From: Norma Jean <nsawicki>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:54:36 -0500

In my experience, books such as Kira-Kira are not published because of sales from independent booksellers, or the chains but because of sales from school and public libraries ( if the reviews are good). Every book does not receive its sales support from the same market...the markets can vary, depending on the book.

The U.S. is not a book buying society and with publishers wanting to control inventory...printing enough copies for six months, in some cases one year, print runs can be modest. And why not since books not sold can be returned for full credit. As shown by the number of Mock N/C discussions and the variations in the "winners" from one group to another, it is impossible to predict the N/C committees. It therefore stands to reason that those books bearing gold and silver medals will be out of stock when the awards are announced given that the initial print run may have been 5,000,000 copies in the case of a hardcover novel. Unlike other awards, the N/C has tremendous sales clout...the award winners will sell somewhere between 50,000,000 within a year of the announcement...with gold selling more than silver and picture books generally selling more than novels ( because of a stronger bookstore market for picture books). Bookstores are in business to sell books and no bookseller likes to tell a customer that a book is out of stock but it happens...even at Christmas time for adult books, as I recently learned. Norma Jean
Received on Thu 20 Jan 2005 11:54:36 AM CST