Шар Publishing

Project

Шар is an independent Bulgarian publisher with a deep backlist, and it sold every copy through the trade.

Through the trade, a large share of the cover price disappears into distributor and retail discount before the publisher sees anything. The same copy sold direct returns close to full cover price, less fulfilment. For a small press, that gap decides whether a title earns out its print run. That makes a direct channel a P&L decision, not a marketing one.

The channel only works if it respects how books are actually found. Readers do not search a catalogue; they move from a title to its author to the rest of the series. That path is where the backlist sells, and the backlist funds a small press between frontlist releases. A shop that models books as generic products cuts the path, and editorial staff, who work in titles and authors rather than SKUs and attributes, stop maintaining it within a season. Checkout carries its own version of the same problem: a card-only checkout is unshippable in this market, and a cash-on-delivery-only one turns away every buyer who pays by card.

The design already existed as a prototype. We took it to production as a catalogue-first storefront, and left out the heavyweight e-commerce platform whose generic product model and permanent overhead would have been carried to serve order volumes that never arrive. The test we designed to was editorial, not technical: staff add a title, its author and its series, and take the order, without contacting a developer.

We designed and built the Шар storefront along with the catalogue and commerce it runs on:

Catalogue-First Modelling: Book, author, genre and series are four first-class types, each holding its own page. Editorial staff maintain the shop in the vocabulary they already work in, so the catalogue stays current between releases instead of ageing into a list nobody edits.

Backlist Discovery: A reader who arrives for one title lands on the author, and from the author on the rest of the series. It is the highest-intent path in book retail and the cheapest sale a publisher can make, because the reader is already on the page.

Frontlist Merchandising: The homepage does a publisher's two jobs at once. A hero and a "book of the month" merchandise the frontlist, while a marquee of titles keeps the rest of the catalogue in circulation instead of behind a search box.

Bespoke Cart & Checkout: Only the commerce a publisher needs, built to the catalogue rather than bolted onto it. The checkout stays short, because every step between a reader and a backlist title is a step that costs the publisher the sale.

Four Settlement Methods: Card and Apple Pay sit beside cash on delivery and bank transfer, so no buyer is turned away at the payment step for paying the way this market pays.

Newsletter Capture: The readers who are not buying today still leave an address. The next release then has a channel the publisher owns outright, rather than one it rents.