Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because they had it, a bit before the launch date, and now, a little over a week later, they don’t. Which I discovered yesterday when I went to pick up Jeff Vandermeer’s latest.
It bugged me. It also didn’t. This bookstore, and it’s a great bookstore, is kind of, I don’t know, hip, I think that’s the word, though maybe not, who knows really what words really mean to the people who read them, but my book, despite its smashing cover, is not hip, not in the sense I mean it, and so probably not quite right for the bookstore. Like it wouldn’t pass the curation sniff test with this place. It sits athwart the list. The vibe.
I launched my last book at this store. And now, after a week, they have none of the new one. So, glass half-full: they ordered it and sold them all and were unprepared for the orders. Fair enough. Glass half-empty: they ordered a few copies and those few copies sold (I signed two copies when I went in) and they didn’t think they could sell anymore and so that’s that. Because there are other books that will be published, and more and more (and here I imagine Seinfeld’s Newman describing the relentlessness of the mail…”The mail never stops…And then it’s Publisher’s Clearing House!”) and, well, a small bookshop has to make room for all those new books. And my publisher, as great as they are, is also small. They have limited means to…market books. (Though this reality is not exclusive to authors published by indie presses, I get that.)
A book becomes an old product the moment it is released. Unless people buy it. Then, and only then, does it have a shelf life.
