If only we could hand out little cards that say “Money flows towards the author” that is the most important thing you need to know about the publishing industry. Anything else is vanity pressland and shonky agentsville. If you have to pay people it’s not legit!

i also have a bit of a problem – huge really! – with the attitude of some of the self-published authors who have approached us over the last couple of years. Two guys especially stick out. I’m usually pretty placid but ended up in a screaming match here in the shop with these clueless idiots who were telling me things like I was ripping off authors by not selling their books at retail price – and passing the entire amount on to them…

“after all, you’re not doing anything – just selling the book. that’s totally passive…”

In both cases these dolts swore that they had canvassed other bookshops long and hard for advice before they’d gone to print. interestingly, i’m the only specialist in town and they never came and asked us for any industry info – just to sell the end result.

i still can’t believe the blazing ignorance of these guys. one poor lad – who was really a very sweet young man – had paid some local vanity press to publish his tome and the’d done a pretty awful job of it and he wanted me to take copies of the expensive end result on a firm sale basis. i couldn’t do it.

i told him he should just write and do the best job writing he could and then submit his work to one of the big publishing houses and let them handle the publishing and selling of the book. he looked so confused.

“but how could i afford that?” he said.

he thought that an author had to pay a publisher – just like he did with the vanity press – and that if the awful vanity press was nearly a thousand bucks, then one of the big international publihing houses must be way beyond his means…

what can you do?

I only recently learned about how those big ole displays work and how much manoeuvering and big discounting and etc. publishers have to go through to get them into bookshops. Fascinating!

“Planogram” also a new word.

Particularly because, honestly, if you have signed stock for me and been friendly, I will put your book in a place of pride with a gold “autographed” sticker on it gladly without your asking me… and it will probably be a lot more visible than whatever place you have chosen.

If you sneak around clandestinely putting your own book on display, special ordering books and not buying them so that “we will have stock”, harrassing employees by pretending to be a customer and having a tantrum when we don’t have the book, or trying to “ambush” or otherwise trick employees into giving you sales or ordering info… well, these are black mark. And they happen all the time.

Shocking behaviour from adults.

So, Little Willow, Jennifer, are there any other things you think should be added to the be-nice-to-booksellers section of Author Etiquette 101?

It depresses the living hell out of me when people say they will get it on amazon. Especially when I have given them my advice, time and energy for free. It makes me go mental, actually.

I want to tell them that if they are so keen on Amazon, perhaps they should wait outside of the Amazon warehouse for an author to come do an event. Or perhaps they should ask Amazon if they will have a bookfair benefitting their kids school. Or maybe they should ask someone at Amazon if they will read stories aloud to their children so they can have a moments peace to shop. Better yet, why don’t they ask AMAZON to pay LOCAL TAXES which benefit the entire community.

THEY WON’T.

OMIGOD I AM SO FIRED UP NOW!