B&N (and other brick and mortar bookstores) rarely stock small publisher's books. But they will order them for you. It takes about 5 days for them to get the book for you, then. And you can pay in cash (my own favorite old fashioned way of shopping).
That's very good for the publisher, too, because then there isn't the problem of "returns". Too many returns from all the bookstores all over America could kill a small publisher with just the returns of one title.
The bad thing about that is people can't stumble across your book in casual book store browsing. But unless the book is a million dollar best seller, the book won't be reprinted. So the window of time for a person to see your book on the bookstore shelf is usually only for a few months, if it's from a big corporate New York publisher that does it that way.
My books are from a small publisher (Stone Garden is not a vanity press - just a small publisher) so they'll be available for order for as long as the business is open.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 27
Thanks for sharing. Give yourself time. I am sure you will be on those shelves in no time.
Many years ago I worked as a "rackjobber" for a large company that was responsible for all of the music and books in certain stores. I would go in once a week and set up new displays etc., for the music departments and book departments. Every week at all of the stores that had book accounts in them I had the horrible job of taking the top books off of the top shelf and bringing them all down one rack. At the top would go the newest best selling paperback and the one at the very bottom of its racks would be destroyed and thrown away. It was my responsibility to tear off the front cover of the books in order to get credit back from the publishing company and then I had to throw the books away.
I often would ask why we couldn't just give the books away to a charity or to a jail for others to read and was always met with the same resistance and told that they could not give the books away. I still don't fully understand why that was but I never have gotten over that horrid system.
<font size="1">PRETTYSEXYPAGES</font>
As long as sites like Amazon continue to be good sources for these small press titles, it's all good.
But Peter's right to remind us that actual bookstores will indeed obtain these books upon request -- after all, they want to make money, too!
There are some people's work that I will order, though, because I just have to read it!
You will be sent a book HOT off the press, since it's P.O.D. (print on demand). The book is returnable if the press screwed up (entirely possible). It's probably still returnable anyway, according to the book store's return policy.
Susan's got the bold goin' on!
ha ha - I'm not done yet.
I wasn't aware of all of the information in Esther's comment either.
I wish you the best, buddy.
Yippee!