On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Chris Turkel wrote: > I had a friend who worked barnes and noble and he told me that if the > bookstore put a book on the shelf before the release date they get > fined by the publisher, whatever that means. This is true. I didn't work at B&N, but I DID work at Blockbuster Video for a few years and I believe the policies are the same. When a publisher or studio agrees to supplement stores with their merchandise, they kind of sign a contract with the store that they'll follow certain guidelines, otherwise the deal is off or penalties incur. One of those guidelines is that the store releases the merchandise on the date dictated by the publisher. As employees, we were allowed to view the material up to a week in advance, because it was like review copies, since Blockbuster Video expected its employees to be able to tell customers about the movies. Once or twice, some of the ppl at our store rented them to friends (non-employee friends), and got in big trouble because if the studios found out, they'd cancel their contract with Blockbuster. ****** NyteMuse "Call her life unnatural, feel her undead breath. Color her black for sorcery, color her gray for death." AIM: NyteMuse139 / ICQ: #21966269 (NyteMuse) MSN: NyteMuse / Yahoo!ID: NyteMuse http://www.crowfire.com