PublishAmerica responses
I think you may all be interested in the two different responses to my worried questions: any feedback would be gratefully received!!
Dear Jessi,
I just can’t understand it. After all this time, and doing everything you advised me to do, I still can’t get into the media except for local interest stories, I've written to many, many newspapers in the States, I’ve written to Barnes and Noble, and even emailed a couple of chat show hosts there. I can’t get my book into bookstores in either continent. No-one replies, and even for book signings anywhere no-one wants to know. Nothing has come of all the business cards I’ve given out over there in the past two years and here in England, it must be well over a thousand.
It’s a great book, the reviews I’ve had from friends, relatives, and even strangers via my web site who have read it via their friends, have really enjoyed it. Having heard that I’ve written another, they’re desperate to read it. I’m really confused and upset – can you tell me what it is that’s going wrong? Please can you help?
Susan Haven
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Dear Susan Haven:
Thank you for your email. No publisher guarantees book sales to bookstores. Major chain bookstores have no policy against stocking non-returnable books. PublishAmerica books are found in brick and morter bookstores, as stated on our website. Barnes & Noble is our largest retail customer. Thousands, each and every week, of PublishAmerica books are sold in bookstores across the nation. Bookstores buy books from us each and every day. The PublishAmerica message board is overflowing with testimonials from our authors about their books being stocked in bookstores. Hundreds of bookstores across the nation stock our books.
PublishAmerica books have the same chance of making it onto a bookstore shelf as do the books of any publisher. It may be of interest that less than one percent of all authors ever see their books stocked by bookstores at all. For bookstores to stock all books published would mean adding 15 feet of new shelf space each and every day.
Therefore bookstore managers must be selective, so they decide based on what that they think will sell. If they do think it will sell, they will stock it, and vice versa. So, if your book is romance and the store's shelves are overflowing with romance novels, the odds are they won't stock it. And, if your book is a history of agriculture in Yazoo County, Mississippi, the bookstore manager in Seattle may feel the same way.
Bookstores will generally stock a book that they think will sell, regardless of whether it is returnable or not, and regardless of whether it is printed on digital or offset presses.
Please do not judge a bookstore's corporate policy by what one local manager or one letter tells you. You can find stories on our website about, for example, two Borders locations in one town: one manager insists that he cannot carry a book, the other orders 40 copies. Bookstore managers are human, they have strengths and weaknesses like all of us, they can make good judgment calls and bad ones. One will like your book, the other may not.
Thank you and have a good day,
Jessi,
PublishAmerica Support
Dear Susan Haven:
Thank you for your email. Your question is very important to us at PublishAmerica, however, it has reached the wrong department. In order to assure that you get the proper answers, we ask that you visit
http://www.publishamerica.com/support, where you will find answers to the most commonly asked questions.
If you do not find the resolution to your specific question, please fill out the brief form at the bottom of the web page so that the Author Support Team may contact you personally.
Thank you,
Denise
Acquisitions Department
PublishAmerica
www.publishamerica.com
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At 08:33 AM 3/27/2009, you wrote:
Dear Lori,
I sent Jessi an email yesterday but didn't get an answer to below:
I just can’t understand it. After all this time, and doing everything you advised me to do, I still can’t get into the media except for local interest stories, I've written to many, many newspapers in the States, I’ve written to Barnes and Noble, and even emailed a couple of chat show hosts there. I can’t get my book into bookstores in either continent. No-one replies, and even for book signings anywhere no-one wants to know. Nothing has come of all the business cards I’ve given out over there in the past two years and here in England, it must be well over a thousand.
It’s a great book, the reviews I’ve had from friends, relatives, and even strangers via my web site who have read it via their friends, have really enjoyed it. Having heard that I’ve written another, they’re desperate to read it. I’m really confused and upset – can you tell me what it is that’s going wrong?
Please can you help?
Susan Haven