I’ve never met a writer who wasn’t also an avid reader. If you believe in what goes around comes around, do this little favour for your favourite midlist authors, and hopefully some of your readers will do it for you when you’re published. Let’s start thinking about where we spend our money and who we are really benefiting.

In Australia, mega-chain-bookstore Angus and Robertson has made the dubious decision to charge small independent publishers rental on shelf space in their bookstores!

In other words, the few publishers who are willing to take a chance on a new writer now have to pay (read: take out of author’s share) for those books to receive the same exposure that a big publisher’s books would receive. Where’s the fairness in that?

On top of this sudden bout of corporate greed, the rental charge is also retrospective - so all these little publishers have already received invoices together with a threat of pay up or your books leave the shelves.

Ordering to the net

Here’s something else to consider when you pop into a bookstore or the supermarket to buy a book: Does the store use an ordering system that “orders to the net”?

Ordering to the net means that the store initially orders, say, 10 copies of an author’s first book. If 8 of those 10 books sell, the chain stores log that amount. The author writes another book and the chain store now orders only 8 copies of the new book. And so on, until their logging system tells them not to bother ordering any more new books by that author.

On the other hand, an independent bookstore is not held to a silly chainstore rulebook. If the independent bookstore orders 10 copies and sells 8, they will more likely think, “Fantastic - 80% sales conversion!” If a book sells that well, the independent bookstore might well decide to double their order for the next book, or at least UP the order by 80% - perhaps they can sell 80% of an order of 20 books, and certainly that’s possible if the author is gaining a bit of a following. Logical.

If you can, please consider supporting your local independent bookstore rather than the chainstores and supermarkets. If you have a favourite author, especially a midlist author whose latest books you’re not seeing very often on bookstore shelves, do them a favour (as a little thank you for all their books you’ve enjoyed) and special order a book or two. If you can place that order through an independent book store, so much the better.

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If the book selling industry's dirty tactics are getting you down, you need to arm yourself with alternative ideas.
Try Beyond the Bookstore : How to Sell More Books Profitably to Non-Bookstore Markets by Brian Jud or Jump Start Your Book Sales : A Money-Making Guide for Authors, Independent Publishers and Small Presses by Marilyn and Tom Ross