Internet narcissism
While standing in a Borders yesterday, I typed the words "Reel Shame" into their "Title Sleuth" to see what would happen. Happily, I was greeted by a listing for our book, and the notice that this book was not published yet, but the info desk would be happy to take my pre-order.
That was all the encouragement I needed to go check the various online bookstores for our listing. Borders Stores has it, naturally, but Amazon does not. This is weird because Borders is partnered with Amazon for online ordering. The "Borders Stores" site only lets you check brick-and-mortar store inventory.
Barnes & Noble has it listed, and they even offer a discount. I find this hilarious because we have no agreements with any distributors yet, so B&N has no reason to expect that they'll get it at a steep enough discount to make any money off the deal themselves. Still, it's nice to have a listing and to see that our book is available for pre-order. If you have a Barnes and Noble Reader's Advantage membership, feel free to pre-order a copy at their $12.82 price. Let's see what happens.
Perhaps most interesting to me is the listing at half.com. For those of you unfamiliar with half.com, it's one of those "sell it yourself" sites -- they handle the credit card transactions, etc., and take 15% commission. This is actually a pretty good deal for a self-publisher, who then doesn't have to worry about security concerns, credit card authorizations, etc etc. Of course, there's the chance that you'll be undersold on the same half.com page by someone with a used copy or someone else who bought them from you wholesale, but that's the free market, baby.
No joy on listings at Books-A-Million, BookSense, or Wordsworth. All in good time.
While standing in a Borders yesterday, I typed the words "Reel Shame" into their "Title Sleuth" to see what would happen. Happily, I was greeted by a listing for our book, and the notice that this book was not published yet, but the info desk would be happy to take my pre-order.
That was all the encouragement I needed to go check the various online bookstores for our listing. Borders Stores has it, naturally, but Amazon does not. This is weird because Borders is partnered with Amazon for online ordering. The "Borders Stores" site only lets you check brick-and-mortar store inventory.
Barnes & Noble has it listed, and they even offer a discount. I find this hilarious because we have no agreements with any distributors yet, so B&N has no reason to expect that they'll get it at a steep enough discount to make any money off the deal themselves. Still, it's nice to have a listing and to see that our book is available for pre-order. If you have a Barnes and Noble Reader's Advantage membership, feel free to pre-order a copy at their $12.82 price. Let's see what happens.
Perhaps most interesting to me is the listing at half.com. For those of you unfamiliar with half.com, it's one of those "sell it yourself" sites -- they handle the credit card transactions, etc., and take 15% commission. This is actually a pretty good deal for a self-publisher, who then doesn't have to worry about security concerns, credit card authorizations, etc etc. Of course, there's the chance that you'll be undersold on the same half.com page by someone with a used copy or someone else who bought them from you wholesale, but that's the free market, baby.
No joy on listings at Books-A-Million, BookSense, or Wordsworth. All in good time.
