Most self-publishing authors focus on Amazon optimization and placement for book sales, but DartFrog provides an entry point for those who believe the indie bookstore customer is their ideal reader
While it’s fairly straightforward for any indie author to make their print books available for bookstores to order (typically via IngramSpark), just having a book listed in the Ingram system doesn’t land it on bookstore shelves. That part requires a marketing campaign, market demand, and often direct outreach to booksellers. For authors without prior experience in the industry, it’s a significant challenge—and offers far less satisfaction and immediacy when compared to online retail, which can be closely monitored and tracked, so you understand what drives sales. (Not to mention that online sales constitute more than 50 percent of overall US book sales today.)
However, for literary authors especially, the bookstore market can be a meaningful part of long-term marketing plans and word-of-mouth sales. Enter DartFrog, founded by author and small publisher Gordon McClellan in 2016. As a self-publishing author, he found that his approaches to bookstores for placement were futile. He thought that becoming a small press—and publishing others’ titles—would change bookstore response, but it didn’t. That’s when he realized, he says, “The real issue was vetting. The rise of self-publishing tools had created a flood of new authors, none of them vetted, but all of them wanting to be in stores. The same was true for the many small publishers that also began to appear. … There was a need for a company that would vet self-published books (as well as books from small traditional publishers), and distribute the best to bookstores. A curator, essentially, of independently published books.”
Here’s how the program, called Direct to Shelf, works: accepted authors pay a fee of $475 for face-front placement in 20 independent bookstores; their book appears in a specially marked section for DartFrog titles for a three-month period. (Only 15 titles can be on display in these sections at any one time.) Submitting a book for consideration costs nothing; however, there is an option to pay $575 up front and receive a detailed evaluation of your book, plus a chance to resubmit if your book isn’t selected the first time.
DartFrog reaches out to indie bookstores through conferences (such as BookExpo and Winter Institute). In mid-2017, they had zero bookstores in their network. Right now, they have 56 stores and are eager to add more. Participating bookstores receive a guaranteed quarterly stipend of $100 and keep 100 percent of the revenue from the first copy of each book sold. Bookstores are then required to re-order from Ingram to replenish copies sold during that three-month stint. McClellan says, “If a store sees that a title has sold several copies in the first three months, they will most likely want to keep that book in stock (and in a prominent place in the store) after the three-month placement.” So … does it work?
“Some of the books we have placed in stores have sold hundreds of copies. Others haven’t sold at all,” McClellan says. “A lot depends on the marketing behind the book. What we’ve found is that just placing a book into a store isn’t always going to result in automatic sales. Sometimes it does, but marketing matters a lot. … Being featured face-front in a specially marked section of bookstores brings attention to a book that it would not otherwise have, for sure. But book selling isn’t as easy as placing books in stores.”
DartFrog also offers marketing campaigns, both for those participating in DTS and as a standalone service. Through a partnership with Deliver Your Audience (DYA)—a data company used by even Big Five publishers that specializes in audience targeting—DartFrog can help an author run an effective campaign even when their social media presence is modest or nonexistent. McClellan says, “We have a form that asks the author some questions about target audience, goals, etc. We also schedule a call with the author to discuss specifics, offer insights as to how to tweak the target audience (if necessary). Then DYA pulls data from its own servers (they own 400+ million mobile IDs, 400+ million email addresses, all first-party opt-in) that matches the target audience. … Ads are loaded to all platforms that are deemed relevant to any particular campaign (not just Facebook, in other words). If an author has an existing platform, we can maximize the campaign to get more engagement and opt-in data than if an author has no platform.”
As an example, he said DartFrog is now running a campaign for an author who has 4,000 followers on Facebook. To date, nearly 600 people have opted in for more information from that author. DartFrog will deliver that data, along with the names of known micro-influencers, to the author for use in the future. In other words, authors receive actual names and contact information for people who have specifically asked for more information from the author, and the data is theirs to keep.
We asked Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware for her take on DartFrog. She said, “DartFrog is expensive. There’s a $475 fee for authors who get chosen for the program … and authors must supply 20 books at their own expense. … On the plus side, DartFrog looks considerably more professional than others of its type that I’ve seen, and authors don’t have to pay anything to submit their books to the bookstore placement program. And it does seem to have had success building relationships with bookstores, although the books are segregated in a DartFrog section or display. So I guess it’s a cost-benefit analysis that individual authors need to make on a case-by-case basis. Bottom line: authors can drop big bucks on DartFrog, but at least they don’t have to worry about getting scammed.”
The two DartFrog services mentioned so far—Direct to Shelf and marketing campaigns using Deliver Your Audience—are just one part of the overall business model at DartFrog. We haven’t mentioned other efforts—a hybrid publishing arm, self-publishing services, and related à la carte services—because we assume many of our readers already know how to professionally self-publish and mainly seek potential marketing, distribution, and sales advantages. Fortunately, authors do not need to use or pay for DartFrog’s publishing services to be eligible for distribution and marketing. We hope that doesn’t change.
Bottom line: DartFrog’s DTS exercises a rather different set of marketing muscles: not the fast-twitch algorithms of Amazon but the slower discoverability through brick-and-mortar retail. What we find exciting about these services is that they help indie authors and small presses build relationships with aspects of the trade they might otherwise have a difficult time accessing—while vetting and curating to put the best face forward. Also, we’re particularly heartened that an audience-targeting company normally used by the Big Five can be made accessible to indies.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
