A guide for UNSEENPRESS DISTRO CLUB vendors
Up-sells and cross-sells are the two ways the shop can suggest one of your other titles to someone already looking at your work. They are the closest thing a vendor has to a shelf display: a way of saying “if you like this, you might want that”. Neither happens automatically. You choose the linked titles yourself, listing by listing.
The difference in one line
| Up-sell | Cross-sell | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it appears | On the product page, below the description | In the cart, once something is already in it |
| The message | Instead of this | As well as this |
| Typical use | A bigger, special or signed edition of what they are viewing | A companion title, back issue or print |
Up-sells show under a heading such as “You may also like” on the single product page. They are for offering a step up. If someone is looking at a £12 zine and you also publish a £45 hardback that grew out of the same work, the hardback is the up-sell.
Cross-sells show at the cart stage, after the buyer has committed to something. They are for adding to the basket rather than replacing what is in it. Volume 2 alongside Volume 1, the print that accompanies the book, the earlier zine in the same series.
How to set them up
- Open the title in your Vendor Dashboard → Products, either when adding it or by editing an existing one.
- Go to the Linked Products tab.
- In the Up-sells field, start typing the name of another of your titles and select it from the list that appears. Add as many as you want, though two or three is usually plenty.
- Do the same in the Cross-sells field.
- Save or update the product.
You can normally only link to your own titles, so it is not possible to cross-sell another vendor’s book. Think of it as arranging your own table, not the whole fair.
Getting it right
Link in both directions. If Book A up-sells Book B, edit Book B so it points back at Book A. Buyers arrive at your titles from search and from category shelves, not just from your store page, so any one of your listings might be the first they see.
Choose deliberately, not exhaustively. Adding every title you publish to every listing turns the suggestion into wallpaper. Two or three genuinely related titles do more work than ten.
Put the step up in up-sells, the companion in cross-sells. The commonest mistake is using up-sells for things that are really companions. If it would sit alongside the first book rather than replace it, it belongs in cross-sells.
Empty fields mean nothing displays. The feature being switched on across the marketplace only means the display areas exist. Until you fill the fields in, your listings show nothing there.
The postage catch (important)
A linked title is bought as a normal, separate line item. That means the postage stacking described in the Adding a new book guide applies in full: each book’s National shipping fee is calculated on its own and the totals are added together.
So if you cross-sell a £3-postage zine alongside a £3-postage book, the buyer pays £6 postage for what is almost certainly one parcel. That is exactly the point at which people abandon a cart.
Two ways to deal with it:
- Discount the postage on the secondary title. Set the National shipping fee on the linked title to a lower figure, or to £0, and keep the true postage cost on the main one. The combined charge then reflects what the parcel actually costs you to send.
- Set a free shipping threshold. Use National free shipping over (order total) on both titles, set at roughly what a two-book order comes to. Postage then drops away entirely once someone buys enough to justify the bundle.
Whichever you choose, test it. Add both titles to a basket and look at the shipping total at checkout before you rely on the pairing.
A short checklist
- [ ] Each title has two or three relevant links, not a full catalogue
- [ ] Step-up editions in Up-sells, companions in Cross-sells
- [ ] Links point both ways between paired titles
- [ ] Postage on the secondary title adjusted so a pair does not pay twice
- [ ] Test order run through checkout to confirm the shipping total looks right