Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Aaarrrgh! What a time to cut back!

by Rob - July 27th, 2006.
Filed under: Uncategorized.

So, the wonderful Chris from Bakka-Phoenix, Toronto’s science fiction bookstore, called today with a classic good-news/bad-news bit.

The good news was that the October 2006 issue of Analog, featuring the first of four serialization installments of my latest novel, Rollback, arrived at the store today.

The bad news was that instead of their usual order of 30 copies, the distributor delivered only nine copies. MetroNews, which handles distribution of Dell magazines in Ontario, hastened to add that it wasn’t their fault: Dell has decided to slash newsstand distribution of Analog and Asimov’s here 75% across the board, at least in Ontario, so Bakka-Phoenix was actually doing well to get nine copies. Two of those nine had already been spoken for, and I’ve taken two, so Bakka only has five left.

They could have sold a lot more copies at Bakka-Phoenix, not just of this issue but of the next three as well, because I have oodles of fans who shop there: in 2003, the number-one bestselling hardcover for the entire year at the store was my Humans; the number-one bestselling paperback for the entire year was my Hominids.

It’ll be the same at other retailers in Ontario: they’ll be getting just one-quarter of the copies they used to get. Sigh.

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