Unchain Me! — Save the Indies!
No, not the West Indies, though if you’re aware that they need any help feel free to provide it. I’m talking about the Independent Booksellers — an endangered species if there ever were one in the world today. You want to make it as a writer in the current market? You better make friends with the Indies, because the Corporate Buyers at the major chains aren’t really looking out for you as a reader, much less as a writer. And you need to make sure your friends and family are aware of the career-breaking practices of the chains and the career-making potential of their local Independent Booksellers.
Now, let’s be honest. The chains are discounters, and they move in volume. They’re corporations and they have to make a profit, but they ’sell to net,’ which can mean that even a damned good book — or series of books — can be doomed even if generally well-received. It’s in the way that they buy books to chunk out on their shelves that creates a diminishing potential sell-through for a title. Some stores in the chains will get some copies this time; some will get fewer, some none the next time; and the downward spiral has begun.
The chains are not at all evil. They’re not the devil incarnate, and neither are their buyers, but they are corporate entities and they answer to someone other than you and your local community. They employ local folks and all that good stuff. That they sell books at all is a good thing in the first place in this day and age, so they’re not bad, it’s just that their buying practices can be death to the careers of midlist writers and, face it folks, most of us out here would be lucky to make it even to the midlist category.
I know it means next to nothing these days, but I’m starting to think that keeping my dollars in the local area — even if it means I pay sales taxes on a purchase I’d have otherwise made online — is more advantageous to me in the long run as a member of the community. And if in some far-flung future I ever start producing marketable genre fiction, I want to know that there are still Indies out there who can form the unseen bulk of an iceberg worth of sales that makes the chains in the tip of it keep ordering my books.
Go have a look at Holly Lisle’s explanation of the situation at Selling to the net… or how to kill a career in three easy books. She’s got a better handle on it than I do, and you may find her supporting arguments in the defense of Indies even more interesting.
