Submission & Fees – Independent Authors

The number one question is usually, “What are the costs involved?” Here is a detailed list of the costs you can expect. All costs are subject to change, and it is impossible to give accurate courier costs for obvious reasons. It will give you a good idea of what to expect before you submit your application.

Courier costs – sending your books to our office (variable prices, you pick and pay your courier to deliver to our door) for packing and labelling.
Packing and labelling costs – for us to send the books according to Takealot’s requirements with their prescribed packaging and barcoded labels for each product and box. This will be R5 per book, which covers poly bags and printed labels and other printing of documents and box labels, as well as labour.
From our offices we employ a Takealot preferred courier to fetch and deliver books to both DC’s (1 box to CTN and 1 box to JHB). Prices vary, but, it should be around R300 in total.
Monthly fee of R400 for membership, administration and accounting, payable in advance as soon as the contract has been signed. No books will be listed on Takealot’s database, nor sent to their DC’s until this fee is paid. This fee is non-refundable and applicable each month until the books have either been sold out or removed from Takealot’s warehouses and our agreement has come to an end. Why R400? Takealot charge a monthly fee of R345 to be a seller on their site, regardless of sales, but this amount is included in the aforementioned R400. You, therefore, are only paying R55 extra for this convenient service per month, which saves you a lot of time and effort.
Takealot charge their own fees, which include a success fee (14% of retail price), a fulfilment fee of R28.75 (Takealot sends your book to the customer) and, if applicable, after 30 days, a monthly storage fee of R4.60 per standard size book – this price increases over the festive season (October to December) to R10 per book. These fees are deducted before they pay out any profits.
Should it be necessary, removal of books from Takealot involves a small handling fee and courier costs to deliver the books from the Takealot DC back to your physical address directly (courier costs will vary in this case).

If you want to sell more than one title, all the same costs will apply (steps 1, 2, 3, 5 & 6), but an additional once-off R150 per title, from the second title onwards, will be charged for the administration thereof. The monthly admin fee will remain R400.

Authors will receive a monthly invoice with detailed line items, to be paid by the 3rd of each month at the latest. When the contract is signed, you will provide your banking details for profit payments, after deductions.

For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Once you’ve read through the previous information post and you are certain that your book passes the exclusion criteria on the About page, then send us an email with the following information and documentation attached.

Your full name, surname, ID number, address, cell phone number.
The ISBN and Title of your book, plus the format – size (length in mm x breadth in mm x thickness in mm), soft or hardcover, number of pages, retail price (what you would advertise it for, excluding postage, including VAT) and any other information you would like to share regarding the look and feel of your book.
A short description or synopsis of your book, both for fiction or non-fiction books.
The back-cover text and any endorsements in digital format inside the email, for us to copy and paste when necessary.
Category of your book, such as
- Fiction and genre, e.g. romance, action, historical, faith-based, children’s fiction, etc.
- Non-fiction and academic subject – such as gardening, house & home, beauty, self-help, personal growth, etc.
Your target market – age group, gender, religion, academic interest, anything that will describe who will love to read your book.
High-resolution images of your book’s cover (full image of back-spine-front, and an image of only the front and only the back). Image files have to be smaller than 2 MB, but the shortest edge of any image must not be less than 600 pixels and the longest edge not more than 2048 pixels. Your graphic designer should be able to provide this.
PDF file of the first five pages of the first chapter of the final, printed version of your book.
Photos of the printed book from all angles – high-resolution, quality, clear photos. We basically need to see if your book “looks” good.
Indicate how many books you have in your possession, and where they are being sold and marketed. How many books you would like to sell on Takealot.com? Please note that they require sellers to send 35% stock to Cape Town and 65% to Johannesburg distribution centre (DC). We do not recommend sending more than 20 books in total initially. This will limit storage fees. You can always send more books if stock runs low.

Once we have received all of the above-mentioned information and files, we will assess everything and let you know via email whether we are interested in selling your book on Takealot.com or not. Our decision is final. If successful, you will receive a detailed quotation and a contract. If you agree with the fees and contract terms and conditions, please print, sign, scan and email the scanned contract back to us – if you cannot scan it, please photograph the signed contract and send it as an image, but please ensure that the full image is completely legible.

Take note of the fee structure to make sure you want to go ahead with your application.