This is a scary time to have a small business. A really scary time. Our plan had been to concentrate on library sales next year because libraries don’t return books and retailers do. I think this is still a good idea but I know that local governments are cutting their budgets everywhere and I’m sure libraries will be one of the first places to feel the cuts.
The second thing that we planned to do was to cut back on events. All the events we attended this year seemed to be feeling the pinch already with lower attendance and less sales.
But now I’m wondering if these adjustments are enough or if we need to reconsider other measures as well. Our sales have been better than last year but the boost we expected to get from the new releases has been a bit muted. I’m pretty sure most of the titles would have sold better under better conditions.
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"The situation has gotten so bizarre that Borders's market capitalization is only $82 million, meaning that theoretically one could buy the company for about $164,000 per superstore--much less than the inventory in it."—Shelf Awareness.
It's stuff like that that is scary.
It's not pretty no matter how you look at it and it's looking more and more like this will last awhile.
From what I can see, here, and elsewhere, pod sales are depressed, and on the national level, between B&N and Borders cutting costs, by both returning inventory, and ordering less, it's a bloodbath.
I'm bummed to hear that but not surprised. I guess there's not too much to do except hang in there and hope that things will settle down soon.
Promotion
I don't know what it's like for other RDSP authors, but I know that my book has received little attention re. reviews, even tho I know RDSP has sent it out to a few publications and editors. I have, however, received some praise on blogs. Since I know that getting reviewed sometimes requires more than simply sending out the books, I wonder if there's a way to reach bloggers. Ellen Datlow regularly offers her titles for free, if people promise to blog about the title--and then she sets up a link to the blog. Why not take ten titles (including mine!) and make such an offer? You know, 2 copies of Worse Than Myself to the first U.S. bloggers to ask.
Another problem for RDSP is getting people to visit the site. I have no idea how many folks actually read this journal. Tho posts are frequent, I wonder if promotion could be combined with something a wider audience might want. Could we ask that all RDSP readers submit a 400 word or less book review, and then post a new review every two days, with a link to the author's RDSP page? (So, I would review a book, and my name would link to the Adam Golaski page, etc.) What other kind of content could we offer? One month we could all tell 400 word "weird" stories--true or otherwise.
Since we authors would (hopefully) benefit, I'm sure most would be willing to pitch in.
Adam Golaski