At 10:05 PM 6/4/2002 -0700, Frank Mayhar wrote:
>One word: Remaindering. A pernicious practice that is one of the things
>killing the paperback industry.
Well, remaindering *is* pretty silly, but it's been going on for a lot
longer than the paperback crunch. And in a sense, it actually helps: it
permits smaller bookstores to take a chance with unknown authors. They
know they can buy a box or so without risk.
No, Rachel explained what has caused the real crunch. Instead of a lot of
distributors working their areas and responding ("Hey, Jim, give us more
westerns next time; people around here seem to like westerns") you have
Ingrams, which gives you (the drug store with a book rack, or the airport,
or whatever) the top ten NYT bestsellers and a few others that they pick out.
>(My very favorite author of all time was Roger Zelazny. I got to meet
>him and hear him read just once, in Dallas a long time ago; he read his
>first "Croyd" story. I tell you, I miss him every time I pick up a book.)
Me, too!