. Membership is £15 a year or £125 for 10 years. Further information about the Friends is available here.  

Your local bookshop can order any available title on your behalf from our Distribution Centre. If this is not practicable, go to the Books Council of Wales’s www.gwales.com website which offers a quick and efficient service. We do our best to offer a next working day delivery service for all books in stock.

Your local bookshop can order any available title on your behalf from our Distribution Centre. If this is not practicable, go to the Books Council of Wales’s www.gwales.com website which offers a quick and efficient service, and also allows you to select a locla bookshop in Wales to receive commission on your purchase. We do our best to offer a next working day delivery service for all books in stock.

Please contact our Department of Children’s Books and Reading Promotion by emailing wbc.children@books.wales. The Department has a number of specialist officers who are knowledgeable in the field.

If you are Welsh or based in Wales, or if your book is of Welsh interest, we can consider handling your book through our Distribution Centre. Please contact our Sales and Marketing Department, ideally at least three months before publication, with as much bibliographical information as possible, including the ISBN and a JPEG of the cover. The Books Council of Wales operates as a distributor only, and it is the responsibility of the author / publisher to promote and market the book.

Terms and conditions for distributing are 55% of the retail price of every copy on a full sale or return basis, with an initial stock of 30 copies; invoices will be paid after 12 months only. If you accept these terms, please contact our Sales & Information Department by emailing sales@books.wales. The Department will then decide whether the Books Council of Wales will stock your book. Should a decision be made not to stock your book, it can still be listed on the www.gwales.com website as available from the publisher only.

Our Information Services Department can still offer your book a free listing on our www.gwales.com website, and will add contact details of your choosing to the description. Any orders would then come to you.

The Books Council has a team of schools officers who are available for school visits to display the latest materials and to offer advice. Please contact our Sales & Information Department by emailing sales@books.wales.

World Book Day is held annually on the first Thursday in March.

Unless the date falls on a weekend, it is held on 11 October, T. Llew Jones’s birthday.

Schools can make direct online purchases but it does mean they pay the full price and postage costs. Schools should contact their local bookshop to discuss possible discounts, or the Books Council’s Sales & Information Department sales@books.wales.

If your book is stocked by the Books Council’s Distribution Centre, your publisher will need to discuss with our Sales and Information Department to see whether any of our generic marketing campaigns are relevant for your book . The Council’s Sales Team will carry a sample of the book and encourage booksellers with accounts at the Distribution Centre to order copies. It is the publisher’s responsibility, however, to market and promote your title through the media, distribute review copies and undertake any advertising and to produce any promotional material.

As the publisher of the book, the above is relevant to you if the BCW Distribution Centre stock your title.

The Books Council of Wales does not offer editing and proofreading services to individual authors. However, our Editorial Department does offer this service to publishers who are based in Wales. You may therefore wish to consider offering your book to one or more of the publishers listed on the Welsh Book Trade Info website, who would then arrange the editing and proofreading service on your behalf, should your book be accepted for publishing. Also included on the website is a list of freelance editors who work in Wales, together with details of their relevant experience. If you decide to go ahead with self-publishing, this could be a useful reference point for finding someone to edit and proofread your work.

We don’t provide this service but authors can contact publishers directly. For a directory of publishers, please visit the Welsh Book Trade Info website.