Quote:
Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers
I'm not sure this is true anymore or will hold true for long. Publishers have laid off staff, including sales people. And bookstores are reducing their inventory and carrying fewer and fewer fiction authors and more toys/videos/knickknacks. The goal of getting their book "on the shelf" will be moot soon for most authors.
L.J.
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Not really. Yes, publishers have laid off sales staff, but the number of folks they
sell to has also shrunk. Independent bookstores are a vanishing breed. Consolidation has happened with a vengeance, and big chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders predominate. In addition to dedicate book retailers, a huge volume of books are sold through other outfits. The book buyers for "warehouse stores" like CostCo and Sam's Club have enormous clout in the industry because of the sheer volume of books they buy. We tend not to think of them because they aren't bookstores, but CostCo may sell more books overall than Borders...
One of publishing's issues is that the decision about what gets bought and put on a retailer's shelves is made by increasingly fewer people.
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Dennis