ISBN - 13 Information

July - September, 2008

Summer has officially arrived as the temperature continues to rise with every passing week. At the same time, the heat is on to get orders placed and books into the schools before school opening dates. Tennessee Book Company is here to take some of the heat off of you, so please be aware of the following tips to ensure your books arrive prior to the students arriving at school.

Summer is a hectic time for all involved in the textbook distribution business, whether it is the publisher, publisher representatives, teachers’ training consultants, textbook directors or the depository. We all play an important and time-sensitive role in the education process and we want to assist in any of these processes the best way possible.

As I have mentioned in previous letters, it is vital that we know exactly what your needs are, especially when it involves special listing textbooks. These special listing textbooks include anything from off-list (non-contracted) textbooks, workbook materials, and other special testing or ancillary materials that are typically not purchased as the core basal item. These items are stocked in our warehouse, but at minimal quantities, as we anticipate the material to be included in the gratis materials being supplied by your local representatives.

Gratis materials and teacher training are not automatically sent or scheduled by the publishers. Part of your responsibility is to coordinate all teacher training through your local representative. Every Friday, we email each individual representative a listing of the details of all orders placed textbooks. This listing is our way of notifying the representative a sale is about to occur and there may be a request for gratis material in the near future. To ensure proper follow-through with the gratis material, I would recommend sending the representative an email with more specific details of individual items and delivery requests.

The delivery of the material is very important to the process and can create headaches if not properly addressed. The material being delivered is very heavy and being delivered by “common” carriers who are setup to deliver large, bulky materials, shrink wrapped on skids. The one assumption that is made by both TBC and the carriers is that the customer receiving the materials will be equipped to unload the products. If this assumption is not true, you must take the time to put very specific notes on all orders being sent to TBC that states any special needs such as “Inside Delivery”, “Call Before Delivery” or the specific “Ship Week” that you would prefer the shipment to arrive. If there are not any notes about delivery, we will ship the material as soon as the stock is available using the quickest, most economic carrier possible for that size of shipment.

If you have a special arrangement with a carrier and you would like for us to use your carrier instead of the carriers with whom we have contracts, you again must notify us on your orders. Otherwise, we will (as stated above) use the quickest, most economical carrier.

We have expanded our position to carry materials above and beyond the contracted items offered through the Tennessee Official List of Textbooks. We now carry Pre-K materials, Title I materials, ACT/SAT Testing materials, advanced placement textbooks, and other special materials used in the education industry. All of these materials are offered at the exact same price you would pay if ordering through the publisher. The savings occurs when you consolidate the order with other publishers’ products and reduce your administrative expenses and shipping costs. The best way to ensure that you are using TBC most effectively is to include all materials needed on your order to us and we will immediately respond with any title or titles that we cannot provide.