Dragaera

Map and RPGs

Rachael Lininger rachael at daedala.net
Wed Jun 5 07:52:28 PDT 2002

On Jun 5, Steven Brust said:
>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. 

It's still black necromancy. 

>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.

The end may justify the means, though. I saw Dreamhaven doing that, 
sigh.

In a weird way, mass-market paperbacks had the problem of digital
copyright before digital got anywhere: the cost of the materials was
_considered_ negligible (don't know if it actually was, as it is in
digital); it's having that author's words you're paying for.

>No, Rachel explained what has caused the real crunch.

I wish my parents could spell.

>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.

I was going to say that that was a while back (drugstore and airport
racks being of any use) and that the paperback market survived the
collapse of the ID channels, and then I realized I didn't know if that
was actually the case. Did sales actually survive, and the later
consolidations kill them; or did they never quite recover, and stagger 
woozily to their extended demise?

Rachael

--
Rachael             From the Dilbert Newsletter:
   Lininger              "You should talk to her. 
     rachael@                   She is a minefield of information."
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