My wife insisted I get out of the house and take her to see "Interpretor" today, so I had to record Ed's show to listen to later. We stopped by my favorite B&N while we were there, and I signed every copy of my books while I was there (probably had about fifty on hand of both titles combined).
Afterwards I talked to the assistant manager to see if they had any PA books on hand. He had not heard of the company, and could not do a publisher-only search on his catalog. I gave him Crispy by you-know-who (only title I could think of off the top of my head), and of course he had none on hand, but he couldn't do a database search off that page. He asked about PA so I told him the basics, but gave him the publishamericasucks.com address, and suggested that as a bookseller and manager he should be aware of the company. He promised he would check up on it.
As far as carrying POD books goes, in a word, NO, they don't. He said that they WILL carry a POD book as long as it has a return policy. If not, the answer is NO. He said he gets calls "all the time" from authors wanting them to carry their books (vanity, self-pub, POD), and as long as the books can be returned, they will take a couple of copies, no problem. He said he gets about two calls a month from POD authors, and he always tells them no due to the no-return policy. He said this decision came from a corporate level.
Also, he said there have been problems with authors calling around to all area bookstores to special order their books and never picking them up. He said B&N has cracked down on that problem.
They also won't do any signings for POD authors (again citing the return policy), because the books just don't sell and the store is stuck with them. And whenever the store is stuck with a nonreturnable POD book, they put the books in the back room (I guess where they'll get thrown out at some point). The ONLY time they will do a signing for any POD authors is when they have a group signing, say three or more, of POD authors. Not sure why, but that's what they do.
This is a really successful store in a touristy spot (Newport on the Levee for anyone in the Cincinnati tristate area), and I've done three different successful signings there. My books still sell very well there, in fact.
So that's the scoop from Newport B&N.
underthecity
give a synopsis please?
to the new people! So glad you are here!!
I mean, uhh, ahhh, you know what I mean...Uhh, never mind...