Today's Very Annoying Development In My Little Book Publishing World

Last time I talked about showing our children's Book - "Birthday Snow'' - to book buyers in place like Barnes & Noble and Borders Express in the recent mini-book tour. And the good news was they liked it.

Unfortunately, I just got the bad news. The publicist was doing followup calls regarding the book tour and asked the buyers about "Birthday Snow.'' They said they'd buy it except it's listed in their data base as "Non-refundable.''

That's just not fair. In the book store business returns are an ugly reality. A lot of stores send books back that don't sell and the wholesaler subtracts that from any profits there might be. If a book store can't get rid of it if it doesn't sell they can't afford to buy it. That's the law in chain store book land and most everywhere else. A buyer or manager could get fired for it. So standard operating procedure in the book trade is all books going out from wholesalers are returnable no questions asked.

So why is "Birthday Snow" book listed as "Non-refundable.'' I don't have a clue. Partners/West, a wholesaler that handles our books, says it isn't them. They said it looks like it's a chain store corporate decision problem. They don't have a clue, either.

I emailed a distributor that handles our books. They sell to Ingram. Which is a very important channel for us. They haven't got back to me. So a chain bookstore wants to buy our children's picture book but they can't. Great.

Michael LaLumiere
www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com