Where to find Sue's Books locally.

A great mystery to be sure!

Of course you'd think it would be a given considering what both Never Ceese and Forever Richard have done since their respective releases.

Yes. I'lll rehash:

-My debut novel Never Ceese short-listed for a 2007 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, the year Jonathan Mayberry won this category (go Jonathan!!)

-Never Ceese voted book club choice for the month of May 2007 at the ACFW

-Never Ceese short-listed for a 2009 Pluto Award

-Forever Richard making the long-list for a 2009 Pluto Award

-Forever Richard currently on the long-list for a 2010 British Fantasy Award

So why wouldn't you expect to be able to go into, at the very least, a local bookstore and find a healthy number of both on the shelf at least in the local section.

*Sue blinks both eyes as though puzzled herself.*

I don't rightly know but you most certainly can't.

My local Barnes & Nobles has ten in their warehouse but none on the shelf. Their explanation,

"Well when customers start asking for it . . ."

Wow!

Really?

Let me clarify my sarcasm. A larger publisher (only called this because now there are small publishers. Before they were simply called publishers) puts out a debut novel that, based on reviews that come later, royally sucks to high Heaven. Because this book came from a larger publisher, it is automatically without question ordered in mass, as per the agreement between bookstores and large distributors, and placed in a prominent position in the stores. The buying in mass automatically pushes said sorry book to the top of the best-sellers chart (neat how that works isn't it?) and double-standard is complete. There was no demand for this author before their debut novel was released. No one had to walk in and ask to see it on the shelf before it could be placed in said prominent position. What a ludicrous statement for a bookstore to tell a small pubbed author. No they don't single me out. This is what ALL small pubbed authors are told.

Books-A-Million, when I approached them about my books not even being at least in their local author section at once ordered twenty of Forever Richard which I quickly had them change to ten so my publisher wouldn't eat the books I couldn't possibly get rid of fast enough since the local section isn't the first place readers go to find books.

All ten did sell and nine more are on the shelf now but only of Forever Richard and not Never Ceese the paperback as that's through Lightning Source and no large bookstores carry POD's due to the fact that they don't come through a larger publisher and bookstores don't want to hassle with books they're pretty certain won't sell due to POD authors not being able to compete with the publicity wagons of large publishers. Sure a bookstore can send my books back for a full refund if they don't sell (and my publisher will eat the returns as most bookstores only have to return book covers or bar codes to get their money back from the distributor thus making the book unsellable to the publisher-how nice!) But most won't even bother ordering because it's simply too much trouble.

The Bookshelf up the road from me, an independent bookstore, does carry both of my books but I supply them. If there aren't any in the store, they can call me and I can bring one--if I have any.

And as far as Books-A-Million goes, I learned a few days ago that when those nine of Forever Richard are gone, they can't order anymore because my publisher who distributes through Bookmasters is in a dispute over an unbelievable amount of money charged to them for books that were returned damaged due to the fact that bookstores aren't required to return books to distributors in a resell-able manner (sorry but missing front covers or whatever is required to return for a full refund doesn't constitute a resell-able book.) As a result Bookmasters is now not sending the books out to distributors until the matter is resolved or so I'm assuming because now my book that was showing up in Books-A-Million's, available to the brick and mortar stores, is no longer showing up.

And to update on another matter, no neither I nor the other small pubbed author I invited to join me in a booksigning at my local Barnes & Noble have been paid for the books we sold. And no, we didn't sell a lot but that hardly negates the absurdity of the situation. Coming up on a year now and neither of us have seen anything.

Ridiculous!