What I enjoy most about Salesboom is how easy it is to tailor its deal stages to match our unique publishing release cycle, from pitching indie bookstores all the way through post-launch royalty follow-ups. Before we adopted it, we tracked every bookstore pitch, advance copy request, and reorder request on a shared Google Sheet, and there was no built-in way to flag where each conversation stood. I still remember a bad mishap with a regional book wholesaler out of Bend. We’d sent them advance reader copies of our new memoir, and they told us they wanted to hold off placing a firm order until after the author’s local event. I jotted that note down on my personal notebook instead of our shared tracker. Our sales lead circled back two weeks later pushing them for a PO, and the wholesaler felt like we hadn’t listened to their request. They put our title on the back burner and cut their planned shelf space in half. That experience made me realize we needed a CRM that could mirror our publishing workflow, not force us to fit into a generic sales pipeline.
I didn’t want a one-size-fits-all sales tool, and Salesboom let me rebuild the whole pipeline to fit our press. I made custom stages for initial outreach, ARC sent, event pending, firm order confirmed, shipment fulfilled, and royalty reconciliation. I added custom fields for ISBN, print run size, author advance clauses, wholesale discount tiers, and bookstore shelf placement notes. Every bookstore and distributor deal card shows exactly what stage we’re in, what copies we’ve sent, and any special terms we agreed on. After that Bend distributor miscommunication, I started logging every single conversation and stipulation directly inside each opportunity. If a buyer says they need to wait for a review or an author event, I drop that into the deal and set a reminder, so nobody reaches out at the wrong time.
I also really like how the task and reminder system ties directly to each opportunity. I can set separate tasks for sending ARCs, following up after a book review goes live, checking in on reorders, and sending royalty statements. Not long ago, a small bookstore in Medford got our advance copies and said they’d decide after their book club preview. I set a reminder tied to that deal, and we followed up right on schedule. They ended up placing a solid opening order and reordered twice more once customer demand picked up. That would’ve slipped through the cracks with our old notebook-and-spreadsheet method.
The CSV import is also a huge win when we load up new bookstore leads ahead of each launch season. I pull lists from regional bookseller associations, map all my custom publishing fields, and bring them in in bulk. The activity feed keeps every email, note, and attached ARC request together. If our part-time marketing teammate steps in to cover while I’m out, they can instantly see the history of that bookstore relationship without playing phone tag with me.
We’re a small independent press, so we don’t need overly complex automation that takes weeks to learn. Salesboom works for us because I can shape the pipeline to how books actually get sold, instead of twisting our publishing process to fit a generic sales CRM. It keeps our bookstore communications thoughtful and on-timeline, and it stops us from alienating buyers by missing their requests. It’s become my go-to tool to keep our pre-order and wholesale outreach on track for every new title we put out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Honestly, Salesboom has been decent for our bookstore outreach, but there are some rough edges that regularly slow me down, and I had a really awkward situation with a wholesaler out of Bend last month that drove this home. I was trying to bulk update the ARC tracking status for a long list of bookstore contacts using a CSV upload ahead of our memoir launch. I lined up all the column headers, double-checked our custom fields for sample delivery and shelf placement notes, and uploaded the file. Most of the records updated correctly, but a handful of entries got overwritten with blank values. That Bend wholesaler’s ARC status went completely empty. Our sales teammate didn’t notice and messaged them to ask if we should send out their advance copies. They already had the package for two weeks, and they were annoyed that we hadn’t kept track. They almost scaled back their opening order. Now I always make a full backup and test with just two or three rows first before touching the full list, which adds extra time to every launch prep cycle.
The report builder is pretty limited for publishing-specific work. My manager asked me to pull a view that shows all active bookstore deals grouped by release month, the number of ARCs sent, confirmed order quantity, and projected reorder volume. Salesboom’s filters don’t stack well enough to pull all that in one single report. I had to export opportunities, contact logs, and task data separately, then manually match everything in a spreadsheet. It took most of my afternoon, and it’s easy to mix up ISBNs or order numbers when I’m juggling multiple tabs. I wish we could save custom report templates built for our book launch cycles instead of rebuilding everything manually every time we wrap a campaign.
I also wish the alert permissions were more granular. Right now, any note or status change on a deal sends a notification to everyone assigned to that record. A couple weeks back, I updated a bookstore’s special condition that they only want follow-up after a local review publishes. The alert went to our part-time marketing assistant who wasn’t handling that account. The assistant reached out too early, before the review dropped, and confused the buyer. It would be so helpful if I could route ARC logistics alerts only to me, and order follow-up alerts only to our sales lead. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
