Indie Author: Dear Indie Booksellers: Please Take Your Eyes Off Your Classmate's Paper And Focus On Your Own Work:
To which I add: Excellent advice. My experience as a personal book buyer and academic librarian spending thousands on books has been that the so-called independent stores are much harder to work with than the big chains. Getting them to order books from university presses or small presses is almost impossible. I used to send students over the a local bookstore to order books until the owners said they would not order a book for a student because they didn't approve of it. My last reference for them.
My daughter, a middle-school-librarian, near Chicago has had the same experience. She recently gave a list of summer reading books to Anderson's bookstores, a three store independent in the Chicago suburbs. They flatly would not order any books except from the legacy publishers claiming they couldn't get a large enough discount from smaller presses. This was despite the possibility of 500 kids coming in to look for books for the summer. She will know send them to Amazon who carries everything. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
The notion that independents promote local authors and new authors is total hogwash and a myth they try to perpetuate to hide poor business practices. And when they fail they blame Amazon.'via Blog this'
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