Distributing books -- a datapoint
Mar. 3rd, 2009 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeI was looking into looking into (as it were) Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest and found that it was in stock at no Chaptigo -- basically, the local monopoly for most intents and purposes -- store in the entire Toronto area. (Happily, it is something that Bakka has, so there is a local store where I can pick up the book if I don't order it from Amazon without evaluation).
Now, Palimpsest is not exactly performing poorly: its amazon.com sales rank is at present 3,559, which is pretty respectable (by comparison Escape from Hell, which they have in stock at the local Coles -- not even a full-fledged Indigo -- is at 4,831).
This suggests that something is deeply broken in the distribution system (as if I didn't know that already). Its all very well for somebody like myself to know about a book (via Whatever, in this case) and decide to look for it. But many sales are made via browsing, and not carrying a book which other indicators would suggest will sell relatively well is just a way of arbitrarily dragging an author's possible sales down.
Now, Palimpsest is not exactly performing poorly: its amazon.com sales rank is at present 3,559, which is pretty respectable (by comparison Escape from Hell, which they have in stock at the local Coles -- not even a full-fledged Indigo -- is at 4,831).
This suggests that something is deeply broken in the distribution system (as if I didn't know that already). Its all very well for somebody like myself to know about a book (via Whatever, in this case) and decide to look for it. But many sales are made via browsing, and not carrying a book which other indicators would suggest will sell relatively well is just a way of arbitrarily dragging an author's possible sales down.
