Chain Bookstores

I had a gift card for Barnes and Noble, and ran over there yesterday to use it. It struck me that many of the books I'd had at the top of my head to look for weren't there at all. I found some good books that I'm looking forward to, though, a short story collection from a writer I've heard of but not read, and a novel that I've been considering reading. I may blog about them sometime soon (though I have some other reading to catch up on first). There were a few others that I had to reluctantly pass on for now, so it's not like I couldn't find anything worthwhile. And I'm not surprised, since my tastes aren't exactly dead center of the most popular types of fantasy. It just makes me curious--if we're optimistic and my book gets picked up, I wonder how much it will be available in stores like that. And how much does a local branch of a chain have control over what they stock? Would the store here in town carry it simply because it's from a local author? I'm sure that depends somewhat on the prestige or reputation of the publisher itself and possibly on the salesmanship of the author. And this is really too early to worry about any such thing since I don't have an offer of any kind yet--but I'm curious and like to learn what I can about the many aspects of publishing.

I won't bother explaining how right now, but as I was typing this I started thinking of Ursula LeGuin's Language of the Night--so I think I'll blog about that next time.

Comments

V.B. Purcell said…
"Would the store here in town carry it simply because it's from a local author?"

Possibly. Unfortunately, most bookstores are like the publishers. The $$ chi-ching is what they look at first these days so it seems.
Daniel Ausema said…
Yeah, that's certainly the driving force. Understandably from their perspective, but still a bit of a brick wall for unknown writers.

Thanks for stopping by!
Celina Summers said…
from what I've seen (and you can ask terry about this) most bookstores make an effort to carry t he work of local authors.