Selling my own books in bookstores... How do I do it?

First thing I would do is check your contract with your publisher to see if you're even allowed to resell those copies. IANAL, but just personally if the stores are willing to stock the book, I'd then have my publisher make arrangements from there.

The industry standard is usually 55% off cover price, meaning if your book is priced to sell at $10 you'd sell it to the bookstore for $4.50. Few publishers sell their authors books at enough of a discount to make that work, so it makes more sense for the bookstore to deal directly with the publisher.

If you can offer the store a standard discount yourself, keep in mind that most will want you to accept returns if they don't sell the books, in which case you'd return the $4.50 for each book you get back. A local store might negotiate a different discount if they like spotlighting local authors, so it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Another option is seeing if the bookstore will take the books on consignment--they give you nothing up front, and you get an agreed-upon percentage of the cover price when they sell a book.

I have used Dan Poynter's books to help me self-publish my first book, so I will include his fact sheet here:
http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/information/promote.cfm#promote1

I think he is talking about major book stores like Barnes and Noble, etc. For indie book stores, I've heard that you sell your books to them in bulk, like 50 or so copies, at a discount. In six months or so you would go back and pick up whatever didn't sell, refunding the store. You might want to stage a book signing to help with promotions. Barnes and Noble, ironically, are also pretty open to having local authors come in for a book signing/reading. I would call one up to see if they have any openings.

The shop will probably have an idea of what they want to sell it for - too high and they'll just take up shelf space, which the shop could have filled with cheaper books that would make them money - and what they're willing to give you from that. I don't know what you've paid for the books initially, but if you need more than $4.50 a book to break even you might have to suck up a loss on the print copies and hope it translates into higher sales overall.

Many stores have a local author shelf. Consignment is a losing proposition, but so is buying the books and selling them to the store. Either way, any money you make is taken up by the effort.

Ask if they would let you host a book signing there. Free publicity for them in exchange for the space, good opportunity for you and you can give the book store a commission on the books.

Otherwise, you've found one of the limitations of an ebook only publisher.

Jeff

I've done it three ways: direct sale/billing, consignment and instructions for ordering from the publisher. I started with distribution of a resume and discount options to local stores via letter. That did zip. Then when to face on face meetings (after phone call.) 50% agreed to meet and of those that did meet, all but one carried my books. Worked great for three years, then the national economy slaughtered our area (tourist oriented) and sales dropped 80%. Of original 9 stores, only 3 have survived.